The Rockets are on somewhat of a roll going up 2-0 in the Jazz series, and all Rocket and Yao fans are feeling pretty good with tip-off for Game 3 in about 3 hours.

However, the chances of the Rockets pulling out a ‘W’ in Game 3 is fairly low. Utah fans are going to be fired up, and I predict Mehmet Okur will finally have a big game.

We also know the Rockets, and most Houston teams, can’t stand prosperity. Just when you think they are going to cruise, they lose a big game or go on a losing streak, with the Astros’ 5-game skid the latest example.

So don’t be surprised if the Rockets lose Game 3. The bright side of losing is the following:

* more focus for Game 4
* another game at Toyota Center will be played Monday night
* last but not least, if the Rockets were to sweep the Jazz on Saturday (4/28) in four games, they may not play again for over a week!

About that last point…I believe the Dallas-Golden State series is going to go at least 6 games, maybe 7. Game 6 of that series isn’t until Thursday, May 3rd, and Game 7 is Saturday, May 5th. Then tack on 2-3 days for the next series to start, and we could be talking May 7th or 8th, a total 9 or 10 days before Houston would play again!

That is just way too much time for Houston to get rusty. Although it’s always nice to have some extra rest, I think 3-4 days rest is ideal for this team. Heck, even with 3 days rest during the regular season, I believe the Rockets’ record was pretty lousy. They need to keep playing to keep the momentum going. It was like that during the 1994 and ‘95 championship season when most of those series went 6 or 7 games.

So I’m not advocating the Rockets should lose Game 3 or 4, but there is a bright side to losing if Houston can take care of business the remaining games of the series.

I was scouring YouTube for some good Rockets videos, and found someone uploaded the pre-game introductions for Game 1. I had mentioned in my post after attending Game 1 that the intro was pretty cool and awe-inspiring, and the crowd loved it.

I have been to many Rocket games in my lifetime, and this pre-game intro had to be one of the best.

Here’s a link to some video interviews that T-Mac, Yao, Shane and Van Gundy gave after Wednesday’s practice before heading to Utah for Game 3.

Yao high-fives Rafer Alston after their 98-90 victory over the Utah Jazz Monday night. Yao scored 27 points and grabbed 9 boards in the win to give Houston a 2-0 advantage over the Jazz in their playoff series. Click here for photos from the game. Click here for photos of Yao before the game.

With all the photos, video highlights, stories and blogs posted online (NBA.com, Houston Chronicle, etc.) about the playoff games, it doesn’t seem to make much sense for me to go into much detail about these games. You’re probably overwhelmed with too much information like I am. And you probably already watched the game yourself.

So what I’ll do is point out some of the stuff that you might not have read or seen anywhere else, especially since I was at the game, or haven’t had time to digest. I’m making sure not to waste this opportunity since I don’t know how long I will be able to keep getting a media pass from the Rockets as more demand from the national media kicks in as the team continues to win.

First, here are some helpful links if you haven’t seem them already in addition to links to photos underneath the picture above (I’ll continue to update these links with more goodies as I find them).

Link to Yao video highlights on NBA.com

Link to game video highlights #1 on NBA.com

Link to game video highlights #2 on NBA.com

TNT’s halftime highlights with Kenny, Charles, Ernie and Magic

JVG’s press conference

*New - Yao & T-Mac press conference

ESPN.com’s Greg Anthony - “How Jazz can rebound”

CNNsi.com - “Open Letter to T-Mac”

*New - I’m not able to find online any transcription of the quotes from Game 2 like what was available for Game 1. However, I have transcribed some myself. Check ‘em out at the end of this post.

Now about the game…

When I got there about 1 ½ hours before tip-off, you wouldn’t believe what was playing on the TV in the press room. It wasn’t the Orlando-Detroit game. Instead, it was Dancing with the Stars. Very strange. Coincidentally, Clyde Drexler was in the other room nowhere near the TV. But finally someone asked for the channel to be changed to basketball.

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I’m at Toyota Center and have Internet access, so I thought I would try something new and provide comments in the YaoMania! discussion forum on what I see and hear at the arena that you might not get on TV or video streaming over the Internet.

Click here for the discussion forum topic. Once you go there, you can click on the latest page number on the top-right and lower-right corners of the forum.

This Rockets-Jazz series already has some interesting sub-plots. But today we got another one when we found out that Andrei Kirilenko was shedding a few tears at the end of Sunday’s practice. Evidently it was because of the very little impact (2 points, 1 rebound, 1 block, 1 steal) he had in Game #1, and the fact Jerry Sloan pulled him in the third quarter right before the Rockets went on a 16-4 scoring run and only played 7 seconds at the end of the fourth quarter.

