In the 2003-2004 season, in the offseason, the Rockets limited reinforcements in players, only poached the starting No. 3 Jim Jackson from the Saramento Kings, but the coaching staff has changed dramatically, the original meritorious coach Rudy Tomjanovic stepped down as head coach due to ill health, and Jeff Van Gundy, who was the head coach of the New York Knicks and reached the NBA Finals, took over.

Van Gundy is known as "Van Bald" because of his Mediterranean hairstyle, this is an academic head coach, he has a knack for leading the team's defense, mainly playing half-court positional offense, he has successfully ** Hall of Fame level interior player Patrick Ewing, so he also hopes that Yao Ming can recreate Ewing's glory during the Knicks period, and he pointed out an incomparably bright "dead end" for Yao Ming.

Yao Ming, who first entered the league, was relatively thin and poorly confrontational, and scored with hook shots or "Shanghai dance steps" in the game, but Van Gundy instructed Yao Ming to increase muscles, increase confrontation ability, and become a star center who can withstand it, and Yao Ming did this, so in the future Yao Ming's games, there are fewer and fewer shots to play with his feet, and instead of a real inside hard chisel.

In the second season, Yao Ming grew up rapidly, averaging 17.5 points, 9.0 rebounds, 1.5 assists and 1.9 blocks per game in 82 games, helping the team reach the playoffs after several years while the Rockets' lineup was basically unchanged.

On April 17, 2004, Los Angeles time, in the first round of the NBA Western Conference, the Houston Rockets challenged the Los Angeles Lakers away, which was only the first game of the series, and Yao Ming was taught a good lesson by the "big shark" O'Neal!

In the last 18 seconds of regular time, the Rockets led the Lakers by one point 71-70, and the Lakers Kobe Bryant missed a three-point shot, and the basketball bounced high, O'Neal used his huge body to press Yao Ming to grab the rebound, domineering dunk, and caused Yao Ming's foul, which made Yao Ming leave the court with six fouls, and finally the Rockets lost the game 71:72, Yao Ming scored 10 points, 11 rebounds, 3 assists, 1 block, 2 turnovers, and 6 fouls on 4-of-11 shooting. And O'Neal's data is 20 points and 17 rebounds on 8-of-17 shooting, 3 assists, 2 blocks, 5 turnovers and 4 fouls, Yao Shark's first encounter in the playoffs is a world of difference, O'Neal's performance dwarfs the young Yao Ming.

In the second game, the first two quarters of the game were still difficult to solve, the third quarter suddenly changed, Kobe Bryant incarnated as a true god unstoppable, scored 17 points in a single quarter, and led the team to play a wave of 30:18 attack wave, which took away the victory, Yao Ming scored 21 points, 4 rebounds, 3 assists and 4 turnovers in 8 of 19 shots, while O'Neal only had 7 points and 7 rebounds in 3 of 9 shots, Francis played a triple-double with 18 points, 10 rebounds and 12 assists, but Kobe Bryant scored a game-high 36 points to let the Rockets drink the defeat.

The Rockets lost all the first two games, but Yao Ming, who performed well and badly, was tied 1:1 in the duel with O'Neal.

In the third game, the Rockets who moved to Houston were significantly better than in the Staples Center Arena, the Rockets led by 13 points in the first half, and kept the difference of 10 points until the end of the game, O'Neal scored 25 points, 11 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocks on 10-of-16 shooting, Yao Ming scored 18 points, 10 rebounds, 2 assists and 1 block on 9-of-13 shooting, which can be regarded as equal, Rockets Francis and Mobley scored 48 points together, becoming the most important contributor to the Rockets' victory.

In the fourth game, the first three quarters to: 59:69 behind the Rockets to catch up, the fourth quarter led by Francis played the Lakers a 22:10 43 seconds before the end, Francis's jumper rewrote the score to 81 draw, the Lakers were unable to score, the game was dragged into overtime, overtime, or Kobe, he scored 6 points alone, Yao Ming was beaten by Karl Malone in one minute and seventeen seconds before the end of the game into two plus one, six fouls left, which made the Rockets' rebounding not guaranteed, 7.6 seconds before the end, the Rockets 88: 91 only trailed by three points, Lakers point guard Fisher missed a shot, but the frontcourt rebound was grabbed by Karl Malone, the Rockets lost, the Lakers Karl Malone scored a game-high 30 points in the game, he also had 13 rebounds, O'Neal scored 17 points, 12 rebounds, 3 assists and 2 blocks on 7-of-11 shooting, while Yao Ming scored 16 points and 6 rebounds on 7-of-15 shooting.

