Here are more interviews I recorded yesterday. I always love listening to the players unedited because you’ll never know what you’ll pick up that you didn’t know before.

Shane Battier‘s post-game press conference (8:08):

Kobe Bryant‘s post-game presser (3:46):

Ron Artest in the locker room (3:07):

Chuck Hayes in the locker room (3:38):

Coming into Game 4, I had a strong feeling we were going to see what we saw Sunday afternoon. Without their best player in Yao Ming able to play because of another hairline fracture in his foot, a Rockets team came out like a cornered animal and shocked LA and the rest of the league, tying up their series at 2-2 with a 99-87 win. It wasn’t even that close as the score would seem.

If Houston’s Game 1 victory over the Lakers was a fluke of a win for Houston after a 7-day break for LA, then Sunday’s game must have them officially concerned. Could there be visions of the last year’s Finals against the Celtics, or the 2004 Finals against the Pistons where they were heavily favored then got blown off the court, be entering their mind now?

What a strange sight with Yao, Dikembe and McGrady in street clothes in the pre-game huddle. Click here for more photos of Yao and Dikembe on the bench.

The Rockets came out strong Sunday from the opening tip, went on a 9-0 run, built a 289point lead at one point, and never looked back. The Lakers closed it to within 13 points in the 4th quarter when the Rockets got careless with the ball (4 turnovers, when before the quarter started they only had 7 total) and were outscored 33-16. But their 29-point cushion after three quarters was so overwhelming, the Rockets eventually righted the ship and closed it out.

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Yao cheers on his team in an amazingly electric game for his teammates. Click here for photos of his teammates in action.

Even though this big victory doesn’t surprise some people, every Rockets fan still has to be very proud that they continue to bounce back from so much adversity this season with Carl Landry getting shot, and McGrady, Dikembe and now Yao out. We all knew they would play hard, but to have to adapt so quickly with a new gameplan after finding out the night before that Yao wouldn’t be available is remarkable.

I had been wondering after Game 1 why Aaron Brooks, who had torched the Lakers with 19 points, was almost a non-factor since then. I thought if anything was going to get him back to his Game-1 self, this was the opportunity since Yao’s absence and the spreading out of the offense would open up more lanes through which he could drive to the basket. Get him going by attacking the rim, and before you know it, the 3’s might start falling, too.

Like clockwork, that’s what happened. Brooks was baaaack with a playoff career-high 34 points on 12-of-20 shots, including 4-of-9 from three-point land and 4 assists. I’ve never seen a Rockets player who is almost impossible to contain like Aaron is because of his quickness and dribbling prowess. Brooks was able to expose Laker point guards Derek Fisher (2 points) and Jordan Farmar (7), getting just about any place on the court he wanted. Heck, throw in Kobe Bryant‘s 15 points on 7-of-17 shooting, and Brooks still outscored 3 of their starting guards combined.

Brooks had one of the most athletic plays I’ve seen from a Rocket since Von Wafer‘s reverse dunk near the end of the regular season against Portland: an alley-oop from Ron Artest on an inbounds pass from halfcourt to Brooks, who caught it in mid-air, suspended himself like Michael Jordan with some major hangtime, and laid it in off the glass! Sportscenter Play of the Day anyone?

Throw in Shane Battier having the playoff game of his life, 23 points including 5-of-10 3-pointers. With Brooks’ 4 treys, Houston shot 10-of-29 from beyond the arc, setting a playoff high this season for 3-pointers made in a game. Battier would later say he has been open all series long, and was a quote machine in his post-game press conference. I’ll have that audio up on the site in the next day.

Brooks would say after the game about Battier: “He came out and gave us a spark and defensively he did his thing. That’s the heart of the team right there.” Wow, that’s saying something on a team that has lots of heart.

Chuck Hayes did a great job filling in for Yao. Although his man Pau Gasol would score 30 points, he created problems by playing great help defense, and grabbing 9 boards and stealing the ball 4 times, 3 of those in the first quarter alone. After the game, Hayes would explain why they were able to force the Lakers to commit 11 turnovers:

“We are faster now without Yao in there and we can move our feet. If we can create a turnover and just spring the court to cause confusion, maybe we will get lucky and get an open three point shot or an open layup will come from that. We created turnovers with our ability to close out the paint and move our feet and we tried to play without fouling.”

