Raymond has translated another interview that Titan Sports conducted with Yao Ming last Friday at the beginning of the Rockets’ recent road trip to Atlanta and Orlando. In the interview he talks about the brace support that concerns Jeff Van Gundy about his return to the court in mid-March. Thanks Raymond for all the hard work in translating this very long interview!

TITAN: So how do you feel now that you’re back to the days of traveling by plane, living in hotels, coming in and going out of visiting team’s changing room, and sitting with your teammates in the same place?

TITAN: You mentioned earlier you must maintain 6 hours per day for your rehabilitation such that you can return to competitive form and shape as soon as possible. How can you guarantee that 6 hours of rehab now that you’re traveling with the team?

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Uh-oh. Just when you think Yao’s return by mid-March is going to happen, we get this on the wire.

“What we’ve seen in the brief things he’s able to do with us, you get the sense he’s a lot further away from playing NBA basketball than maybe the timetables would suggest,” Van Gundy told the Houston Chronicle before Sunday’s game at Orlando. “He does not look comfortable at all with the brace. He does not look agile. Last year, he looked on the cusp of [returning]. To me, he looks like we have problems to solve there to get him back.

“Remember two years ago when I wore the arm brace?” Yao said. “I had a lot of trouble with that and that was on my arm.”

I just had to write a note about NBA great and Austin NBA D-League coach Dennis Johnson, who died last Thursday and whose memorial service was in Austin on Sunday. I wish I could have attended, but I was out of Texas and couldn’t make it.

I met DJ a couple of times over the past year. The first time was in Austin where I saw him in a parking lot and stopped to say hello. I was really surprised how nice he was. I think he even asked what I did for a living, and we talked for a few minutes.

Then when I was in Las Vegas last summer for the Vegas Summer League, I saw him in the stands and mentioned how I met him in Austin and how I worked on this Yao Ming web site. I swear, we ended up talking for 20-30 minutes in the stands while watching some of the action on the court. Here he was, an NBA legend who had more basketball experience in his pinkie finger than I had in my whole body, and he was interested in what I had to say about Yao Ming, and basketball in general. We talked about a lot of other topics beyond the NBA, like how he loved Austin, how he was planning on moving his family there, etc.

I always respected his game as a player when he was the Sonics and the Suns, but I always hurt that his Boston Celtics beat my Houston Rockets in 1986 in the NBA Finals. However, by his spending that much time with me, just a regular guy, proved to me that he was a class act and I became a big DJ fan after that.

Now when I read all the stories about how great of a person he was, I can believe it. He had ex-teammates like Bill Walton and Cedric Maxwell fly into Austin just for the memorial service. That goes to show how great of a man he must have been – that teammates 20 years ago flew halfway across the country to pay their respects. I wish I could have been one of them.

Click here, here and here for details from the memorial service, how much he was loved, and how much he’ll be missed.

In case you didn’t see them in the YaoMania! forum, here are some photos from Yao’s visit to the Houston Chinese Community Center earlier this week, along with an article about the visit near the bottom of the page.

Pictured to the left (courtesy of Karen Warren of the Houston Chronicle), Yao Ming gets his leg hugged by Hannah Oh, 4, during a visit to the Chinese Community Center in recognition of the lunar new year, Monday. Click here for more photos from his visit along with an article about it.

The Chronicle also reports that Yao should be able to start playing again in early March. Here’s what Jonathan Feigen of the Chronicle reports:

Rockets center Yao Ming said Monday he expects to return to Rockets practices within two weeks, a few days ahead of the March 1 date the Rockets had planned, with a return to games in “early March.”

“It’s hard to say (when he will play). Hopefully, the beginning of March.”

A long article appeared in the Times Online in UK on Yao. You can read it by clicking here, but for the most part if you have been following Yao’s career, you won’t really learn much new. However, below I have narrowed down some of the things that were new and interesting to me:

* Yao said, “The first few months I was really homesick,” he told The Times at his home in Houston, Texas, where he is recovering from a fractured tibia that will keep him out until mid-March. “I was counting it day by day, just to survive.

