HANGZHOU, East China -- Yao Ming played his first game in almost five months after a foot surgery, helping China beat Serbia 96-72 at the Stankovic Continental Cup here on Thursday.
Chinese basketball star Yao Ming, 2.28m Houston Rockets center, plays during the match against Serbia at the Stankovic Cup basketball Olympic warmup tournament in Hangzhou, capital of east China's Zhejiang Province, July, 17, 2008. Yao's health for the Beijing Olympics has been of great concern to organizers since he suffered a stress fracture to his left foot in February, ending his NBA season.[Xinhua]
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The Houston Rockets' center scored 11 points in 12 minutes, grabbing another four rebounds and having three blocks.
"The stats are nice for Yao, and he didn't make any mistakes on defence. What can we ask him more for?" China's head coach Jonas Kazlauskas said.
Wang Zhizhi led China with 18 points and Yi Jianlian, New Jersey Nets forward, added 14 points for the 11 consecutive warm-up victory.
Forward Milan Macvan had the game-high 23 points and seven rebounds for Serbia, which is composed of an U-20 squad for the competition.
China opened the match with a 9-0 run and extended the margin to 13-2 in less than four minutes.
Yao substituted Wang with 3:59 minutes left in the first quarter and scored his first point on a free-throw two minutes later.
He remained on the court at the start of the second quarter before he was benched three minutes later when China led 36-23.
Serbia made it 51-39 with a beat-the-buzzer 3-pointer from Macvan on the break and and closed it by 54-46 in the third quarter, the smallest margin of the game.
The host team took a 14-2 run to set the tone of the match and led as many as 31 points on 81-62in the fourth quarter.
