[yahoo]With Yao down, Rockets need T-Mac to rise up

With Yao down, Rockets need T-Mac to rise up

By Johnny Ludden, Yahoo! Sports


Give Daryl Morey credit. He tried to stay positive. Or at least as positive as one can stay when you’re riding the winning streak of your life and then wake up to discover the bottom has dropped out of your season.

The Houston Rockets GM announced Tuesday that Yao Ming is shelved for the remaining 26 games, as well as the postseason, because of a stress fracture in his left foot. And while that’s certainly bad news for the Rockets, Morey also said “we feel very confident about our playoff push.”

That might read well in print. But as Morey uttered those words he looked like someone had just dunked his face in a barrel of spoiled milk.

“Our coaching staff and players feel really confident we’re going to continue to play well and make the playoffs,” Morey added, failing to disclose whether he also handed out party hats and kazoos at the team’s morning shootaround.

The Rockets should feel fairly confident about making the playoffs. They’ve got a seven-game lead over the 10th-place Portland Trail Blazers, leaving them to battle the Golden State Warriors and Denver Nuggets for the Western Conference’s final two seeds. Their schedule also isn’t as daunting as that of some of their opponents.

The problem, of course, is that this season was supposed to be about more than simply reaching the playoffs. After reeling off a dozen consecutive wins – 16 in a row when Yao was in the lineup – the Rockets had begun to feel they had a legitimate chance to contend for the championship. If nothing else, they at least hoped to put an end to their recent one-and-done postseason ventures.

Now?

Everything’s on T-Mac.

The message Yao delivered to Tracy McGrady Tuesday said as much.

“I told him, ‘Now is your time. You need to turn it up,’” Yao told reporters in Houston.

Rival league executives would laugh at that. By Tuesday afternoon they were already jokingly counting down the minutes between the end of Morey’s news conference and the start of his next one when he has to announce McGrady’s bad back has sidelined him for the rest of the season. When the going gets tough, T-Mac usually gets a massage.

Houston officials will eventually have to decide whether they can continue to rely on their two talented, yet brittle cornerstones. Earlier this season McGrady bristled at the suggestion the Rockets might be better off without him. Now they have to lean on him. And that’s what he should see Yao’s injury as: an opportunity.

There’s little chance Houston advances past the first round without Yao, so McGrady already has his excuse. The Rockets’ expectations were severely downsized the minute Yao emerged from his MRI tube.

Morey had assembled a productive supporting cast around Yao, and the Rockets were built to also play small when needed. But last week’s trade that sent Bonzi Wells to New Orleans won’t help in that area. Morey also will have a tough time digging up much free-agent help; Houston never seemed as likely a landing spot for Brent Barry as San Antonio or Phoenix.

For now, though, McGrady can at least try to put a dent in the loser’s label that’s clung so tightly to him the last five years. He can’t lead the Rockets to a championship without Yao at his side, but he can keep pushing them in that direction.

Prior to Tuesday, Houston hadn’t lost since Jan. 27. Yao didn’t play that night against Utah, the only game he had missed this season. He returned two days later to score 36 points and beat Golden State, starting the Rockets’ win streak.

Shane Battier didn’t need long to explain the reason for the victory. “Well,” he said, “we had Yao Ming.”

Now the Rockets are left with T-Mac. As Yao said: This is his time.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_y...YF?slug=jy-tmactime022608&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Hope Tmac won't let us down.

 

Another good read, related to JVG.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_y...YF?slug=aw-yaochina022608&prov=yhoo&type=lgns

Rockets shouldn’t expect Yao to rest this summer

By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports 1 hour, 8 minutes ago

Houston Rockets general manger Daryl Morey let out a long, exasperated sigh over the telephone Tuesday, as though to say: Are you kidding? Asking Yao Ming to ease back on his Chinese basketball commitments – never mind sit out the Beijing Olympics in August – is a request that’ll go unasked to his franchise star.

Yao’s body takes a terrible toll at 7-foot-6, something needs to change and still the Rockets are at the mercy of a Chinese basketball federation that never truly let the NBA have the most popular and beloved of its 1.3 billion people. He’s forever on loan, forever on the way to getting his career run into the ground.

“Asking him to not play for China is like, well, asking him not to play basketball,” Morey said. “We understood that when we drafted him and it’s still the case. We know that he belongs to the fans of the NBA and those of China. It isn’t a consideration to discourage him.”