Because of that kind of defense, the Rockets held the Lakers to 36 points in the first half, their lowest scoring half of the season.

You’ve got to give credit to the Rockets for showing what they’re made of against a high-profile team like the Lakers when their own high-profile guy in Yao is out.

What’s amazing is that the Rockets didn’t hardly get any scoring from the guys who I thought would come out on fire. Not that they didn’t play hard, because they all did — especially on defense with this kind of effort — but they only got 8 points from Ron Artest (4-of-19 shooting, including only 1-of-8 in the 4th quarter), Von Wafer only had 4 points, and Carl Landry had two points. Luis Scola chipped in 11, but he was only 4-of-11 from the field (but grabbed a playoff-career-best 14 boards). Chuck scored his obligatory 2 points. And even former Laker Brian Cook even got into the act for the first time when it really mattered, hitting a three that brought the house down.

There was alot of ‘house’ coming down Sunday afternoon at Toyota Center. I couldn’t keep up with counting how many times the crowd was on their feet and blowing the roof off the joint. And they responded by booing loudly whenever Fisher had the ball, or Kobe or Lamar Odom committed a foul. They did their job, helping scrap out this win.

Kyle Lowry, who scored a playoff-career-high 12 points and had two assists and two steals, was responsible for some electrifying moments himself, taking the ball coast-to-coast on one possession, going strong to the hole, getting fouled, then banking it off the glass Kobe-style.

The Lakers have to be worried even a little bit more now since Odom took a hard fall on his back, thanks to great defense by Battier, when he was called for a charge, laid on the floor for a few minutes, and had to leave the game because of back spasms.

It must be strange for Laker fans, who must have been giddy when they heard Yao was out for the season thinking they had this thing wrapped up, to be tied 2-2 and have Odom be questionable for Game 5 on Tuesday.

I’ll have plenty more on Monday with some further analysis and lots more audio from the locker room and press room.

Here’s a 1-minute video snippet from Yao’s pre-game press conference that occurred earlier today:

I’ve also gone ahead and uploaded the ENTIRE AUDIO from earlier today. You can go check it out at the new YaoMania! Facebook page at Facebook/YaoMania. Just look for the little ‘music player’ underneath the ‘Fans’ box in the left-hand column to play the audio.

While you’re there on that Facebook page, go ahead and login using your Facebook account and become a fan of the page so you can get YaoMania updates on your Facebook wall.

You can also check out lots of photos like the one below of Yao before and during the game that the Rockets dominated against the Lakers. My report of that game will be coming shortly.

Raymond has translated a phone interview Yao gave Saturday night to Titan Sports after the announcement was made he’s out for the playoffs. Check it out here.

Last night I asked Carl Landry in the locker room what the Rockets would have to do different if they weren’t able to play with Yao. At the time I thought the chances were slim they’d have to worry about that. Now it’s a reality.

I messed up by asking him what they would have to do in “Game 3” when I meant “Game 4.” Here’s what he said.

“Be aggressive. In the second quarter we were without Yao. [We are] role players. We play well. That’s something we have to get used to. That’s something we are used to playing without Yao. He’s been hurt this year. Hurt last year. And we’ll just run our sets and run our stuff and move the ball and get good shots.”

If you want to hear the audio as well as other comments he made, click the player below:

I predict the Rockets will surprise lots of people and really put up a great fight. Landry will become even more aggressive, similar to what we saw during the 22-game winning streak last season, Luis Scola will become more of a scoring machine again, the Rockets will spread the floor and Aaron Brooks will have more open lanes to get to the basket like he did in Game 1, Kyle Lowry and Von Wafer will do the same, Brian Cook will get some playing time (and hopefully haunt his former team), Shane Battier will become more aggressive offensively, and Brent Barry will even see some action and hit some shots.

Essentially, the Lakers will think they’re going to win now that Yao is out and take Houston lightly, meanwhile the Rockets will come out like an animal backed into a corner, and the Rockets could win a game or two…and hopefully three!

