In the previous 21 chapters of this series we looked back at the history of the Rochester Royals’ transformation into the Houston Oilers and the Oilers’ subsequent successes and failures in their new home; the short but eventful lives of the IBL and the ABA as they both attempted to supplant the NBA as the dominant force in pro basketball; Houston’s back-to-back 1989 and 1990 NBA league titles; their painful 1991 NBA Finals loss to the New York Knicks; their premature exit from the 1992 NBA postseason; their return to the top of the mountain with their 1993 NBA Finals victory over the Chicago Bulls; their triumphant rematch against the Knicks in the ’94 NBA Finals; the departure of Michael Jordan to Chicago as a free agent; the Oilers’ 1995 NBA Finals victory against the Indiana Pacers; their defeat by the Bulls in the 1996 NBA Finals; their stunning early exit from the ’97 NBA playoffs; the opening of the Enron Center; the Oilers’ controversial 1998 Finals loss to the Bulls; the consequences of the NBA’s first-ever lockout for Houston’s performance during the ’98-’99 season; the abrupt name change for the Oilers’ home arena triggered by the Enron scandal; the arrival of Chinese pro basketball sensation Yao Ming in the NBA; and the franchise’s response to 9/11. In this episode we’ll review Yao’s first full season with the Oilers and Houston’s 2003 NBA WesternConference playoff run.

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Up until the signing of Yao Ming to an NBA contract, the most popular second language among Houston residents had been Spanish. In the months after he joined the Oilers, however, the Energy City’s continuing education schools witnessed a surge of interest in Mandarin Chinese; almost from the minute the ink had finished drying on Yao’s contract, it had been common knowledge Chinese tourists and broadcasters would be flocking to the Sonic Center to witness their fellow countryman’s NBA regular season debut, and Houston’s tourist industry wanted to be prepared to capitalize on the resulting boost their presence would provide for the local economy. Suddenly it seemed like there were more Chinese in Houston than in Beijing-- one Houston Chronicle writer even jokingly suggested China’s national theater company move its headquarters to the Houston Theater District.

      As it happened, such a transfer would be unnecessary-- Yao would provide plenty of drama all by himself when he took to the court for the Oilers’ season opener against the defending Eastern Conference champion New Jersey Nets. Yao took everything the Nets could dish out and threw it right back in their faces; Houston rallied from a twelve-point second quarter deficit and tied with New Jersey just before halftime thanks in part to Yao’s constant pressure on the Nets’ frontcourt. The Oilers began to pull away from Jersey early in the third quarter and went on a 17-3 run in the fourth quarter to clinch a 111-92 victory to open the 2002-03 NBA regular season. Rave reviews for Yao’s performance started to come in thick and fast, and before long the newcomer was on his way to establishing himself as the most beloved sports figure in the Energy City since Earl Campbell.

Though his English at the time wasn’t the most polished, his performance on the hardwood hardly needed any translation. Here, agreed many if not all of the beat writers covering the NBA as a whole and the Oilers in particular, was a bona fide game changer, a budding superstar who with time and further training had it in him to evolve into a full-blown legend deserving to be included in the ranks of greats like Bill Russell and Magic Johnson. Some of the more optimistic members of the Houston sports media even ventured a prediction that the former Shanghai Shark might be the man who led the Oilers back to the NBA league championship.

And that optimism only grew after Houston proceeded to reel off ten victories in its next twelve games, including a highly satisfying 141-110 road blowout of the Lakers in Los Angeles. It seemed as if there was little if anything the Oilers couldn’t do with Yao in their lineup; by the time the first month of the ’02-rsquo;03 NBA regular season had ended, Houston was barely a handful of percentage points out of the top spot in the Midwest Division. In early November, they tied for first place with an overtime win at home against the Dallas Mavericks.

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But Yao’s rookie season in the NBA wasn’t all peaches and cream; in mid-November he was handed first career ejection from an NBA regular season game when he was tossed from a 97-78 Oilers loss in Miami midway through the third quarter. That ejection was the beginning of a run of ill luck for the Chinese superstar in which his points per game average was cut in half and Houston was knocked off its perch atop the Midwest Division. Yao wouldn’t get his groove back until Christmas Eve, by which time Houston was six games under .500 and struggling to avoid getting overtaken by Portland in the overall Western Conference standings.

After Christmas, however, the Oiler ship righted itself once again and Houston began storming back towards the top of the NBA heap. By mid-January Houston had worked its way to a respectable third place in the overall Western Conference standings; near the end of the month, the Oilers were in a three-way tie with Dallas and Minnesota for the top spot in the Midwest Division. It was at that point when Yao Ming went from being just one name among the the list of possible contenders for that season’s NBA Rookie Of The Year award to being the most prominent name on that list. Not since Michael Jordan had an Oilers newcomer inspired so much hype in the basketball world.

