from PVee's Sun heap o': One billion Chinese, give or take 200 hundred million, went out shopping this weekend for Steve Francis jerseys. Hey, if I were Shanghaied, you and Pete Rose can bet that's what I'd be doing. After crushing Kobe Bryant, Derek Fisher and the ghost of Gail Goodrich for a career-high 44 points and 11 assists in Houston's OT victory over the Lakers, Francis now is being hailed as Stevie Far East. You couldn't have script-written more drama for the first command performance co-starring Shaq and Yao. OK, so Francis stole their show and often stepped on, as well as played above, their lines. Still, Shaq, when allowed to touch the ball, was staggering. He inventoried 31 points, including a prime-time posterization of the Ming Dynasty, and collected 13 rebounds after an awfully humbling start. Meanwhile, Yao only occasionally appeared to be outmatched, beginning and ending in a heated rush by invalidating Shaq's first three shots and recording the game's decisive basket on a dunk off a brilliant feed by Francis. In between, Houston's 7-5 aristocrat accumulated 10 points, 10 boards and three additional blocks.
Wow...that's the most even-handed accounting of that game I have seen. And to think, it came from Peter Vecsey! This kind of scares me.
