Yao Ming, who returned to the Chinese basketball national squad after having surgery on his left foot, is regaining his form through warm-ups and aiming at the best teamwork, a Chinese basketball coach said Monday.
"Yao is in normal training with the team," Guo Shiqiang, an assistant coach of the Chinese basketball team, told a news briefing of the FIBA Diamond Ball Tournament for Men 2008.
"He will produce the best teamwork with the rest of the squad," Guo added.
Yao, the towering 2.26m Houston Rockets center, whose NBA season was ended by a stress fracture, returned to China to join the national team in June.
China, the most successful team in Asia with 13 regional titles, has been struggling to make a mark in top-level world arena.
The 2008 FIBA Diamond Ball Tournament for Men 2008, the last basketball warm-up tournament before the Beijing Olympics, will tip off Tuesday in Nanjing, southeast China.
On his part, Brendan Joyce, assistant coach of the Australian team, said his team will try to avoid the United States in the Olympic quarter-finals.
If the Aussies deliver in this goal, it would run even higher, said Joyce, adding "anything is possible."
Nicknamed the 'Boomers', the Australian men's basketball team qualified for the Beijing Olympics as the champions of Oceania, beating New Zealand 2-1 in the 2007 qualification series.
Australia has kept its record of competing in all Olympic Games since 1972.
But the 17-time Oceania champions recorded their worst finish in 32 years in Athens, where they just edged New Zealand for the ninth place.
Besides hosts China, the 2008 Diamond Ball Tournament attracts the reigning Olympic champion Argentina, African champion Angola, Australia, Iran and 2002 FIBA World Champion Serbia.
(Xinhua News Agency July 29, 2008)