On Valentine’s Day Yao buttressed his claim to the Rookie of the Year award by putting up a very Jordan-like 48 points and 60 rebounds in a 117-114 Oilers overtime victory against the Celtics in Boston. By early March the question wasn’t so much if he would win the ROTY trophy as by how many votes he’d win it. In hopes of further tipping the scales in his favor his old Chinese pro club, the Shanghai Sharks, encouraged their fans to lobby David Stern on Yao’s behalf. But what may have been the ultimate affirmation of Yao’s Jordan-like status came when Jordan himself did an ESPN interview pronouncing him “the greatest center I’ve seen in the past ten, maybe fifteen years”.

The Oilers clinched the number three spot in the 2003 NBA Western Conference playoffs with a 136-100 blowout of Sacramento at the Sonic Center late in the first week of March. The Kings wouldn’t have to wait long for a chance to avenge that blowout; they edged out Phoenix for the number six playoff seed and set up a first round Houston-Sacramento series in which Yao Ming would receive his NBA postseason baptism of fire.

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     An old joke about basketball asserts that it’s not a contact sport but a collision sport; whoever first made the quip may have foreseen the bruising intensity of the Oilers-Kings 2003 opening round series, since that contest definitely had its fair share of collisions before it was over. There were collisions of players with fans, collisions of players with each other, collisions of players with referees, collisions of players with coaches, and in one particularly embarrassing instance a Sacramento backup center even ran into Houston’s team mascot.

     In fact, the Oilers would set a franchise record for average number of team fouls per game in the ’03 first round series with Sacramento. But whatever pain the Houston players might have felt was at least partly soothed away by the series’ ultimate outcome: they beat the Kings three games to one and advanced to the second round to take on the fifth-seeded Seattle Mariners, who’d knocked off the fourth-seeded Dallas Mavericks in what some sportswriters viewed as an upset(and Mavericks fans regarded as a blatant case of ineptitude among NBA referees in not calling what to said fans were obvious Seattle fouls in the deciding game of that series). The Mariners were on a roll going into the showdown with Houston, and were looking to ride that momentum straight into the 2003 NBA Western Conference finals.

     Naturally, Oilers head coach Mike Fratello had other ideas. Determined that his club would not be the second victim of an upset by Seattle, he tore up the game plan he had originally devised for the second-round series with the Mariners and wrote up an entirely new strategy built around exploiting weaknesses in the Mariner front court which Fratello had noticed while watching game tapes of the Seattle-Dallas first round series.

     The new strategy worked like a charm. Houston took a two games-to-none lead over Seattle and went on to win the series four games to one over the Mariners, stunning the experts who’d picked Seattle to eliminate the Oilers and setting up a cross- Texas showdown in the 2003 Western Conference finals between the Oilers and the top-seeded San Antonio Heat, whose offense was built around U.S. Naval Academy grad and future NBA Hall of Famer David Robinson. Robinson was no stranger to high-pressure playoff situations; in the strike-shorted 1998-99 NBA season, Robinson-- nicknamed ‘the Admiral’ by fans --had been the NBA Finals MVP, and his free throwing shooting had played a crucial role in the Heat’s success during the first two rounds of the ’03 playoffs. Fans and sportswriters alike were eager to see whether Yao Ming’s irresistible force could beat Robinson’s immovable object.

      At first it seemed like the irresistible force would win decisively. Houston won the first two games of the conference finals by an average score of 37 points and jumped out to a 25-point halftime lead during the third game. But when Yao had to be taken off the court with a hyper-extended ring finger on his left hand midway through the third quarter of Game 3, Lady Luck turned her back on the Oilers. The Heat mounted a dramatic comeback in in the fourth quarter, tying the game with barely five minutes to go in regulation and clinching the victory on a buzzer-beating 3- pointer by Robinson.

       The next night San Antonio tied the series with a 10-point win over Houston, and from that point on the Oilers lost control of their playoff destiny. The Heat took a three games-to-two lead in the series with a 30-point blowout of Houston in Game 5; they would clinch the Western Conference title with an overtime win at the Sonic Center in Game 6. Yao Ming’s first NBA playoff run had ended in heartbreak. But with the Oilers having made the Western Conference finals for the first time since the 1998 lockout, and with Yao having garnered valuable experience in his initial NBA season, Houston fans were optimistic their team would bring home the conference title in 2004.

        But the Oilers would hit some very big potholes on the road to their next conference finals appearance....