In the fourth battle of life and death, the Rockets, who scored 48 points in the first two quarters, and the Lakers who scored 47 points fought inextricably, who would have thought that the whole Rockets team suddenly became unable to play in the third quarter, only scored 9 points in a single quarter, and was beaten by the Lakers with a 9:25 attack wave, and the entire quarter of the fourth quarter became garbage time, Yao Ming got 10 points and 5 rebounds on 3-of-10 shooting, while O'Neal shot 6-of-13, 12 points, 9 rebounds, 5 assists and 4 blocks.

Due to the huge gap in strength, the Rockets' defeat is reasonable, the Lakers have the league's No. 1 center O'Neal, these five games, let Yao Ming see how far he is from the peak, five games, Yao Ming averaged 15.0 points per game, 7.4 rebounds, 1.8 assists, 1.4 blocks, 2.6 turnovers, shooting rate is 45.6%, the overall performance is slightly lower than the regular season, O'Neal, on the other hand, averaged 16.2 points, 11.1 rebounds, 3.6 assists and 2.8 blocks per game, shooting 51.5% from the field, and his overall performance was slightly below the regular season level. Overall, Yao Ming's performance is not as good as O'Neal's, but it is not far behind, the data can show that after the Lakers defeated the Rockets, they fought six games with the San Antonio Spurs, and O'Neal averaged 22.5 points per game, 14.5 rebounds and 4.3 blocks in the face of the same great Duncan, and the shooting rate was as high as 63.5%! Beyond the Spurs, the Lakers vs. the Timberwolves, in the face of Hall of Fame-level defensive interior player Kevin Garnett, O'Neal averaged 20.7 points, 15.7 rebounds and 3.0 blocks per game, shooting 56.9%! In the finals, O'Neal averaged 26.6 points and 10.8 rebounds per game against defensive titan Ben Wallace, shooting 63.1% from the field! In these rounds of the series, except for the Timberwolves, the other three teams used a single defense, but only Yao Ming can be said to have really limited the play of the "big shark".

In the 2003-2004 season, Francis played the worst performance in the first four years, averaging only 16.6 points per game and shooting 40.3%, and in the playoffs against the aging Payton, he did not play the role of the anchor, which made the Rockets' management not very satisfied, and more importantly, the Rockets got Yao Ming, and they decided that the team's future was built around Yao Ming, not Francis, although Francis has a good scoring ability, but he has a fatal flaw in technology, That is, it is not in place to deal with the pass inside the outside, Francis plays with a strong street ball style, the dribble is low and fast, the pass is faster, and the angle is tricky, deceiving the defender and also deceiving his teammates, to put it bluntly, it is not easy to catch, just in the summer at the end of this season, the management of the Rockets has set their sights on a talented teenager who is far away in Orlando.

The teenager's name is Tracy McGrady, Maddie and Kobe Bryant were friends in high school, and after entering the NBA, the trajectory of the two people's development is almost the same, both started from the bench, and finally became a superstar in the limelight, Maddie has the height and size of an extremely perfect basketball player, and most importantly, his talent is amazing, his pull-up shooting is unique, the breakthrough dunk is as fast as the wind, and it is quite creative, and the throwing dunk makes future generations scramble to imitate, Rockets owner Leslie Alexander is a fan of Maddy, in the 2003-2004 season Maddy averaged 28.0 points, 6.0 rebounds and 5.5 assists per game on behalf of the Magic, crowned the league's scoring champion.

On June 30, 2004, the Rockets reached an agreement with the Orlando Magic, whereby the Rockets sent Steve Francis, Cardino Mobley and Kevin Cato to Tracy McGrady, Juwan Howard, Tyronn Lue and Les Gainness.

Francis dedicated his first five years to the Rockets, while the old cat Mobley played for the Rockets for six years, and is currently ranked tenth in the Rockets' all-time scoring history list with 7,281 points, Mobley is ninth with 7,448 points, and 672 three-pointers are second in team history, while Francis ranks sixth in team history with 2,411 assists, fifth in team history with 619 steals, ninth in team history with 470 three-pointers, and seventh in team history with 1,797 free throws.

Compared with those pale data, what Francis brought to Yao Ming is more of a big brother fan, Yao Ming, as a rookie, has been taken care of a lot by Francis, and the time he almost fought with Xiao Si for Yao Ming is even more well-known to the majority of fans, that sentence

"This is my territory, I won't allow you to touch my brother!" It has touched countless Chinese, so when Chinese fans call Francis, they use "Boss Fu" more to show their respect for him, and the mood when we say "Boss Fu" is by no means comparable to "Boss Ke" now.