The Salt Lake Tribune writes how AK47 is upset that Sloan isn’t playing him, and how it’s an awkward situation that both Sloan and Kirilenko is going through.

Tonight on Inside the NBA on TNT, they reported that Kirilenko cried, and of course Charles Barkley asked, “You’re kidding?” and then said, “That’s ridiculous.”

You can bet the talking heads are going to jump all over this one because it’s an easy target to jump on. Just look at what they did with Dirk Nowitzki and his comment during the playoffs last season ridiculing him that the way he relaxed when shooting clutch free throws was to think of a David Hasselhoff song. Even opposing teams’ fans got into the act, jeering Nowitzki with signs about the Hoff. Let’s just hope Rocket fans don’t do anything classless to mock Kirilenko during Monday night’s game.

Then you’ve got the other storyline about the Jazz collapsing at the end of the season to lose homecourt advantage to the Rockets. And you’ve always got the standard T-Mac-has-never-advanced-past-the-first-round, which is getting very old.

Obviously, the Jazz are on the ropes mentally with diminished confidence, so the Rockets need to lower the hammer and not give the Jazz a chance to gain any momentum in the series by letting them win Monday night.

As I mentioned early this morning in my last post, I was able to capture a few things that you might, and might not, have observed through all the different media reports coming out of Toyota Center after the Rockets victory over the Jazz in Game 1.

First, if you didn’t know it, you can watch Jeff Van Gundy’s post-game news conference for home games by going to Rockets.com. Here’s the video link for last night’s JVG conference, or if you want to read some of the noteworthy snippets from the conference, here are some of them:

* When asked what got T-Mac going in the second half, JVG first responded simply, “Tracy.” Then JVG later said, “Sometimes, when you want something so bad, it works against you a little bit. I think that’s what happened with him in the first half.”

* It looked like JVG was upset with a guy in the interview room behind me was finishing up a cellphone call (very quietly I might add). He looked at him seriously and asked, “You got a call?” then broke the tension by saying he was just joking with him.

* Commenting (and joking) on Utah’s 52.9% free throw shooting: “We defended the free throw really well tonight.”

* Speaking of the Rockets’ shaky play in the first half, “When the intensity rose, instead of doing what we do, we were scattered and frantic, and that’s a by-product of very good defense on Utah’s part, and some things we felt we could do better.”

“We actually would like to play a little quicker. In the first half, we were so discombobulated and so scattered, they had us all over the place. I didn’t even recognize what we were doing, and we were fortunate to only be down 9 at half.”

* “We obviously don’t want Yao out there on the three-point line with Okur.”

* On Rafer Alston’s performance (9 points, 11 rebounds, 8 assists, 2 steals in 46 minutes): “I thought Rafer was really good tonight defending…playing so many minutes. I think he did a great job.”

* On the play where Derek Fisher missed a layup and Yao converted the mistake into a dunk on the other end, JVG said “We got rewarded for poor play. Yao didn’t run back…Sometimes it is luck. We got lucky on that one…We got some good breaks tonight.”

* On T-Mac’s shaky start shooting 0-for-6 from the field in the first half: “There is an energy factor that he has to pace himself a little bit when you’re asking so much from the offensive end.”

In Jerry Sloan’s press conference, I was very impressed with him that I thought I would be for such a tough-minded coach who has a feisty reputation. He was very professional, and downright pleasant, in answering questions after a tough loss.

Among other things, Sloan said, “We’ve got to try to get the ball out of his (McGrady’s) hands and we didn’t seem to have the desire to want to make that work. We’ve got a young team, and they’ve got to learn that, and in this type of game, you can’t lose your ability to compete and we went through a stage where we lost our ability to compete.”

“We have to play a full 48 minutes. We can’t have a quarter like we did where we were missing free throws and missing open jump shots.”

But while writing this post entry, I discovered that Rockets.com does a good job transcribing a lot of the quotes from the locker room and interview area. So rather than re-invent the wheel, I’ll direct you to this page if you want to read more quotes, especially from Yao.

Yao’s locker spot was the most crowded of any other player. That’s because T-Mac provided his comments in the interview room. There must have been 10 Chinese or Asian-American reporters waiting for him, so it was hard to get through and get good audio from him, or even ask a question. And Yao traditionally takes more time to get to his locker than anyone else, I think because he either lifts weights or gets some treatment.

The first few questions Yao answered were in English, with the majority of it being conducted in Chinese.

