They'd already competed long and hard at pingpong, Chutes and Ladders and checkers. After all those years, Jeff and Stan Van Gundy finally faced off as basketball coaches Tuesday night.

In just the second time in NBA history that brothers coached against each other, Jeff's Houston Rockets sent Stan's Miami Heat to their seventh straight loss 90-70.

Houston won its fourth in a row and kept Miami as the only winless team in the league.

The game was a mere subplot for the main show between the Van Gundys, who joined Herb and Larry Brown as the only brothers to coach against each other in the NBA.

The family reunion started Monday night when the Heat arrived in Houston and Stan went to Jeff's home for dinner.

"His wife, Kim, told me to make sure I use the words `homemade' and gourmet' and it was," Stan said. "It was unbelievable — steak, potato, salad _, it was wonderful. She said to say she cooks like that every night."

The brothers continued their banter in pregame exchangers in the hallway outside the teams' locker rooms Tuesday night.

"I wish it was me going against Jeff, I'm sure I'd come out on top," Stan said. "It's more serious when we have to face (Steve) Francis, (Cuttino) Mobley and Yao (Ming)."

Jeff said he enjoyed the rare chance to visit family.

"It's never a distraction when you can see your brother," Jeff said. "We sat around saying things like `your team is better,' and the other saying, `no, your team is better.' We wasted a lot of time doing that."

The brother-brother intrigue was more entertaining than the game.

Houston missed its first six shots and didn't get a basket until 6:33 remained in the first quarter as the Heat took an 11-5 lead.

The Rockets recovered to lead 43-36 at halftime and took command in the third quarter. Houston was led by Mobley, who scored a season-high 30 points.

Yao blocked a career-high seven shots. He had 16 points and eight rebounds. Eddie Jones led the Heat with 21 points.

The Van Gundys rarely looked at each other during the game. Stan, wearing a tan jacket, was more animated than his brother, dressed in a dark suit.

When it was over, they walked off at opposite ends of the court. Jeff had his head down and Stan looked up real quickly, saw that his brother was headed off, and left with his team.

Their parents, Bill and Cindy, watched at home in suburban Miami. They always watch in separate rooms — Bill, a career coach, keeps the sound off while his wife turns up the TV volume.

"I absolutely do not have a favorite," she said shortly before the game started. "I feel empathy for the loser and joy for the winner, but it's definitely a win-lose proposition."

"If I had my way, it would be like football and end in a tie," she said.

The last head-to-head meeting between the brothers was 1984 when Jeff was a senior at Nazareth College in Rochester, N.Y., and Stan was the coach at Castleton in Vermont. It was the championship game of a holiday tournament and Nazareth won with Jeff earning the MVP award.

"I never heard them say they wanted to be anything else, doctor, lawyer, anything else," Cindy Van Gundy said. "Around junior high, I knew they'd be coaches. I hope they learned values, devotion to family, and a work ethic from both Bill and me."

They definitely learned competitiveness as youngsters playing all sorts of games. The pingpong matchups against their parents were quite serious.

"They wanted to win," Bill Van Gundy said. "But winning might have been too competitive playing against their mother and slamming her."

Notes:@ From 1976-1978, Larry Brown coached at Denver and Herb Brown coached at Detroit. Larry was 4-2 in those matchups against his brother. ... Heat forward John Wallace is the only player to have played for both Stan and Jeff. "They're both Xs and Os guys, very defensive-minded. You ask one about the other and they say the same thing — very competitive," Wallace said.

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