Today a press conference was held at Toyota Center with Rockets’ GM Daryl Morey and Dr. Walter Lowe, team doctor for the Rockets. Yao didn’t attend. He’s also not at Toyota Center where the Rockets are blowing out the Memphis Grizzlies 61-33 at halftime.

Here’s a link to the presser video on Rockets.com. Here’s a summary of the press conference posted on Chron.com.

I’ll also update this post with quotes that aren’t in the Chronicle article in the next hour or so.

ESPN The Magazine’s Ric Bucher, who co-wrote Yao’s book and obviously knows Yao personally talked to #11 Thursday night. Check out the video below. Here’s a link to the article where Yao jokingly said, “I haven’t died. Right now I’m drinking a beer and eating fried chicken. What were you expecting, a funeral?”

Bucher reports that the Rockets front office “will examine all options” and that they were “devastated” when they heard the news today about Yao’s injury. You can bet they are working some long hours to figure out what they will do with Yao this season and beyond, and perhaps try to find some help at the center position.

Here’s the video update from Bucher (excuse the commercial at the beginning). From what we gather and remember Yao saying over the summer, the most viable option at this early stage is that Yao would probably choose to have the fracture heal over time rather than have surgery again.

As you may know, the stress fracture that Yao Ming was diagnosed having earlier today is the same kind of injury that Grant Hill had to overcome. Many thought it was impossible given the type of injury Hill suffered and the amount of work required to overcome it. Although Yao’s situation may be more complicated, Hill’s injury was considered severe in its own right. After all, he plays more like a gazelle whereas Yao doesn’t need to run as much, or as fast. But Yao is 300+ pounds, and Hill isn’t. Regardless, here’s a short video of what Hill went through:

Either way, I hope Yao and Hill have a chance to talk over the coming days and weeks so Yao may get some inspiration from Hill’s trials and tribulations in coming back from this type of ankle injury. But if Yao decides to retire, you can’t hold it against him. But I’m not mentally prepared for that, nor are alot of people who think Yao still has too much game left in him.

Since we don’t have any details yet from Yao’s doctors, here’s the next best thing: an interview that Houston Sportsradio 610 had with orthopedic surgeon Dr. Kenneth First (not affiliated with Yao or the Rockets). It’s interesting that this injury is very similar to Grant Hill’s ankle injury from several years ago.

So sad, I can’t even put it into words. Here are more details as well as a short Rockets press release.

Having gotten to know him over the years, I feel so bad for Yao. He doesn’t deserve this. His career may be over.

On Wednesday night the Rockets lost to Oklahoma City in a game you probably could have placed a sure bet on. As much as the Rockets kept the score close through most of the first half, they failed to finish out the 2nd and 3rd quarters and were overwhelmed by the Thunder in the second game of a back-to-back on the road.

It’s not travel fatigue that you can point to being the root cause for the Rockets not to play up to the Thunder’s standard. Houston reverted back to its early season problems of not being able to finish strong the ends of quarters. I won’t get into all the numbers and details since it’s “deja vu all over again,” although OKC’s shooting an astounding 57% from the field is the highest FG% the Rockets have given up this season, and the highest OKC has racked up against an opponent this season.

The Jeff Van Gundy era seems like eons ago. JVG is starting to look like George W. Bush to Rocket fans — the more time passes, the more his favorability rating rises.

Not that I’m a Rick Adelman basher. I did plenty of that in his first year as Houston’s coach when I nicknamed him Rick “Idleman” for failing to make quicker personnel adjustments and inserting young talent into the lineup. He may still have that problem to a degree, but you’ve got to give him credit for giving Chase Budinger a lot of minutes last year, and doing the same with Jordan Hill this season, which has paid big dividends. I would have liked to have seen it with Jermaine Taylor, but he’s gone now. I’d still like to see it with Jared Jeffries, who has length and is a good defender. Isn’t that what they need more of now?

