<div class='quotetop'>QUOTE </div><div class='quotemain'><font class="fbody" id="zoom">If you believe the chatter coming out of China following Yao Ming's stellar performance in the Houston Rockets' regular-season opener, you might think Yao already has the MVP award locked up. Yao's 25 points and 12 rebounds certainly laid a foundation for the Rockets to escape with a narrow win at Staple Center in Los Angeles. "Those are MVP stats," one exuberant fan wrote on a bulletin board at Sina.com. MVP-caliber? Maybe. More encouraging might be the grueling 40 minutes of work Yao put in at both ends of the floor, swatting three Laker shots and adding a steal to go along with his offensive outpouring. Those 40 minutes - well outside his 33-minute average last season - are especially noteworthy and suggest Yao is indeed ready to bear an MVP-type workload after missing almost half of last season with injuries. Enthusiasm was abundant at Sina.com, where an online poll had 47 percent of respondents calling Yao's game the best season-opener of his career. Many Chinese fans went so far as to call it "a perfect game", probably choosing to ignore Yao's four turnovers.</div></font></p> <font class="fbody" id="zoom">People's Daily </font></p>
He's not playing like an MVP tonight.</p> 3-12 from the field and 5 turnovers.</p> TMac however is tearing it up.</p>
Yao didn't really have a great first game either, by his standards, so the MVP talk is very premature. He'll get better as the season goes on. He's a willing and dedicated learner.</p>
