BEIJING - Yao Ming thinks China's young team can still win a medal at the 2008 Beijing Olympics despite being knocked out of the world championship in the second round.

The Asian champions led by 12 points before collapsing to a 95-64 defeat by Greece in Saitama on Sunday having scraped out of the group stage on the back of a last-second three-point shot.

China's Yao Ming dunks against Greece during their world basketball championships game in Saitama August 27, 2006. [Reuters]

"I'll go back to NBA," the 7 ft 5 in Houston Rockets center said in an interview with Basketball Pioneers newspaper. "I can promise I'll be better in two years but I need my team mates to become better. I only made five attempts (on Sunday) and we can't win if I only get five attempts."

Yao had the best scoring average at the world championship going into Sunday's game but pressure from the Greeks on the Chinese guards left him with just 10 points and eight rebounds as his team collapsed around him.

"What our guards lack, sometimes, is a little bit of courage and basically we need physical strength," he said. "That's what I've learnt in my time in the NBA, to live on your strength. Look at my arms."

Despite the huge enthusiasm for the game in China, the national team finished 12th at the last world championship in Indiana in 2002 and eighth at the Athens Olympics two years later.

"To sum up, it was a tournament in which we can see more hope, more than those in Indiana or Athens," the 25-year-old NBA All Star told the paper.

"Our performance in the group stage was better than I hoped. However, the last game left me with some doubts. I hope it was just a blip."

Along with Olympic high hurdle champion Liu Xiang, Yao is China's most popular sportsman and there is a lot of pressure on him to deliver a medal in men's basketball in 2008.

"If we can keep the good form, if the players work hard in the next two years, if we are fight as well as we did this time and if we are lucky at home," he said.

"If all those premises exist, we might hopefully take a medal at home."