This was posted on the Houston Chronicle site about 8 minutes ago (8:22pm Central):

Rockets center Yao Ming was ruled out for the remainder of the sesaon after a hairline fracture was found in his left foot Saturday evening.

“Yao Ming had an initial test taken in the early morning hours on Saturday following the game,” said Rockets team physician Tom Clanton in a press release. “The original diagnosis of the left ankle sprain was based on the results of that test. Further diagnostic procedures performed later in the day revealed a hairline fracture on the top of his left foot. In order for the bone to heal properly, Yao will need to immobilize the foot by wearing a walking boot. No surgery is required and he should be able to resume his regular workout routine sometime between the next eight to 12 weeks.”

Just heard the news. I can’t believe it…again! He’s out for the playoffs! More news shortly.

I recorded the full audio from Yao’s presser last night, which is about 4 1/2 minutes long. There’s actually a funny moment at the end when he responds to ESPN’s Lisa Salter’s question about his injury.

So far there’s no word on the results of Yao’s “running test” that happened this morning.

There’s also a question asked in Chinese to which Yao responds in kind, so if anyone wants to translate it, feel free to provide it in the comments.

I have a few more interviews with Shane Battier and Carl Landry that were recorded in the locker room that I’ll provide later (these take a long time to upload). Check back a little later for those.

The Rockets’ locker room after the game was dead silent after their 108-94 loss to L.A. to lose home court advantage in their playoff series. Yao was sitting there with his feet in a bucket of ice, looking straight ahead at the floor dejected. We all knew there was a problem with his foot or ankle as everyone saw in the fourth quarter as he hobbled around, but I felt a little better when I saw Shane Battier with his feet in a bucket of ice, too. This is a routine for some of the players, so maybe it’s not too big of a deal…at least I’m hoping it’s not.

Yao said after the game he doesn’t remember exactly when he hurt his foot or ankle, but it was sometime in the second quarter, and it kept getting worse as the game wore on. I doubt it was one of the reasons why he missed a few point-blank layups and dunks, though. We thought those kinds of games were long gone from Yao. Even with those missed opportunities, he was just one shot shy of shooting 50%, hitting 6-of-14 for 19 points.

Yao Ming’s left ankle or foot was hurting at the end of Game 3.
Click here for more photos of Yao nursing his foot.

So we all wait with baited breath to hear what the prognosis is for Yao’s ankle (or foot) on Saturday. He said he is going to do a “running test” in the morning. Hopefully this simple routine test along with maybe some customary X-rays or whatever doesn’t turn into something major like last year when he was going to get a simple MRI on his foot because of some minor pain, only to have it turn out to be a stress fracture that sidelined him for the rest of the season.

That’s the last thing we need to hear after he had such a relatively healthy season, thinking he was out of the woods for awhile when it comes to foot and lower leg injuries.

Assuming Yao is going to be okay to play on Sunday in Game 4, let’s talk a little bit about what the team’s problems are that need to be fixed. I still see too many offensive sets that confound me: like Yao setting up on the weak side while either Ron Artest or Luis Scola are posting up (which is fine), but then Yao parking himself on the weakside or along the weakside baseline with 1 or 2 defenders between him and the ball, taking himself completely out of the play as an offensive option. WTF?

Even Rick Adelman told ESPN after the 3rd quarter that Yao had to move and be more active and not take himself out of the play like that. So maybe it’s not the sets. Maybe it’s Yao not doing enough, which is difficult to fathom. And we really can’t blame the injured foot/ankle because we’ve seen Yao struggling to get open, especially when he’s being fronted. So this is really the first time I’ve heard so explicitly Adelman saying that Yao’s got to do more. Wow.

The way these plays develop remind me so much of the offensively-challenged Kelvin Cato doing the same thing back in the Steve Francis era, waiting for either Francis or Cuttino Mobley to take it into the paint and dish off at the last second for a dunk to him, or waiting for an alley-oop pass.

C’mon. Yao’s better than that. Those kinds of plays are designed for big men who can’t shoot and have only one option to score: dunk. Plus, I just don’t understand when I go to the pre-game shootaround like I did a couple of hours before the game, Yao drills jumper after jumper from about 20 feet, THEN NEVER USES IT except maybe once per game, which he didn’t even do Friday night.

