I had to watch most of the Rockets-Mavs game from an airport sports bar TV Thursday night. Because my flight was late in departing, I got to see most of the game until about the 6:16 mark in the fourth quarter when Dirk Nowitzki hit a three-pointer to put the Mavericks ahead 72-69. That was his second three-pointer in a row, and leading up to that point, Dallas had made a furious 12-0 run in the third quarter to take away the Rockets’ hope that they could coast to a victory against their arch rivals.

It was sickening how the Rockets could hardly hit a bucket in that third quarter (only 3-of-13!), very reminiscent of their game in Dallas last week when the Mavs went on a 16-0 run to suck the life out of the Rockets on their way to a blowout victory.

Also sickening was how the Rockets squandered opportunities before those two Nowitzki three-pointers, missing 5 free throws in the 4th quarter alone before those buckets. Juwan Howard missed two free throws after a great hustle play by Chuck Hayes where he sprinted from behind to catch Jason Terry, knock the ball away, leading to a Houston fast break where Howard got fouled in the act of shooting.

T-Mac had missed 3 free throws at that point, precious points the Rockets couldn’t afford to squander when you have to play almost perfectly to beat a 43-9 team like Dallas.

Like I mentioned earlier, after Dirk hit his second trey and the Mavericks had all the momentum now leading 72-69, I had to stop watching the game and jump on my plane. It was an interesting position for me because I cannot ever remember NOT watching a game when it comes down to the wire. So I thought it would be interesting to predict what would happen. Since I was on the plane to the point I’m writing this, I don’t know what the outcome of the game is, so here’s my prediction.

“I predict the Rockets will continue to fall behind after having their ego crushed yet again by another Maverick comeback. They will make a valiant effort to stay in the game, but will continue to miss big shots down the stretch, including more missed free throws, while the Mavericks continue to make theirs and show why they have the league’s best record. The Rockets will lose and will be lamenting all the blown opportunities, including those huge missed free throws in the fourth.”

After I got home and watched the recording, I was able to see if my prediction was correct. I was partly correct. Here’s what happened:

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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.

Yao works out in Houston as he gets closer to being ready to play. See the article below of Yao’s latest status.

Raymond has translated a Sohu.com interview with Yao Ming on the latest with his rehabilitation, which you can read right here.

He also has translated another interview where Yao gives his thoughts on which team challenges the Rockets most, the Phoenix Suns or the Dallas Mavericks.

Tracy McGrady reacts after hitting a jumper to give Houston a 95-92 lead with 1:19 remaining the fourth quarter against Sacramento Tuesday night, capping an amazing comeback led by T-Mac.

You gotta love T-Mac, who struggled throughout the night against Sacramento but then worked his magic just in time to lead a miraculous comeback against the Kings.

They were down by 9 points with a little over 4 minutes remaining, but finally mustered enough effort to pull out a victory for the first time in 14 games this season when trailing entering the fourth quarter.

In the fourth, T-Mac scored 10 of the Rockets last 12 points (and 12 of their last 14) on an array of jumpers and three-pointers in just 2 minutes and 49 seconds. He started the comeback by hitting a 3-pointer and a long jumper to make it 92-88, and that’s when you knew the Rockets had a chance. Then Bonzi Wells hit two free throws to make it 92-90. T-Mac then banked in a 3-pointer to give them a 93-92 lead, bringing the house down!

The Rockets defense suddenly got solid during that stretch, something it hadn’t done much of all game long. They held the Kings scoreless with great defense, including a strip by T-Mac as Kevin Martin was going up for a layup on a fast break. The ball came down inbounds right along the baseline, and Shane Battier whipped the ball behind his back to save it from going out of bounds. The Rockets picked up the loose ball, pushed it down the court, and McGrady made a juke move at the top of the key to get open and drilled a jumper to give them a 95-92 lead.

With Toyota Center going bonkers, his reaction after scoring his 10th point in the fourth quarter reminded me of when he spearheaded that comeback against the Spurs a couple of years ago. It was great theater.

Unfortunately, Ron Artest (39 points) kept hitting big shots down the stretch which forcedg overtime.

In OT, Luther Head was fantastic, coming up with a huge drive to the basket for a score to make it 107-104 with 32 seconds remaining, then forced John Salmons to turn the ball over with great defense near the sideline. He capped the victory by hitting two free throws after getting intentionally fouled.

Luther was big before OT. He hit some big shots in the fourth quarter to keep the Rockets within striking distance. Overall he finished with 15 points on 5-of-7 shooting, including hitting 3-of-5 treys.

The other hero was Battier, who also hit a big 3-pointer in OT when they were down 102-100. Overall, he hit 4-of-9 three-pointers and finished with 25 points on 10-of-17 shooting. Man, Battier is coming up big this season.

Rafer Alston also hit a difficult three-pointer from the corner to start off overtime, completing a 4-of-7 night from three-point land, and was 7-of-17 overall for 18 points. But he still missed a few chip shots, and how Clyde Drexler can say in this game (and I quote), “Rafer is a great finisher at the basket” is so completely stupid it deserves a firing.

But the star of the game was T-Mac. He was a lackluster 5-of-16 entering the fourth quarter, and was only 4-of-9 from the free throw line. However, he turned it on in the fourth, making 5-of-6 shots when the Rockets needed it. He finished with 28 points on 11-of-26 shooting, and chipped in 12 assists that were piled up mostly in the first three quarters when he couldn’t find his shot.

Reading some comments after the game, I am somewhat surprised there isn’t as much appreciation for T-Mac’s performance as you would think there would be. One writer said that T-Mac doesn’t do the “heavy lifting” and is a “preening diva.” C’mon! He’s one of the best playmakers in the game behind Steve Nash, and that’s a quote from Van Gundy.