However, I do reserve the right to bring out the “Idleman” moniker if Jeffries continues to ride the pine. More importantly, the problem with the Rockets lies with personnel in a few key positions, to no fault of anyone who plays on the team who runs it. Not that Houston has bad players. I actually think every one of them has something to contribute. But as we have seen with Oklahoma City, it takes a few special players in key positions to make the difference from being an elite team and a mediocre one.

Not that this is any secret. Daryl Morey has been saying this for years. The only player the Rockets have that could be considered elite (at least two years ago) is Yao, and who knows how good he’ll be when he gets back to full speed. Aaron Brooks may be close, but his size brings up defensive liabilities. Luis Scola is great, but his defense is also suspect. Kevin Martin can score with the best of them, but his defense won’t scare anyone. Shane Battier is a good defender, but he doesn’t produce enough offense or wear out his man who is defending him. You get the point.

What really makes me mad is that in order to become an elite team in the NBA, you either have to be in a “special” market (LA, New York, Miami, Chicago) that attracts free agents or players wanting to be traded there, or you have to be terrible for a few years so you can get really high draft picks. Why Houston — the fourth largest city in the country — can’t attract free agents like the aforementioned frustrates me. But at least Philadelphia as the #5 city faces the same dilemma, although it didn’t bother Elton Brand a few years ago.

Oklahoma City (formerly Seattle) took the latter route of just being a bad team for a few years, and now they are on the verge of building a dynasty for a decade or more. Let’s go over who they have been able to draft over the years after putting up terrible W-L records:

2006-07 season: 31-51 record
2007 draft:
– Kevin Durant – 2007 – #2 pick
– Jeff Green – 2007 – #5 pick acquired in a package deal with Boston for Glen Davis (#35 pick in the same draft) and Ray Allen

2007-08 season: 20-62 record
2008 draft:
– Russell Westbrook – 2008 – #4 pick
– Serge Ibaka – 2008 – #24 pick

2008-09 season: 23-59
2009 draft:
– James Harden – 2009 – #3 pick

You have to give them credit for the trade to get Green, although they did give up a lot in hindsight. Also getting Ibaka at the #24 spot is pretty good drafting. But Durant, Westbrook and Harden were can’t-miss picks at #2, #4, and #3 respectively. All they had to do was suck and get a good draft pick each of those years.

It’s tough that a team like Houston — who has been stuck with late 1st round or 2nd round picks for several years — has to build more through trades and free agency. It’s very difficult to do that and win championships. It makes you wonder if they should take the easy route for a year or two and just be really bad in order to get a game-changer of a draft pick. That’s what they were before they drafted Ralph Sampson, Hakeem, and Yao (notice how I didn’t put Steve Francis on that exclusive list). I know intentionally being bad by tanking the season isn’t going to happen in Houston. The owner and GM want to win too much to do that, and I commend them for that. There is always a chance the Rockets can knock off a top seed in the first round of the playoffs, kind of like the Laker series a couple of years ago, or Golden State with the Mavericks a few years ago.

In the meantime, it would be nice if the NBA expanded the lottery a few more teams, like to 6 to 8 more, since the teams who are on the lower end of the playoff brackets (#5-#8) really don’t have any chance of winning a championship without some draft pick help.

What’s interesting is that the Rockets now have a record (after acquiring Terrence Williams) of acquiring physically gifted players who were worthy of being lottery picks, but who hadn’t worked out with the original team that drafted them. First it was Jordan Hill from the Knicks (a #8 pick in the 2009 draft), now it’s Williams from New Jersey (#11 pick in 2009). Not a bad strategy to take if you’ve got the culture and coaching to course correct with players who have gone awry early in their careers. But it’s not like Houston’s a bastion for making guys shake off bad karma they gathered at previous teams (e.g., McGrady).

I’m all for trying to get players who have relatively ‘clean’ reparations who are overachievers given their physical limitations like Brooks, Battier, Scola and Kyle Lowry, just to name a few. But it has become clear that the Rockets believe that in order to get to the next level, they have to take a few risks trading for guys who have all the physical gifts but may be a problem with the coaching staff or in the locker room. We saw how they pulled the plug on Von Wafer pretty quick after he showed disrespect to Adelman.