“After a couple of weeks I felt like I had already left home months ago — it was really slow. I would look at the dates all the time to see how it passed. I wasn’t driving at the time. I didn’t know my way around Houston. Everything was unfamiliar and I was trying to adjust to the NBA and perform.

* Yao said, “…after one or two years in the NBA, I became clear about my job. They ask the questions and you answer them. So from then on, I tried to be more professional and I started to make some jokes, to make it fun for myself. If the questions were going to bore me, at least I could have some fun and entertain myself.”

* Yao said, “…I’ll tell you this story. In 1993, we tried to get the Olympics. Obviously, we lost, but that night when the announcement was going to be made, I stayed up late as a 13-year-old boy to hear the news, but finally I fell asleep before the news.

“The next morning, my mom tells me we lost the Olympics and I’m really, really sad. Then, in 2001, we go to Moscow to try to get the 2008 Olympics and that night the TV was sitting right over my shoulder while I was in my bedroom playing video games and I was just listening for the news. I wasn’t watching because I was afraid to. Finally I heard [Juan Antonio] Samaranch [the IOC president] say ‘Beijing’ and I almost cried.

* Yao also said that he would like to hold the record for the most number of Olympic games for a Chinese basketball player, which would be four, taking him to play in the 2012 London Olympics.

* Bill Sanders, VP of Marketing for Yao’s agency BDA Sports, said the following: “…Yao is a reluctant icon. He doesn’t have the ego that a lot of celebrity athletes have. He feels a responsibility to China and to Chinese basketball. But privacy is important to him.

“He gives us a certain number of days to ‘sell’ and I would guess that figure is half as many days as Tiger Woods or Peyton Manning [quarterback with the Indianapolis Colts, winners of Super Bowl XLI] does. Could he be making more money? Sure. Should he be out there [in the public domain] with Tiger Woods? Sure. But he doesn’t want to be.”

Yao made an appearance at Toyota Center Saturday to conduct some workouts, and did the Rockets a favor by taping a video message for the crowd to wish them a Happy Lunar New Year. Click here to see some photos from a Chinese dance team that performed at halftime.

Here’s a translation from Raymond of a Sohu.com article that was published after Saturday’s game between the Rockets and Bobcats…

One after the other, Yao Ming shot the basketball passed to him by his assistant coach, Tom Thibodeau. It was almost exactly like the promotional film that Yao Ming did for the Houston Rockets, except this time, Yao Ming was standing a few steps more closer to the free throw line. As the commercial states, “Excellence is a habit, not an act (and it takes practice and perseverance.)” So while Yao Ming’s knee/leg wound is still recuperating, he is working diligently and laboriously to try to return to the court as soon as possible.

More Rockets teammates arrived into the training hall. Tracy McGrady walked in leisurely, and was surprised but excited to see Yao Ming there as well. The two of them stretched out their hands from afar and struck their fists to greet each other. They then sat down together on the bench and started to chat. They often turned their attention to the Rockets that were now into their shooting practice. Obviously Tracy McGrady was explaining to Yao Ming the latest situation with the team. At this very moment, maybe both Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady are starting to sketch out something big and special for the Rockets for this season.

Yahoo! Sports posted an interesting article on Jeff Van Gundy today, headlining their main NBA home page.

It’s nice to see the coach get some national run. I wholeheartedly agree with the statement made in the article, “All in all, this season has turned into Van Gundy’s finest work as an NBA coach.” It’s good to see he has more balance in his life, too.

No, they didn’t collide in the workout room. They both ran into each other at the Yao Restaurant & Bar in Houston. You can read more of the details and see more photos by clicking here.

Since injuring his leg on December 23rd, Yao makes one of his first public showings at the Rockets’ annual Tux ‘n Tennies benefit. Click here for more photos of Yao and his teammates at the benefit.

A Yao sighting! Yay Yao! Click here for more photos from the event (images may load slowly).