Just give me the damn ball. That, or some equally pointed derivative, is what Jeff Van Gundy is waiting to hear from Yao Ming. The Houston Rockets new coach hadn't heard that phrase or anything like it from his 7-6 center in the season's first three games and he didn't hear it last night at the Meadowlands.

In fact, Van Gundy knows he may never hear it. But a coach can dream, can't he?

A passive Yao -- who took just one shot in the game's first 21 minutes -- recorded his third double-double of the young season, pulling down 11 rebounds and scoring 10 points in the Rockets' 86-75 come-from-behind victory over the Nets.

Yet even with that statistical line, Yao was hardly a factor. His crowning moment may have come in the second quarter when he spun baseline around Alonzo Mourning, who was playing against him for the first time, and threw in a dunk.

Later, after the Rockets had opened a six-point lead late in the fourth quarter, Yao dropped in a 13-foot fadeaway over Jason Collins to push the margin to eight with 2:09 to play and all but end the Nets chances.

"A lot of times we were scrambling trying to double-team Yao," Nets captain Jason Kidd said. "That puts a strain on your defense because you're trying to protect everybody else. That's the gift they have over there."

While Yao was a welcomed gift to the entire NBA last year, bumping up attendance in nearly every arena he played in, last night there was little of the buzz generated last season when the Ming Dynasty passed through the Meadowlands for the first time. Fans of the NBA's only player from China turned out, but not nearly the way they did last season. A sellout crowd of 20,049 watched that March 31 game. Only 11,784 were on hand last night.

One Yao-hoo did hold up a sign that read: "Yao You Can Be The Best." The fan, however, was wearing a Kobe Bryant Lakers jersey.

Van Gundy, too, believes Yao can be among the best. But it won't happen, he said, until his 23-year-old center changes the almost deferential way he plays the game.

"We'll have made great strides when he comes over very emphatically and tells me, 'Give me the ball' and not nicely," Van Gundy said before the game. "When Patrick Ewing said it it was never kind and so I knew where he was coming from and that was good. And then the pressure is on him. If you're going to ask for it, then you have to accept the responsibility and I hope that Yao, as he becomes more and more comfortable, will do that."

Chances are he will, but last night was clearly not the night. Yao made just four of 10 shots. Afterward, he criticized himself for "thinking too much" on the court, although when asked how he thought he played he said "not bad."

"At the beginning of the game, I don't think I played very well," he said through his translator. "I wasn't aggressive and I was thinking too much. I wasn't getting my shot off as well as I'd like and I was looking for better opportunities. ... I don't think today I was very aggressive. I think I can be in the future."

"He has this demeanor of humility and team first," Van Gundy said. "Yet you don't want him to try so hard to fit in that he can't stand out. When he gets it in a spot and he has single coverage and he has it every time, he should be thinking score every time until they bring that second defender. His nature is, 'If I score three or four times, what is everybody else going to think?'

"As a coach, I'm thinking, 'Score again.' There's no physical basketball skill that he doesn't have (except) that disposition to dominate every night. ... He's a very kind man, which is great. And yet, you have to develop that disposition that if you get 10 early and they're playing you single coverage, to try to get 12, 14, 16. That disposition is what stars have. That's in the early stages of development."

Yao is learning from one of the best to ever play in Ewing, now an assistant on Van Gundy's staff.

"He's doing good," the former Knicks star said. "He needs to be a little more aggressive, but he's fine. He's a very good player. He's got a lot of talent. The sky's the limit for him."

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