"After Monday’s practice, Yao Ming showed off a wide, 6-inch red scrape on his left biceps.

“ Joey Dorsey needs to cut his nails, maybe his tooth,” Yao said, shaking his head and smiling.

The loquacious rookie Dorsey claimed he was not the culprit.

“I think it might have been Chuck Hayes,” Dorsey said. “I’ll take the blame, but I ain’t got no nails.

“I blocked (Yao’s) shot a couple of times today. He dunked on Mike Harris. I ain’t got dunked on yet, so I’m good. ”

When told of Dorsey’s crowing, Yao grinned broadly.

“That’s OK, it’s practice,” he said. “When the season starts, he won’t be playing.”

Getting after it

The exhibiton schedule gets the Rockets quite busy right away. They’ll play four games in the next seven nights.

“We have four straight games of playing every other day,” Coach Rick Adelman said. “That might be too much. I’d like to have a couple days in between one of those games. I think we’ll learn something. I’ll be able to play a lot of different people in those four games. We have good depth, enough people to look at.” "