Yao said he was sore but had no pain. The MRI and bone scan showed no reason to think it was more than that.

Yao did not practice on Sunday, giving him an extra day of rest. But he played 31 minutes Monday, scoring eight of his 22 points in the first six minutes of the fourth quarter and seeming to grow stronger as the game progressed.

The Rockets had been chasing home-court advantage. Yao played, however, because there was no reason not to.

"It's more important you have health for the playoffs," Adelman said. "We've been on that circus (in the chase for playoff position) for two or three weeks. We've been jumping all over the place and it's still that way.

"All we're trying to do is finish strong. We know whoever we play, home or away, we're going to face a very good team. The most important thing is to have your players. We didn't have Yao last year. We didn't have Rafer (Alston) to start the playoff series. It's very difficult to succeed if that happens. So we just want him healthy.

"I think it's important you finish the season off, but if it was a health issue, we would have looked at it differently and we would have made that decision."

ROCKETS 86, HORNETS 66: The Rockets had come too far to slip now. They had turned around their season, put the division championship in their sights and had come home for one more game with a four-game winning streak. Then they got off to a slow start, falling behind the Hornets, a team they could face in the first round, by six. With that, the Rockets turned up the defense, got a surge from the bench, and blew the Hornets out, moving within one win of the division title. They had an 18-0 run in the second quarter to take a 12-point lead by halftime, then opened up a 23-point lead in the third quarter before rolling to the win in what could be a playoff matchup preview.