Instead, I’ll focus on observations and quotes that I know either you haven’t see anywhere else, or was lightly reported, like…

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Yao blocks the shot of Mehmet Okur Saturday night in an 84-75 victory over the Utah Jazz. Yao led all scorers with 28 points and 13 rebounds. Click here for more photos from the game. Click here for photos of Yao & T-Mac getting ready for the game. Click here for photos from Yao’s pregame shootaround.

I was lucky enough to go to Game 1 of the Rockets-Jazz series in Houston. Since many of you may have seen the game on ESPN, streamed online, or many of the highlights by now, I won’t go into a ton of details about the game. Instead, I’ll focus on some of the things you might have missed by not being at the arena.

And tomorrow (Sunday), I will post another blog entry with some of the comments and observations I gathered from the interview areas that you might not be able to read or see anywhere else (it’s so late, I don’t have enough time to do it tonight).

So let’s get things started…I don’t know if the Rockets do this before every game, or just the playoff games. But right before the pregame warmup drills, they showed on the big screen the Rockets in their huddle just outside the locker room area before they run out on the court.

That was cool to see because the fans got a chance to see the players get hyped up beforehand, and they responded with a roar of anticipation. Then when the players ran on to the court, each one of them had a small, red ball (I assume with a Rockets logo on it) and threw them into the stands as they transitioned directly into their layup drill.

The players never had thrown balls into the stands in past seasons. I had heard the team has done a lot of new and different things this season that was much better than in the past. Even the new public address announcer, who I know Van Gundy likes more than last season’s, got on the mic in the middle of the court before the warm-ups began to get everyone fired up and wave their “Red Rowdy” towels. He has a very impressive, booming voice and did a good job.

The introduction of the players was very well done, with imposing music and inspirational videos of the Rockets played on the screen leading up to the intros. The crowd got amped and the response from them was deafening!

Not only was the crowd’s decibel levels impressive, but I would say over 80% of them were wearing red. I have never seen that before at a Rockets game. It was like a college game the way the fans were all united in one color. They definitely were holding up their end of the bargain in not letting Utah get comfortable.

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Yao suited up and participated in pregame warmups in Utah Wednesday night, but as a precautionary measure didn’t play in a fairly meaningless game against the Jazz. Utah ended up winning the final game of the regular season for both teams, 101-91, and play again Saturday night in the first game of their playoff series.

Although they lost against the team they will be facing in the playoffs, Jeff Van Gundy did the right thing by not playing Yao, T-Mac and Dikembe Mutombo in the final game of the regular season. The risk was too great if an injury had occurred to one of these guys. Yao suited up but didn’t play, Deke wore street clothes, and T-Mac stayed in the locker room.

Even without those three players, I couldn’t believe it when the Rockets jumped out to a 19-5 lead in the first quarter. That made the Jazz fans restless, and they started booing before the Jazz got it together and pulled away in the fourth quarter while resting their own starters.

This is so strange to have the Rockets lose and for me not to be mad about it. I kind of like this. It’s like that last exam you take in school when you know you’re going to graduate and no matter how bad you do on the test, you’ll still get a passing grade in the class and get your diploma. I loved those rare days.

Even with Utah out-rebounding Houston 45-25, I’m not upset.

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Yao throws one down with Utah’s Mehmet Okur looking on. Yao carried the Rockets with 35 points, 16 boards and 4 blocks, but several breakdowns contributed to Houston losing a 9-point second-half lead and letting the Jazz sneak out of Houston with a huge victory. Click here for more photos from the game.

The Rockets lost a huge game to the Utah Jazz Sunday night in Houston. I was confident the Rockets were going to win after taking a 9-point lead late in the 3rd quarter. I thought surely they would make the necessary defensive stops and hit the buckets they needed to take a lead in the standings over Utah for home court advantage in the playoffs, especially after seeing the two clutch wins they had in Los Angeles this past week.

But they lost, and I narrow it down to four specific things that contibuted to Houston’s loss.

First: the officials. Carlos Boozer hit a huge bucket with 43 seconds remaining in the game, but he charged into Shane Battier. Battier had position to draw the charge, but the damn ref called it the other way, saying Battier was too late in sliding over. I vehemently disagree.

That was a huge call that put Boozer on the line for the penalty free throw, making it 85-81 and capping an 8-0 run. ^&#%@*! REFS! If anything, you don’t make that call. You let it go if you’re not sure at such a crucial juncture in the game. That 4-point edge with 43 seconds remaining was going to be hard to overcome.

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