Sweet. So I walked in and the Rockets were still running practice, and had the players broken up in to groups by position. As I started to walk down the side of the court, the ball got away from Kelvin Cato and came right at me. I picked it up and passed it back to him.

"Nice pass, man. You get the assist," said Kelvin.

I thought, "Well that was cool of him." Sort of made up for yesterday's diss.

Then he turned, fired the uncontested 7-foot baseline jumper and missed. So now the dude screwed me out of my first NBA assist.

Cato was one of four Rockets running big man drills with Rockets assistant coaches Larry Smith and Melvin Hunt. The others were Kenny Thomas, Ike Nwankwo and Eddie Griffin, so make no mistake, Rudy has no visions of Griffin as a wing. They ran all kinds of post-up drills. Hunt would dish it in to the post where the players would take turns taking the feed and turning around for quick, strong hooks in the paint.

If they ran through the drills and missed even once, they ran a sprint up and down the floor. If they were perfect, Mr. Mean and Hunt had to do the running.

More often than not it was the players doing the running, and more often than not it was Nwankwo who missed his.

Griffin was impressive. Quiet, reserved and smooth. He moves well, made some strong moves in the post and hit jumpers when the drills pushed them farther away from the hoop. He even drained both triples I saw him put up. What makes Griffin a fascinating prospect is despite the height and excellent raw shot blocking ability, he still has a very smooth and soft jumper.

And he's only 19.

On the other end of the floor, Walt Williams, Dan Langhi, Oscar Torres and Damon Jones ran long-range shooting drills where they would come off picks, get the feed from assistant Jim Boylen and fire up 20-footers. I could see why the team has been impressed so far with Jones and Torres -- both shot very well. Torres wears jersey #18 while Jones is #16.

Cuttino Mobley and Glen Rice both sat off to the side, having a good laugh and cheering the players on in the drills. I never saw Rice do anything but sit, then leave after practice. Mobley meanwhile shot around at his leisure after practice, and he shot very well, particularly from trifecta territory.

Steve Francis was not there. I asked around and they said he left practice earlier with a headache.

I watched Terence Morris for a while and he struggled with his shot today. He missed 7 threes in a row going "Around the World" and I could tell it bothered him, especially when Rudy T came by to observe their drills. Afterwards, up until just about everyone left, Morris was shooting away by himself working hard to get his touch back on one of the side courts.