Given these deals, I wonder now if Houston is giving up on the idea of acquiring “basketball IQ” types like Battier (and giving up Rudy Gay)? Perhaps in order to keep up with the Thunder and all the other tough teams in the West, you need to have athletic thoroughbreds. If they are, it won’t hurt if the Rockets do suck this year, get a very high pick, and hope that player turns into an elite player like so many teams seem to have these days (Minnesota, Clippers).

Is it worth it to go ahead and build for the future by playing younger guys now, finishing with a poor record, and load up on more lottery picks for a couple of years in order to build a dynasty for the next 10 years? If it is, I wouldn’t mind it so much. I like to see young players develop and improve, as long as it pays off in the long run and the team becomes better equipped to head off the Oklahoma City locomotive that’s barreling downy the tracks for many years to come.

The other question that comes to mind is how much does coaching really matter when so much of your success is predicated on getting really good players? I wonder just how good of a coach OKC’s Scott Brooks really is? Did he hit the lottery himself by being promoted to head coach right when their high draft picks were destined to gel anyway?

The Rockets took care of business Tuesday night, putting a shellacking on the 5-16 Sacramento Kings at Toyota Center. Before getting there, though, the Rockets’ starters were letting the Kings in the first quarter and part of the second slice through their interior defense to get lots of easy shots up close. The game was close until the end of the second quarter when the Rockets’ bench started a huge scoring run that went into the third quarter. When the starters came back, Houston opened up a 22-point lead and cruised to a 118-105 victory.

It was a highlight reel of a game with all kinds of passes from Kyle Lowry (9 assists) to his teammates, with Luis Scola getting many of those passes on his way to 23 points, 14 coming in the 3rd quarter on 6-of-7 shots. Lowry-to-Scola is almost becoming like the new Stockton-to-Malone as far as Rockets’ history goes. Although Hakeem was in the house courtside Tuesday night, I don’t remember any point guard (Kenny Smith, Sam Cassell, etc.) during his Dream’s time as a Rocket feeding him the ball as much as Lowry has done for Scola lately.

Probably the signature moment of the game was when Jordan Hill posterized Samuel Dalembert with a ferocious one-handed dunk that had a Phi Slama Jamma snap of a wrist to it. I had to watch that one several times over on my DVR.

Jordan Hill throws one down over Samuel Dalembert. Click here for more photos from the game.

When the season started, the bench that we all thought was impressive (on paper, at least) was really the difference in this game since the starters were sluggish in the first quarter. But Houston’s bench is far superior to Sacramento’s, so we have to take Tuesday’s dominance with a grain of salt.

Interestingly, Jermaine Taylor didn’t play at all in garbage time. I didn’t expect he would since it’s been reported that Taylor will be traded to the Kings (coincidentally) for a 2011 second round pick (if Sacramento finishes with one of the top 5 records in the league, yeah, you heard me right) to make room for New Jersey’s Terrence Williams, who has been traded to Houston. So you can bet the Rockets weren’t going to do anything to risk Taylor to injury. But wouldn’t that have been wild if they had played him? Can you imagine the reaction that would have come from the Sacramento bench if they had played Taylor?

I’m kind of bummed that Taylor won’t be able to show what all he can do in a Houston uniform. I’ve been high on him all season long, and when he did get some playing time, he showed just how much of a scorer and how athletic he is. I think it’s always a disappointment when the Rockets’ front office drafts a guy, they talk him up to get the fans excited, then we never really get to see them live out their potential before trading them. Now we have to get excited about Morris. Oh well, it was nice knowing you, JT. Just don’t come back and haunt us as the second coming of Michael Jordan.

Now that the Rockets have redeemed themselves somewhat with wins over Cleveland and Sacramento after suffering that embarrassing loss in Milwaukee, Houston will have a chance to either let us down again with a stinker of a game on the road against an explosive Oklahoma City team, or get an unlikely ‘W’ like they did against the Lakers at home a couple of weeks ago.