All things considered, at halftime things weren’t too bad with the Rockets trailing 50-48. Sure, they had 11 turnovers that led to 14 Laker points, but it could have been worse. The Rockets were shooting 49% after a nice first quarter where they hit 58%. The only problem is that they let the Lakers shoot 61% in the first quarter, and didn’t build a big lead when they had to chance to capitalize on LA’s 7-of-23 shooting in the 2nd quarter.

Here’s something you don’t see very often. Yao contesting a Kobe Bryant jumper out at the 3-point line. Bryant would miss the shot. Click here for more game photos.

Not building a lead came back to haunt them in the 3rd quarter when they hit only 6-of-25 shots for only 14 points, and couldn’t really put the clamps down on LA in the 4th to gain ground. They did whittle the lead down to 6 points with 4:15 remaining, but then Jordan Farmar hit a jumper, Ron Artest missed 2 jumpers, Yao missed a turnaround, and then Kobe Bryant hit a three to make it 95-84 with 2:21 remaining.

Artest would cut it to 102-94 when he hit a 3-pointer with 47.2 seconds remaining, still too big of a deficit to overcome, and right after that is when Artest got the “flagrant-2” foul called against him for fouling Gasol on a breakaway dunk attempt. But at that point, I think making up 8 points in that little of time was really improbable, so I wasn’t that upset Artest got ejected from the game. Alot of people seemed to be talking about it after the game, though. And I’m not concerned about Artest getting suspended for Game 4. It wasn’t that bad of a foul. Nowhere near Bryan’s elbowing Artest in the neck in Game 2, and he got off easy on that. There ain’t no way the NBA is going to suspend Artest for Game 4, or Stu Jackson will be public enemy #1 in Houston.

L.A. only turning the ball over 6 times compared to Houston’s 17 TO’s leading to 20 points was huge, with Aaron Brooks turning it over 3 times and Ron Artest 4 times. That’s actually par for the course for the Rockets this season against the Lakers — they’ve averaged 18.6 in their 7 games against the Lakers this season.

Houston’s 56-43 rebounding advantage wasn’t enough, the first 50-rebound game they’ve had in the post-season, and the first time they’ve out-rebounded an opponent in the playoffs and did NOT win. They also had a 50-32 scoring advantage in the paint, the most they’ve scored in the paint in the playoffs.

Another problem is they let the Lakers hit 11-of-20 three-pointers, the second-highest total against the Rockets at home this season.

Yao describes in the 1-minute press conference video below what happened in his mind. He also talks about his foot injury:

Here’s a photo I took in the media room during the same press conference:

After the game, I asked Carl Landry (4-of-7 for 10 points) how often a bad game like this would happen during the regular season, and he said maybe once every 20 games or so. I can believe that, especially after the All-Star break when I can only remember 1 or 2 games where they couldn’t get it going. What a time for this kind of performance to have happened.

This was such a surprise with all the energy and motivation the Rockets had coming into this game from their fans, ready to get payback on Bryant for elbowing Artest, and Fisher plowing down Scola. They didn’t harness or channel this energy to take them to a higher level. No one in Houston saw this coming. They thought for sure that a win in Game 3 was almost a lock.

Has doubt now crept into their mind if they can win this series? I’m sure there’s some of that. But one thing about this Rockets team we know for sure: they are resilient and will have a much better showing Sunday afternoon. If it’s not good enough to win, then this series is just about over.

Von Wafer really worked up a sweat during the pre-game shootaround. His t-shirt was soaked as he went 1-on-1 with James White for quite a long time. I thought it was a little strange for a player to be working so hard just a couple of hours before the game. Maybe it’s that same kind of work ethic that has finally landed him where he is. Or maybe that’s one reason why he went 2-for-10 in the game and scored 9 points.

Trevor Ariza‘s 3-pointers (3-of-4), 13 points, and 4 steals were killers. The Rockets got away with Portland’s Travis Outlaw having a poor series, but they’re going to have to play much better to overcome double-digit scoring from Ariza and all their starters: Odom 16, Gasol 13, Farmar 12, and you-know-who 33. What’s unfortunate is that they still won with Bryant making only 11-of-28 shots, and was only 3-for-9 in the fourth quarter.