"I really am not excited about the win," said C Yao Ming. "I would probably say that we survived from the other game. I think we were up by nine points with three minutes to go and we did let them come back and it went to a free throw game. This keeps happening and happening again since the Utah game, so I cannot be happy about this win."

F Ron Artest thought even less of it than that.

"The only good thing about this is that we get to live another day and New Year's is today," Artest said. "I'll just sum it up. There was a lot of the game we have to play better in. But to sum it up, that win was not a good win."

--In each of the past four games, the Rockets have hit an offensive dry spell, each time in the fourth quarter and each time with little motion but loads of missed shots.

After consecutive games missing nine consecutive shots in the fourth quarter, they went 1-of-9 to end the loss to Washington and 5-of-13 overall in the fourth quarter against the Bucks.

"I think we kind of get away from execution and just start to go one-on-one and try to take over the game," Tracy McGrady said. "Then we're out of sync offensively. We're not in our sets. We try to go one-on-one. We turn the ball over because guys are not in the correct spacing. That's why we're out of sync and the offense is not moving."

QUOTE TO NOTE: "The win was horrible. Sometimes the fans want to know what is going on in the players' minds. Tell them the win was bad. We have to play better. That's it." -- F Ron Artest.