The Houston Rockets walked into their Game 4 match-up with the Los Angeles Lakers undermanned, over-officiated, and ready for battle.

Less than 48 hours earlier, the Rockets had not only lost Game 3, they had lost the 7’6″ symbol of their franchise. When Yao Ming fractured his foot, it was thought to have also fractured his team’s hope to dethrone the defending Western Conference champions.

How did the Rockets respond? As one unified team.

The headstrong group of overachievers responded with play that seemed to say, “No Yao, No Problem.”

Losing your franchise player and not missing a beat? That was easy for Aaron Brooks, Shane Battier and the rest of Houston’s iron-willed warriors. A 99-87 win at home in Game 4 Sunday proved as much, as the final score is a complete misrepresentation of how thoroughly and exhaustively Houston dominated the entire game.

Houston jumped all over Los Angeles from the opening tip and built a 22-7 lead before the Lakers could even blink. From there Houston simply kept it’s foot on the accelerator and made sure it capitalized on the multitude of mistakes and turnovers a sloppy and uninspired Lakers squad was happy to provide them with.

Brooks had his best game ever as a professional, scoring an efficient 34 points on just 20 shots.

Battier nailed five threes, including three in the games opening five minutes, en route to 23 points of his own.

Other Rockets stepped up as well: Luis Scola produced a +/- performance of +19 while the undersized-but-never-overmatched Chuck Hayes and the unshrinking Ron Artest each produced +16 efforts.

One might want to question whether these performances were a mirage that cannot possibly be repeated Tuesday night when the series returns to Los Angeles.

To be sure, Houston’s was a joy to watch as a fan of team-oriented and defensive-minded basketball, however their fiery play seemed to be inspired by the immediacy of the challenge at hand.

If you will pardon the analogy, it smacked of the kind of adrenaline-fuelled action and endurance shown by a plane crash survivor, where raw survival instinct and adrenaline allows them to not register that their limbs are broken until they are safely clear of the wreckage. Only once fully removed and with time to comprehend all that is happening around them do they become conscious of the impossibility of continuing to drag themselves to safety.

Their swarming defense that caused the majority of the Lakers’ 11 turnovers to come in the game’s opening quarter was unquestionably spurred by instinct. Their three-point marksmanship (10-29 as a team for the game) was lifted by an uproarious home crowd of 18,313 that refused to let their team believe in the possibility of defeat.

Is it repeatable? Is it sustainable? For today, that doesn’t matter. The Rockets faced the kind of adversity that should have ended their season outright, yet they never gave into the appeal to cave, never submitted to the idea that they were finished.

It wasn’t easy for Houston to keep believing in themselves. It just looked that way.