For more than two months, Zhou Qi sweated in the Toyota Center weight rooms and ran through drills on the practice court. He trained with the staff of a Rockets team he would soon join, often with Yao Ming's retired number overhead as if watching his progress as he knew so many in China soon would be.
On Wednesday, he got to do something he had not in all that time. He played basketball. He competed with the other members of the Rockets' summer league team in preparation for the games in Las Vegas beginning on Friday.