Which Rockets’ team will show up? Based on recent history, I’m not getting my hopes up.

There have been a few interviews with Rocket players written over the past couple of days about how the team has turned the corner on the season, now better able to execute in late-game situations, getting defensive stops, etc.

With this kind of talk, you can’t help but think the Rockets were going to take care of business, at least over their next 3 games, by beating teams they should beat, starting with one of the worst offensive teams in the league — the Milwaukee Bucks (lowest in scoring, field goal percentage, and 3-point shooting percentage). After all, they also had 3 days of rest since their Tuesday night victory against the Pistons.

I have to admit I was buying into the groupthink.

Instead, the Rockets suffered one of their most embarrassing losses of the season Friday night. Not because it was a loss to a mediocre Milwaukee team with a record in of 8-13 in the East, which is a lot worse than the Rockets’ 7-13 in the tougher Western Conference. Well, it’s partly because of it.

It’s because as Daryl Morey said on Thursday during a radio interview, the Rockets just about needed to win all of their upcoming games against the upcoming run of poorer NBA teams to get back into the playoff hunt. Unfortunately on Friday, they regressed in problem areas you’d think they had already conquered.

The Rockets gave up 48.1% shooting to a Bucks team that was averaging as a team 40.4% for the season. The Bucks also scored a whopping 56 points in the paint, thanks to Andrew Bogut going off for 24 points, as well as 22 rebounds, 7 of them on the offensive glass. The Rockets had no one who could match his size, or could counteract his shot blocking ability (5 blocks).

One of the apt microcosms of the defensive struggles the Rockets went through the entire game was when Luis Scola stupidly made contact with Ersan Ilyasova on a 3-pointer, sending him to the line with 35 seconds remaining and a 90-85 lead. Ilyasova made all 3 free throws, giving them a seemingly insurmountable 8-point advantage. But Kyle Lowry followed up that mistake by hitting two consecutive 3-pointers in a row sandwiched around a Brandon Jennings free throw, cutting the lead down to 94-91 with 21 seconds remaining.

Brad Miller would miss a 3-pointer with 13 seconds remaining that could have brought them to within one point. If only Scola hadn’t committed that dumb foul, there could have been a different outcome. But it’s bad defense like that which gave the Bucks the opening that was provided to them to seize the win.

Throw-in surprisingly bad shooting by Kyle Lowry (4-of-15 for 11 points), Kevin Martin (5-of-13 for 23 points), Luis Scola (4-of-13 for 10 points), and Shane Battier (2-of-8 for 4 points), the Rockets had no chance. Especially given they were out-rebounded 48-37.

It’s funny how when the team does well with guys like Kyle Lowry stepping up, people start thinking the Rockets don’t need Aaron Brooks after all. Well, we saw how important it is to have Brooks’ scoring, kind of like what we saw last year where there was talk that the team didn’t really need Yao when they were winning, only to run out of gas and put that nonsense talk to rest.

The only bright spots for Houston was the bench. Jermaine Taylor actually got decent minutes and delivered like I always knew he would, scoring 10 points on 4-of-5 shooting in 17 minutes. He also had two steals. Finally it looks like Taylor’s athleticism and production is too good to ignore. Similarly, Courtney Lee scored 16 points on 7-of-10 shooting, and Jordan Hill hit 4-of-7 shots for 8 points.

Frankly speaking, the Rockets’ psyche has got to be shaken after such a dud of a performance in a game that had “W” written all over it beforehand. They won’t have much time to sulk about it since they play another mediocre team, Cleveland, in the second game of a back-to-back. The Cavs are 7-15 in the East, having lost 6 in a row, with 5 of those losses coming from losing margins of 19 (vs. Boston), 28 (vs. Miami), 34 (vs. Minnesota), 10 (vs. Detroit), and 20 (vs. Philadelphia).

The saving grace for the Rockets seem to be that they play much better at home where they have won their last 4 games, which is the way it should be. Remember a few seasons ago when they played better on the road than at home?

