Chron: Yao steps up, goes down fighting

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/metropolitan/3172433

Center puts up 33-point effort, but doesn't get needed support
By MEGAN MANFULL
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

DALLAS - After a season of working alongside Yao Ming, teammate Dikembe Mutombo said he couldn't be more proud of his young counterpart in Yao's season finale.

In the biggest game of Yao's professional career, he was dominant in the middle against the Dallas Mavericks. Yao finished with 33 points, 10 rebounds and five blocked shots. It was his second double double of the seven-game series. Yao's 43 minutes were a season high.

Yao was the only Rocket able to support Tracy McGrady during the elimination game Saturday at American Airlines Center, though. Dallas took advantage of the Rockets' one-dimensional game by putting together a dominant 116-76 performance in front of a sellout crowd of 20,884. The victory earned Dallas a second-round date with former Maverick Steve Nash and the Phoenix Suns.

Despite the lopsided loss, Yao's play was impossible to ignore. He finished the series averaging 21.4 points per game and shot 65.5 percent from the field over the seven games.

"I'm just happy for him, just for the fact that he finished the season so strong regardless of the loss tonight," Mutombo said. "He tried to give the team his best, and there's not much more we can ask of him.

"I think he was really aggressive, played extremely well on both ends. When they switched and went very small, there was not much he could do. But he was making them pay on the other end. To me, he played really well tonight."

Yao made 11 of 15 field goals and had 24 points going into the fourth quarter. With no support coming from anyone but McGrady, Yao felt the pressure in the fourth quarter, taking eight of the Rockets' 17 field goal attempts, but connecting on only two.

He also finished the game with eight free-throw attempts and made seven of them. In the previous two games, Yao had missed 10 free throws.

"Yao played great, but the thing is, you look back on it and you won't remember Yao played great because we played terrible," said Rockets power forward Scott Padgett. "He had a great game all series long. When he got the ball down deep, he killed them. Unfortunately, in the other games we lost excluding tonight, he didn't touch the ball enough, probably."

Yao was a consistent threat the entire series when he was on the court. Foul trouble limited his minutes at times, however. But by Game 7, Yao seemed to put all of the distractions and problems behind him. He picked up three fouls in the first half but didn't panic, even when he was called for a moving screen on offense.

Yao remained aggressive in the second half and picked up only one more foul.

"Yao's play is overanalyzed in every possession," Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy said. "I think he's developed very well. I thought for the most part tonight he played very, very well. But we didn't play well."

A year ago, Yao also watched the Rockets get eliminated in the first round.

In that series against the Lakers, Yao averaged 15 points and shot 45.6 percent from the floor.

After Game 7, Yao was hardly comforted by his strong performances in this season's playoffs.

"We just didn't bring our energy to this arena from the first minutes," Yao said. "They look like a team getting to the second round. We did not."

megan.manfull@chron.com