Yao speaks truth

Though he would have rather had Yao Ming reserve his harshest comments for the locker room, Rockets coach Rick Adelman said Yao's rebuke of the Rockets in Toronto and Philadelphia, when he called the Rockets among other things "soft" was "true."

"Everybody has a right to their opinion, and certainly Yao did," Adelman said. "I think he was right on in a lot of cases. From my standpoint, this is an 82-game schedule.

"At halftime of the Toronto game, things were pretty good. Everybody was happy. And in 72 minutes, it seemed like it all changed. There's warning signs. There's definitely signs in the way we played the second half in Toronto and came out against Philly. An alarm goes off there. But in this league, you can't be so high after a win and low after a loss.

"I'd rather see us handle those things in house, talk to each other in house. But I had no problem in him voicing his opinion. I have no trouble with what he said. It was true. We're going to have to work on it. If it fires us up, ask him some more tough questions."

Yao said he hoped the tough losses would lead to tougher play.

"We're trying to make the change, to change the team to winning." Yao said. "Make us be tougher. Every day is a new day; every game is a new game. We still have hope. It's a struggle, at this point. But the season is still only 20-something games old. We can still turn it up. We just need to do our jobs, play harder.

"Nobody would like to stay struggling. Nobody would like to lose. After that pain the last two games, I believe everybody will think about how we need to play the rest of our season. Those two games are painful, hopefully. The pain will get us tougher. I don't want to lose them for nothing."