We all know it’s “just” the summer league, but I am still shocked how many points Rockets’ rookie Donte Greene scored in his first game as a Rocket Monday night in Las Vegas. 40 points on 12-of-20 shooting (5-of-10 from 3-point land), and 11-of-12 free throws. That’s still much more than anyone would have thought he would have scored so early in his career. And he did it all after signing his contract with the Rockets just 5 minutes before the game started.

I don’t want to get carried away, but could he bring McGrady-esque scoring to the Rockets’ bench this season? Could he be the Rockets’ version of Monta Ellis, who quickly blossomed as a rookie scorer off the bench, contributing to Golden State’s amazing upset in the 2007 playoffs of the Mavericks? If Greene keeps scoring like this, he’ll make everyone forget about that Rudy Gay trade last season, and Daryl Morey will be named GM of the Year.

Here’s some of Greene’s highlight reel scores, courtesy of ClutchFans

Raymond has translated a couple of articles, one where Yao’s trainer Anthony Falsone says that Yao’s conditioning during Chinese National Team scrimmages is poor, as described in this first article. It will take some time, but everyone is satisfied with his progress so far.

In the second translated article (directly underneath the first one), despite Yao’s conditioning issues, he is expected to get some playing time in the FIBA Stankovich Continental Cup that starts July 17th. As Raymond points out, this contradicts an interview last week that Rockets’ assistant trainer Keith Garnett gave where he thought Yao would start playing at the end of the month in the FIBA Diamond Cup. So perhaps Yao and the Chinese team think waiting that long won’t give him enough time to gel with the team before the Olympics start next month.