In addition, the focus is on how the Rockets almost lost one they should have won, and their defense was terrible before their comeback (one thing they don’t point out is all the layups they missed, which is inexcusable). Yes, all these faults may be true, but I think there is value in seeing that T-Mac still has the ability to turn it on when his team needs it, which is important confidence for him to have as the season winds down and the playoffs get closer. There are going to be games where fantastic offensive scoring barrages are going to be needed to win a playoff game, or two, or three (remember Dwyane Wade in the Finals last year?)

The other factor is that the Rockets are tied with the Spurs with a 33-18 record, an important thing to keep in mind if the Rockets want to have home-court advantage in the first round of the playoffs. Every win at this point is a big one.

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.

Twenty-four hours after getting blown out in Dallas and being brought back to reality on how much farther they have to go, the Rockets got back to eating cupcakes, took care of business, and defeated the Charlotte Bobcats 104-83 Saturday night.

Although you would expect them to win against Charlotte, it didn’t start out looking that way. They quickly found themselves down by 11 points, but then righted the ship and cruised to an easy victory. One of the reasons was because of great defense (more on that later), and balanced scoring across the board, something you don’t see every day.

Six players scored in double-figures. Part of the reason was because Tracy McGrady only played 27 minutes and scored 16 points. That left extra minutes for other players to take on the scoring load.

After showing his age against the Mavericks on Friday, Dikembe Mutombo had a monster game, scoring 14 points and gobbling up 14 rebounds. He also had 4 steals.

Luther Head bounced back after his Dallas debacle, scoring 17 points, hitting 5-of-8 three-pointers, and dishing 6 assists. It’s a Devin Harris-like performance like that the Rockets will need from Luther when they play the Mavericks to have a better shot of winning.

Kirk Snyder also rebounded from a poor game against Dallas, hitting 6-of-7 shots for 15 points. A contribution like that from Snyder, especially with Bonzi Wells hurting, will also be needed if the Rockets are going to have a chance to beat the Mavericks and Suns of the world. Juwan Howard was solid with 16 points and 6 rebounds.

But the star of the game (I can’t believe I’m about to say this) was Rafer Alston, who chipped in 14 points (on only 5-of-13 shooting), but had 9 steals and 8 assists. 9 steals is sick, and is the most by anyone in the league this season. That must be the closest to a triple-double that Rafer has had.

It was those steals (20 as a team, the most by a team in the NBA this season!) and the 27 turnovers Charlotte committed that was the difference in the game. Charlotte didn’t shoot that bad compared to Houston (44.6% vs. 45.2%), outrebounded the Rockets 44-39, had about the same number of assists (25 vs. 23). But it was the defense and steals that made the difference.

The Bobcats’ leading scorer Gerald Wallace was the guy who coughed up the most TOs, giving up 7 of them, and only hitting 1-of-7 shots and scoring 4 points. Everyone else shot decently, except first round draft pick Adam Morrison, who only made 1-of-8, who only scored two, and point guard Brevin Knight, who missed all four of his shots in 16 minutes.

I was so looking forward to the Rockets-Mavs game Friday to really see where the Rockets stand as a team. Are they really as good as that 31-17 record indicates, or just pretenders and have a lot of work to do before they can even consider winning a championship?

That question was answered quite profoundly Friday night. The Rockets have a long way to go, losing 95-74 in a game reminiscent of that 40-point blowout in Game 7 of the Rockets-Mavs playoff series a couple of seasons ago. The bright side is that at least this time I had the wisdom to NOT attend this game.

In fact, for the first time in a long time, I turned off the game in the third quarter when Dallas went on a 16-0 run, 13 of those coming in just under 2 minutes to put the game out of reach. It was a complete disaster.

Luther Head kept turning the ball over (4 for the game, most on the team). Rafer Alston went back to his inconsistent self in the third quarter, driving into the lane and missing easy layups to help Dallas extend their scoring run and pull away. But you know it’s bad when Alston’s 6-for-13 shooting for 14 points was one of the best on the team.

Shane Battier was 1-of-9 (5 points). Juwan Howard was 3-of-9 for 11. Luther was 1-of-8, and 0-of-4 from three-point land. And Kirk Snyder was 1-of-7. Tracy McGrady was 7-of-16 with 20 points, which wasn’t bad, but he missed lots of shots in that pivotal third quarter before sitting out the fourth quarter. As a team, they shot 33%. Just as bad, they were outrebounded 55-40.

Even worse, they got rattled once Dallas started putting on the pressure in the third quarter, just like they did 2 years ago in that Game 7 I mentioned earlier, and extending their lead to 29 at one point. At least T-Mac admitted their softness after the game, “When things got tough, we folded…You just have to have heart, man. You just have to want it. Each individual. You can’t coach that.”

Now it’s almost not fair that Dallas has had virtually no injuries this year while the Rockets have had Yao out for 6 weeks and counting, and their X-factor-to-be off the bench, Bonzi Wells (well, he is one of their best bench players), had to sit out because of a sore back.

You know those two guys would have made a big difference, but still, the Mavericks are too fast and deep for the Rockets. But that’s what a huge payroll will help do for you.

What has to happen now is that the Rockets cannot be content to be good against the average teams and cupcakes. Every player has to ask, “Who is my counterpart on the Dallas team, and how can I get better than them, or at least close, if we face them in the playoffs?” A 21-point blowout instead of a 40-point one is not considered progress enough.

You can read more about the carnage in this Houston Chronicle game story.

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.