I’ll make this quick since there is no controversy in how the Rockets took care of business last night beating Detroit, blowing them out with a 19-6 run to close out the game in a 97-83 victory.

Luis Scola is making a great case for an All-Star spot with 35 points on 16-of-25 shots, one point short of his career high at Golden State in the second game of the season.

Kyle Lowry’s growth as a point guard continues, scoring 22 points and racking up 12 assists and 6 steals, both career highs. It’s going to be interesting to see what happens when Aaron Brooks returns to the court soon since Lowry has raised the bar on Houston’s point guard expectations. A little bit of pressure to be more of an assist man isn’t a bad thing.

The part of Lowry’s game that has made him even more dangerous is his 3-point shooting, which has drastically improved over the past few games. He was 4-for-5 from 3-point land, and 11-of-19 over the past four games.

Joining forces in the 20+ scoring club for Houston was Kevin Martin, who continues to amaze with his aptitude to get to the line, hitting 14-of-15 free throws.

Who would have thought just a couple of years ago the Yao Ming/Ron Artest/Tracy McGrady “Big 3” would be replaced by the Scola/Lowry/Martin triumvirate? Add Yao and Aaron back into the mix, and you’ve got a very formidable lineup that could get the Rockets back into the playoff hunt as they face a very weak schedule of teams in December to make up for all those opponents they faced before last night’s game. But they’ve got to play defense like they did Tuesday night, although Rip Hamilton getting himself ejected from the game gave the Pistons little hope offensively.

Speaking of McGrady, his return back to Toyota Center for the first time since leaving the Rockets provoked an interesting reaction. I heard many more boos than I had anticipated, but perhaps that’s because most of the crowd got word that McGrady dissed Houston before the game by saying the Rockets’ poor start this year is correlated with his leaving, or something like that.

When you read this quote, you’ve got to be happy this selfish, insecure bufoon is gone:

“It wasn’t my fault it ended the way it did, but yeah, I regret it. I want to know who they’re blaming around here now that I’m gone.”

Yes, it was your fault McGrady, and you hold partial blame for sucking tens of million of dollars from the Rockets’ cap the past two years in Houston when you hardly played, taking us through all of your drama, and handcuffing Houston from being able to get a legitimate free agent during your last two years here.

Back to Houston’s roster: Chase Budinger continued to struggle Tuesday, hitting only 2-of-6 shots, including an air ball on an open jumper from the free throw line, then missing 2-of-3 free throws after getting fouled on a 3-pointer. I haven’t seen a “sophomore slump” like this one in quite some time. Something has got to give here with Budinger’s playing time.

Rick Adelman said before the game that he was going to play more of Jermaine Taylor so he can add some size to the backcourt since Ish Smith isn’t all that big (and he’s not playing so spectacularly to give him lots of minutes). We’ve been calling for more playing time for Taylor for weeks, so I’ve got to give credit to Adelman for adjusting like he did with playing Jordan Hill more. But he only gave 6 minutes to Taylor on Tuesday night. Hopefully we’ll see more of them, although the Rockets might not need him as much with Milwaukee (7-13), Cleveland (7-14) and Sacramento (4-15) as upcoming opponents.

Here’s part 2 of the video that FoxSports Houston produced that aired last month. Although it chronicles Yao’s recovery this past year from the foot surgery he had in 2009, I bet many of the same rehab techniques shown in this video are the same as what he is doing to recover from his bone bruise. Here’s part 1 of the video.

Yao will not play tonight against the Pistons. He had targeted this game as his return, but this is what he said Monday:

“Every day is closer. It’s just not strong enough to support me running, jumping. I think they (the medical staff) made the decision based on that.”

At least we know that Yao won’t try to suit up like Tracy McGrady did last season when he was trying to force the Rockets to let him play when they said he wasn’t ready. Remember that? McGrady returns to the scene of his crimes tonight with the Pistons.

It’s not known if Yao will be able to practice on Wednesday. I’m okay with that. Take it slow, big guy.