It might have been the best $25,000 Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy ever spent. He complained madly about the way the officials were calling games against Yao Ming. Specifically , he complained because he felt Alonzo Mourning and others were getting away with felonious assault against him.

“It just irritated me,” Van Gundy told reporters. “The whole game irritated me the way he was officiated. 'There was no contact,' yet there was blood streaming down his arm. They tell you there's no contact and you're watching blood flow. Unless he's so self-hurtful he's taking his own nails to his skin and ripping it open to draw attention to himself, you have to ask yourself, 'What am I seeing? Why can't what I'm seeing and he's obviously feeling and seeing be seen?'”

Naturally, he draws a fine from the league. Then the next game, against the Pistons at The Palace, Yao gets to the free throw line 20 times, tying his career-high.

“It’s kind of hard to defend a guy who is 7-5 and 330 pounds when you can’t touch him,” deadpanned Coach Flip Saunders.

"I'm going to refrain from talking about Yao right now," Van Gundy said. "I would have to tell the whole story. ... Instead of telling the story in parts, I'm going to stay away from the subject. His name usually involves a deduction of my money."