Yao Looms Over Knicks and Leads Rockets to Win
By HOWARD BECK

HOUSTON, Nov. 10 — There are nights when Eddy Curry rules his world, when he is the biggest, baddest man in the paint, when he moves to the basket at will and bodies wither around him. A 6-foot-11, 285-pound man becomes accustomed to his natural advantages.

But Curry’s physical edge vanished Friday, and his fighting spirit quickly followed. Yao Ming — using all of his 7 feet 6 inches and 310 pounds — towered over Curry, blanketing and bullying him until Curry faded into the floorboards. The Knicks went with him.

Yao produced one of the best games of his career — 33 points, 17 rebounds and 7 blocks — fueling the Houston Rockets’ 103-94 victory over the Knicks at the Toyota Center.

The experience left Curry in a daze. He could convert only 2 of 11 shots, and 4 of his 8 misses were swatted away by Yao. Attempting to describe his night, Curry could only exhale, chuckle and force a smile.

“Oh, man, it was bad out there,” he said. “It’s crazy. He doesn’t even seem real sometimes. He’s just up there shooting. You’re jumping and the ball is like two feet over your hands.”

The Knicks did what they could, which was not much. Kelvin Cato, Malik Rose, David Lee and Renaldo Balkman all threw themselves at Yao, to little effect. Lee and Balkman had a few good moments in the fourth quarter, when the Knicks knocked a 16-point deficit down to 6, but they never solved Yao or threatened the Rockets.

It was a horrific night for the 23-year-old Curry, whose development is critical to the Knicks’ success, but Coach Isiah Thomas framed it as a learning experience.

“What I said to him was that if you look at it, he really hasn’t played in a week, and I think he’s lost his rhythm,” Thomas said, referring to the foul trouble that has limited Curry’s playing time. “They foul him out of every game and tonight he had a chance to play, but he was really kind of out of rhythm.”

It was a generous assessment by Thomas. Although Curry kept shooting, he never physically challenged Yao at either end of the court. He played 23 minutes — only 21 seconds in the fourth quarter — collecting 7 points and 5 rebounds. Curry has now been held to single digits in scoring for two straight games despite being the first option in the Knicks’ offense.

The loss left the Knicks with a 2-4 record as they headed to San Antonio for the final game of this road trip Saturday.

The Knicks trailed for all but the first 1 minute 58 seconds of the game. They fell behind by 10 points in the first quarter and by 19 in the third. In a near repeat of Wednesday’s comeback victory in Denver, they rallied down the stretch, cutting the deficit to 99-93 with 1:15 to play.

Nate Robinson, all 5-9 of him, scored on a putback dunk, and Stephon Marbury hit a 3-pointer, momentarily chilling the building. But Yao took over from there, with a pair of rebounds and a pair of free throws that sealed the Rockets’ victory.

Stephon Marbury led the Knicks with 22 points and 5 assists. Jamal Crawford, starting his second game in place of the injured Steve Francis, finished with 18 points on 7-of-20 shooting.

Thomas, never one to dwell on the negatives, praised his team’s fighting spirit.

“I told the guys when I went in the locker room, I said I’ve never been prouder to be associated with a group of guys this early in the season right now than these guys, because we get down 18, we get down 20, and we fight our way back,” Thomas said. “We never give up. There’s a lot of fight in this team, and once we get everybody healthy and we catch back up with the schedule, if we can keep this fight and resiliency, it’s going to be a pretty good year for us.”

Curry scored on his first shot, a baseline dunk past Yao, then missed his next nine attempts, with Yao blocking four of them in the first half. Curry also had a 24-second violation, shot wide right on a free throw and committed three fouls. In literally his lowest moment, Curry fell on his backside when Yao cleverly pulled away during Curry’s post move in the paint.

Gotta love the accountability that the Knicks coach/GM/President demands from the players.

Has any other coach or GM of a team given his players so many excuses for their poor play? Has any other coach or GM suggested that losses weren't important and that it didn't matter if they lost since they weren't expected to win anyway?

F---ing pathetic.

I think its good that isiah is being positive- because this group still needs time to develop chemistry.

Marbury coming around was huge.

Its all about players all getting better and coming together.

Its disheartening because yao went off on us.

I watched a lot of rocket games last year, and for many, I marveled at how a 7'6" giant center could absolutely be a non-factor.

And isiah is right to start bemoaning the foul calls on curry- its getting stupid the calls being made against him.

Yeah, I see no reason to bash the team and demand accountability for losing to the rockets on in Houston.

are we expected to go undefeated?

This is precisely the reason that the Knicks better play hard for Isiah: the next coach won't be nearly as "understanding."

Posted by Allanfan20:

I'm so sick of the coddling and I'm sure Dolan isn't this stupid. I'm sure he's doing some pretty heavy gm shopping as we speak.

Benching players when they are playing badly and giving that time to players who are playing well is coddling?

oohah

Do you really think it's gonna help matters for Isiah to be abusing them in the press? Don't you think that he's working on them in practice and even on the bench when they mess up? He's pulling them from games and cutting down their playing time. There have been PLENTY of coaches that didn't bash their players in public, but still got the job done.

Isiah isn't a soft guy, that's just how he comes across in public. We all saw how well BASHING worked last year. It's so effective you know. In the meantime Steph has snapped out of his funk and I suspect that as we go along others will too. I like to assess teams in 20 game intervals. So far things have started off slow, but we are learning things about this team. We know that we can put some pretty good defensive units on the floor and we still have a solid defender waiting in the wings in Jared. You can just imagine how much better this team is gonna be when we get Frye and Curry playing better.