When we got in the building, I found that there were lots of fans, mostly American fans wearing the Yao 11 uniform, with ages ranging from 6 to over 40. Of course there were also many Francis 3 fans, but not as many as Yao fans, which shows how popular Yao is in Houston even among the Americans. Asian fans only had the Yao uniform on which is understandable. To my surprise, there were a lot of Bryant 8 fans too. A big black guy whose size is like a scaled-down version of Shaq with a big butt, also wore the Bryant uniform. Then I said to myself the da_mn rapist still got a lot of support, and I hoped that someone would remind him his lawsuit tonight. I thought fans wore a star’s uniform because wanted to be like that person, but I realized that was not true after seeing some skinniest people wore the Oneal 34.

Fisher, Fox, Payton and Cook came to the arena before everyone to practice. In their shoot-out Fox made almost every 3 pointers and Payton missed a lot of shots. I was happy to see Payton struggled with his shots and thought today the rockets 有戲。 But I was a little worried to see Fox was in a good shape and hoped he won’t have a break-out game tonight. Then the rockets begun their shoot-out and Yao looked very stoic and didn’t seem to have much passion before the game. The interesting thing was before I thought Yao didn’t jump much in his jumpshot but when I looked carefully I found other guys were not jumping much higher than Yao when they took their jumpshot. No wonder Yao can block people’s shots easily despite his small vertical jump. The most impressive thing before the game was that they ignited a few rockets on the court and fans were really excited by the scene of rockets taking off. Many people were yelling and chanting, combined those with the breathtaking music and exotic light show, I felt incredible energy was accumulated in the building. And from that moment, I believed the rockets could win tonight.

Sitting in front of us were two couples. The two men, very tall guys in their 30s were wearing the O’neal and Bryant uniforms respectively. And the two women were wearing the rockets’ T-shirts, which was a pretty peculiar scene. My wife was sitting next to me. To my right there were two guys, a white guy wearing the Yao shirt and the black guy wearing the Francis shirt, both were very tall, around 190 cm or so. I suspected they were high-school or college players. Sitting behind me there were some Hispanic guys.

The lakers first came into the court and was welcome by loud boos. The two guys sitting in front of me stood up and raised their hands. People nearby were upset by these two “traitors” and my neighbors yelled loudly “Kobe sucks” and received big applause when Kobe was introduced.

A woman started to sing the national anthem. When it came to the sentence like “the rockets….”, she raised both her tone and volume dramatically, and everyone was yelling along “the rockets”, only until then I knew that the “rockets” were blessed by the national anthem in every game, which made me more confident about the game tonight. No wonder they won two championships. Tillman was also commemorated in the pre-game ceremony.

After the game started, Shaq was very dominating in the first 5 or 6 minutes and made quite a few shots. On the other hand Yao picked up his first ticky-tacky foul less than 2 minutes into game and we started to worry. Yao played quite passive in the first few minutes and seemed to be reluctant to go into the paint area. People around me other than the two laker fans were a little quiet and worried. My wife said to me in Chinese that Yao is like a willow, which made me feel embarrassed, being a Yao and rocket fan as I am. The O’neal and Bryant in front of us stood up and raised their arms each time the lakers scored, looked upon angrily by the rest of us, especially the two guys on my right.

JVG was jumping up and down by the sideline like a monkey and the sixth player of the game, because I was sure good or bad, he had affected the players from both teams somehow. The decision to let Nachbar come into the game early was a genius one, and totally changed the rhythm of the game. His 3 pointer greatly inspired his teammate and revived the crowd and his defense was like a hungry wolf jumping onto a timid sheep, scaring and slowing the lakers outside shooters. And his teammates in turn sucked the energy from the crowd and turned it into brilliant performance. From that point the basic tone was set and we all knew we could take this game.

During one of Pil Jackson’s forced timeouts, some beautiful cheerleaders threw some balls at the crowds. We all stood up and hoped to catch some balls. I thought that if one came at my way I would try to catch it. When I looked at the tall guys in front of me and the two guys on my right, I knew that was a tall order. So I prepared myself and bent my knee to the quarter squat position, waiting for my chance to come. One ball fortunately came to our way and dropped to the top of the head of the white guy standing next to me. I jumped as high as I can and leaned on the guy next to me. Maybe because the two guys sitting to my right didn’t prepare well enough or they didn’t pay much attention to the little Chinese guy whose head is at about their chin height, somehow I managed to pull the ball my way with my right hand and it finally dropped it between my wife and me. I grabbed it with my left hand quickly. The people near me all high-fived with me and congratulated me for the trophy.

Yao still didn’t want to go inside the paint, but it didn’t matter because the rockets’ three pointers were pouring like rain. By the half time mark, the rockets were shooting something like 56% and lead by 13 points. Although Yao didn’t do anything spectacular on offense, he pretty much canceled Shaq out and played good defense and pulled down quite a few boards. His block on Gary Payton drew loud screaming from the crowd. And some of his scorings were greeted with the famous “Song of Yao Ming” which only have two words “Yao Ming, Yao Ming, Yao Ming…..” By end of the first half, the crowds were so excited that the screaming, yelling, whistling and all the noise could blow out the top of the Toyota center.

Ok, let me take a break at half time.