Continued: On shaky footing again as Wolves lose 12th in a row

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HOUSTON 109, WOLVES 102

Up next: 7:30 p.m. Tuesday at San Antonio • TV: FSN (1130-AM)

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The Timberwolves on Saturday night lost both their 12th consecutive game and veteran guard Mike Miller once again.

The 109-102 loss to Houston at Target Center leaves them still 0-for-December, with 10 days remaining in the month.

Miller played only five minutes and left the game for good midway through the first quarter, when he again stepped on a foot and obviously turned his right ankle, just as he had done more than two weeks ago at Orlando.

He missed four games with that ankle too stiff to play, returned to play the next four games and now looks like he could be sidelined again.

"It was tough to watch," Wolves guard Randy Foye said of a drive to the basket in which Miller fell hard and writhed on the floor. "I didn't even need to see the injury because I knew it was the same ankle."

Without him, Wolves coach Kevin McHale turned to Rashad McCants and his 16 points off the bench on a night Al Jefferson gave up 9 inches to Houston's Yao Ming in the evening's center matchup and scored a season-high 34 points to Yao's 18, but the Wolves still couldn't overcome the 7-6 center's oversized presence.

The Wolves double-teamed Yao at nearly every turn, and the Rockets simply responded by moving the ball and making 12 three-pointers, including three each from Aaron Brooks and Ron Artest.

The Rockets built an 18-point, third-quarter lead the Wolves chopped to three points in the final minute, but couldn't get any closer, not after Yao made a gyrating hook shot over Jefferson with 22 seconds left to secure Houston's fifth victory in six games.

"They made shots," McHale said. "That was our scheme, to get the ball out of Yao's hands. I know guys get frustrated, but you can't stop everything."

McHale called Yao's final basket a "circus" shot .

"They made some tough shots, even Yao, a 7-7 guy, fading away," Jefferson said. "There isn't anything you can do."

Jefferson tried, bulling his shoulder into Yao to clear space at the floor's other end and using his nifty moves around the basket to score 21 points after halftime, including 14 in a fourth quarter when Foye scored eight unanswered points in 45 seconds to turn a 105-94 deficit with 1:28 left into a 105-102 game with 42 seconds left.

"That's the way you've got to play him," Jefferson said of Yao. "You have to make him feel uncomfortable. If not, he'll kill you on one end and relax on the other end. You can't let him relax."

Yao's shot over Jefferson with 22 seconds kept the Wolves winless since Nov. 28, when they won at Oklahoma City. Foye, though, said he sensed something different after his team's fourth-quarter rally.

"I just feel like it's coming," said Foye, who scored 22 of his 24 points after halftime. "I don't know if you can see, but it feels different to me. I don't know what will happen. But tonight it felt like if there was an extra four minutes, things would have turned for us. Unfortunately, the game's just 48 minutes."

Notes

• Rookie Kevin Love played a season-low seven minutes and did not play at all in the second half, when McHale turned to veteran Mark Madsen instead. "We wanted some energy out of Dog and I thought he came in and gave us that," McHale said of Madsen. "Kevin just watched a little bit. His time will come again. I thought in a game like tonight we needed somebody like Dog."

• In a time warp: A fan after Foye, a third-year guard, got the hoop for three consecutive baskets in the third quarter, "Whoo, Rookie of the Year!"

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