Chinese netizens think highly of the comeback performance of New Jersey Nets' Chinese forward Yi Jianlian, as Yi scored a season-high 22 points on 7-of-12 shooting and grabbed eight rebounds at the game against Minnesota Timberwolves Wednesday night.

Yi Jianlian returned to the Nets bench after missing 24 games for knee and lip injuries since Nov. 2.

But Yi showed no ill effects of the knee injury. He first scored 12 in the first half, rising for a dunk and swishing 3-pointers. Late in the game, after hitting a 3-pointer to cut the Timberwolves lead to 92-90, he screamed as he walked off the court, pounding his chest.

Yi's team mate Keyon Dooling said after the game that Yi was spectacular Wednesday night and Yi was definitely on the right path.

Even coach Kiki Vandeweghe who said before the game that it would take two weeks for the forward to get back into the swing of things, was quite content with Yi's comeback performance although Nets lost the game 99-103.

As Yi was the only Chinese basketball player who would still play this NBA season after Sun Yue was dropped by the New York Knicks and Yao Ming is missing the NBA season because of his left foot injury, Yi's performance drew great attention of Chinese fans.

So far 33,822 netizens have participated in an online vote created by sina, the largest Chinese-language infotainment web portal, and about 67.2% of the voters believed Yi's comeback performance "was quite thrilling" and 29.0% voted "wait and see" while only 3.3% voters were discontent with his performance.

Millions of Chinese fans left scores of comments about the game on the Web, most of which are complimentary.

What a fan wrote got most favorable responses. "Yi has potential but still lack competitiveness. No matter how he plays in the future, I hope that Chinese fans would encourage him because we all desired to see him as another great icon similar to Yao Ming."