Yao has gone down again. This time, it’s a stress fracture in his left foot. The threshold of chronic injury to his legs and feet creeps closer. There’s a disturbing, depressing pattern. He has broken his foot twice in the past two years. He’s broken a leg. He’s had an infected toe. Four surgeries in two years and the truth is increasingly inescapable: With the way he moves, with 7 feet, 6 inches of unprecedented polish and power, Yao has asked his lower body to support a style, a frame, that no basketball player his size has ever maintained.

What complicates everything is the demands, the pressure, the loyalty that Yao has to his national team. NBA commissioner David Stern had to undergo years of glacial negotiations to crack the Chinese market, to get Yao and Milwaukee’s Yi Jianlian into the league. Yao is such an earnest and loyal son, honorable and decent to the core.

“The national team is a part of who he is,” his old coach, Jeff Van Gundy, said.

Yao has trouble saying no to anyone, Van Gundy said – never mind the government that manipulated his development from birth to the No. 1 pick in the NBA Draft. Van Gundy calls Yao the hardest-working and best teammate in the NBA. He loved coaching him, loves counting him as a friend. And truth be told, he’s desperately worried about Yao’s future.

As it turned out, Van Gundy walked into a Houston health club Tuesday afternoon and still hadn’t heard the news about Yao’s injury. He was on the telephone with a Miami radio station when someone finally informed him. Just then, guess who walked through the doors?

Yao.

Yao’s personal trainer, the Rockets former strength-and-conditioning coach, keeps his office in the site. So, Van Gundy and Yao talked for a half hour, and what Yao insisted in his news conference – that missing the Olympics would be “the biggest loss of my career until right now” – was repeated with emotion in private. Yao had to get back to represent China, he insisted to Van Gundy.

As Van Gundy said, “The Olympics means so much to him, but after that, he’s turning 28 and it doesn’t do anybody any good if his body is going to be chronically injured. Either he has to develop more of a ‘no’ personality – which isn’t his way – or someone around him needs to be the bad guy for him and say ‘No’ for him.”

It isn’t just the physical toll that the summers with Chinese basketball have taken, but the mental, too. For Yao, he never gets a break when he plays for his country in the summer. It isn’t the Chinese way to make allowances for Yao when he’s playing for the national team. They run long and relentless training camps and Yao sits out nothing. He would never be inclined to ask for a drill off – never mind a day – and they’d never be inclined to offer it.

The Rockets doctor insisted on Tuesday that Yao should be recovered for Beijing. Here’s the scariest question for Houston management: Will that even matter to the Chinese basketball federation? This isn’t just any Olympics for China, but its ultimate stage. Publicly, they insist that they can medal in these Games. That’s doubtful, but it will still be their best team ever. And do you think China would hesitate to play Yao at 70 percent, or 80, or anything below complete recovery?

Whatever the circumstances, Yao will play in Beijing and beyond. As always, the Rockets will have little to no say in it.

When reached Tuesday, a high-ranking international basketball official sounded unoptimistic about Yao’s chances of ever catching a break with the Chinese basketball federation.

“They will continue to pressure him,” the official said. “The one thing they do with all of their athletes is drive them into the ground with training. The strongest survive. If you don’t, they’ll find another to come and do it.

“I mean, they don’t do little things like block out good airline seats for them when they travel. They can all be in middle seats in coach for all they care, and that’s how Yao travels with them. Whatever happens with his injuries, they’re going to insist that he keeps playing for them.”

Morey, the Rockets GM, was respectful and realistic Tuesday. He knows the drill: Yao Ming is his franchise player, but he belongs to China. And always will. This was the deal when they drafted him and that’ll be the way it goes without negotiation.

That’s Yao Ming. That’s his identity, his life, his burden. Until he can no longer run on the floor, he’s China’s basketball star. For his own good, his own survival, this has to end with the Beijing Olympics. For once in his dutiful life, Yao Ming has to be the bad guy.

 

The CBA has given in somewhat after the Wang Zhizhi incident, who almost defected after insisting to stay in the US to hone on his game rather than training with the CNT (to prepare for 02 World Championships). Now Yao is only expected to play in the World Championships and Olympics -- together once every two years. No more Asian championships and the Asian Games.

It was unfortunately that Yao had to join the CNT last summer to prepare for this year's Olympics. That, IMO, has contributed somewhat to his injury because he didn't get a chance to have an extended rest over the summer. Also I think Adelman probably shouldn't have increased his minutes so much.

Hopefully after the Beijing Olympics Yao will be relieved from at least the training part of CNT duties (only consists 20 or 30 games) and will only play in the real tournaments, which is like 6, 7 games every time.

The thing is that Yao himself wants to represent his country. Rockets drafted him with that in mind.