Yao did not duck out on his duties to the national team -- he takes them very seriously, and, Thibodeau says, "When you watch him practice with the team, you can see how much he enjoys it, how much he likes representing his country and being around those guys." In order to work on his NBA game, though, Yao had to submit to an extraordinary schedule. He and Thibodeau worked for an hour before the Chinese team's two-hour morning practices. Yao then worked on conditioning with Macha after practice. He returned to the court for another one-hour session with Thibodeau before the night practice, then went another two hours with the national team. That's six hours of on-court work, plus weight and conditioning training.

"Plus, the first year, he was taking English lessons at night," Thibodeau says. "I have no idea how he found time for all of that."

You may notice Yao has added muscle while losing weight -- the Rockets determined his best playing weight is between 308 and 310 pounds after first trying to get Yao to bulk up to 325. You may see Yao is playing 35.4 minutes per game, the highest average of his career, and does not appear to get winded as quickly as he did early in his NBA life. And you may see him shooting a turnaround baseline jumper or consistently knocking down an impossible to guard jump hook. The confidence and skill with which Yao is deploying those weapons was developed over the past two summers.

"You have to remember, he had no time off for his first couple of years," says Rockets general manager Carroll Dawson. "One of the big differences is that he has had normal NBA summers the last two years. He has had time to work on his game, and you won't find a harder worker in the league. That comes, I think, from having a billion and a half people with their eyes on you."

The pressure of being a standard-bearer for a nation certainly does not make Yao's working summers back home any easier. At 7-6, he can't easily hide from a crowd, and Dawson says traveling in China with Yao "is like traveling with Elvis. Only Yao does not have any bodyguards or anything." But, at 26, Yao is getting much more comfortable with his role -- in the NBA, in China and in the world. It is estimated that 20 percent of the hits on NBA.com come from China. Yao has become the face of the 2008 Summer Olympics, to be held in Beijing. He has been a spokesman for HIV/AIDS awareness, a taboo subject in China. He even has spoken out against shark fin soup, a Chinese delicacy that has endangered dozens of shark species.

"These are things that are important to me," Yao says. "I don't see why I should not speak about it."

Among his Rockets teammates, where his English is nearly as polished as his game, Yao is speaking up, too. He is more aggressive on the court, and his sense of humor helps keep things loose off it. "Oh, he is funny," says forward Shane Battier. "He says things out of left field that make everyone crack up." After a win over Memphis last month, Yao recalled a failed attempt by McGrady to set up an alley-oop pass. Yao smiled and held up his thumb and forefinger, a couple of inches apart.

"I have to remind Tracy that this is how high I jump," he said. Maybe Yao's vertical needs some work. But he has made leaps almost everywhere else.

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