HOUSTON (Ticker) -- For over 36 minutes, Yao Ming was having fits with Erick Dampier. That all changed in the final period.
Yao scored 15 of his 23 points in the fourth quarter as the Houston Rockets pulled out an 85-83 victory over the Golden State Warriors, who have lost four straight games.
Dampier controlled his matchup with Yao for the first three quarters as Golden State took a 65-64 lead into the fourth period. But the 7-5 Yao began to use his size advantage over the 6-11 Dampier and scored 11 straight points for the Rockets, forging a 77-77 tie with 3:54 remaining.
"He got a couple of shots to go down in the fourth and that was the difference in the game," Dampier said. "I tried to make sure he didn't get anything easy. I got away from that in the fourth quarter. I think he learned from how I was playing him."
"I felt my opponent was low on energy," Yao said through an interpreter. "He wasn't 100 percent and that hurt him in the fourth quarter. It increased my desire."
The Warriors also never considered double-teaming Yao in the fourth period.
"Not really," said Golden State forward Clifford Robinson, who scored 23 points. "Dampier is capable of playing him straight up. Yao just made some tough shots in the fourth period."
"Why would we do that?" Dampier said. "We didn't double-team him the whole game. He's not a Shaquille (O'Neal). There's no need to double-team him."
The Warriors hung in and took an 81-77 lead with 2:28 remaining. But Cuttino Mobley hit a 3-pointer with 1:25 left and Yao made three foul shots down the stretch.
Dampier finished with 15 points and 12 rebounds but did not score in the final 11 minutes, missing a pair of foul shots with 18 seconds to play.
As much as Yao had his way with Dampier, he also gave Golden State a chance as he uncharacteristically missed a pair from the line with 15 seconds to play. But Mike Dunleavy, Jr. missed a 3-pointer with three seconds remaining and Kelvin Cato split a pair of free throws to seal the win.
The Rockets have won 15 of their last 21 home games with the Warriors. But the first meeting against them at the Toyota Center was anything but easy, and coach Jeff Van Gundy was infuriated about the final two minutes.
"The last two minutes of that game were totally unacceptable," he said. "We need to play intelligently to win close games. We turned it over, we fouled foolishly and recklessly and we missed free throws. We did everything wrong that goes into finishing out games. We were running on bloody stumps because we're shooting ourselves in the foot repeatedly."
