--In another episode in the ongoing drama about who will play each night, issues the Rockets thought were behind them, Ron Artest told a website one day that he might have to sit out until after the All-Star break and then told the team the next day that he was ready to go.
Artest played against the 76ers and said his ankle was sore, but not too much to miss any playing time. The Rockets, however, were not happy about having to read about his uncertainty. "I think there's a way to do things, a way to follow protocol or procedure," Adelman said. "I don't feel like I should have to read it in the paper about what a guy is doing. Usually, if someone's hurt, whoever it is, they see the trainer. The trainer looks at them, gives them treatment, and we can make some kind of plan. If it is more serious than that, they go see the doctor, and they talk to me about it, I talk to the player and we move on from there.
"I think this was the wrong way to do it. We've had this happen a number of times where it gets in the paper where there is a time frame or an absolute thrown out there. I think that's not the way we need to do things. I knew nothing about any of that. We need to have some type of order and we talked about that. We've talked about it for awhile."
--The Rockets play nine of their next 11 games at home, and do not have a road trip longer than two games the rest of the season. But for now, Rockets coach Rick Adelman was as eager to return to the practice court as the Toyota Center's main stage.
"We have to have a period of time, not just games, but practice, too," Adelman said, "We actually get on the floor and work as a group. We haven't had that at all. If we have had practice, it was one or two guys sitting out. We've had no flow.
"The biggest thing that is going to change for us is our rotation is totally different right now. We need everybody back and a consistent two-, three-week period of practice, games where guys don't miss and we keep working on things."
QUOTE TO NOTE: "After the game, Coach said that we have to learn from this game. Why do we keep learning this game? Learning from these games means we lost again and this happened again and this happened months ago, and two months ago and now it is the end of January and we are still and learning. When is the end?" -- Yao Ming.
