- Picking up where we left off yesterday, I’m not really sure I can explain how I felt after the title. No doubt I did not appreciate it appropriately, but I do recall extreme excitement. I think the main misunderstanding on my part was a failure to grasp the rarity of the feat.
- I know for a fact that I didn’t appreciate Hakeem. I knew he was extraordinary but didn’t realize I would likely never again see a player of his abilities don the red and gold for this team.
- I vividly remember the front-page season preview piece on Robert Horry prior to ’96 in the Houston Chronicle sports section. ”Robert Horry has arrived…not like Grant Hill has arrived, but he’s on his way.” Or something like that. Okay, perhaps the memory isn’t so vivid, but we all thought Horry would naturally build off of his playoff run and cultivate his talents. It never happened. In some ways, Horry might be the greatest paradox in basketball: the most successful player in modern history (from a team perspective), but a disappointment in terms of personal potential. After ’95, he just fell in love with the 3 point line and was never again the same player. Watch clips of Horry from ’94 and before and you see a slashing gazelle that actually drove to the basket with every touch despite his awkward handle. Some say the spill he took in the Finals (either game 3 or game 4, if I recall) was the turning point. Another theory is complacency over a winning formula. Either way, Robert Horry could have been so much more than what he was despite the hardware he now boasts.
- The rumor has always been that Olajuwon pushed for Cassell to be traded, frustrated over the young guard’s erratic ways. It would seem to make sense, but I personally have not seen this reported in any credible source. This begs another point: what fueled speculation in an era without the internet? I guess you only knew what the beat writers decided to convey and everything else was shouldered by radio personalities. The paradigm has turned on its head.
- I miss Bruce Gietzen from the UPN halftime and postgame show.
- A quote I remember from an NBC halftime segment following the Drexler trade: “Charles Barkley says he’s been laughing all week wondering who would now guard him.”
- A misnomer regarding the trade: it was a huge risk, yes, in that you were dismantling a championship lineup (and a quartet of Smith-Maxwell-Olajuwon-Thorpe that had been together for like 4 years), but not to the degree at which it is romanticized. When discussed, the Thorpe-Drexler trade is fondly recalled as one of the greatest exercises of blind faith in NBA history wherein a title team “traded it’s starting 4 on a gut feeling, despite the glaring hole it left behind with no adequate replacements.” That’s not true and on the contrary, the trade was simply a rational exercise of efficient resource re-allocation. What’s forgotten, or perhaps willfully excluded from the narrative, is that in filling in for an injured Thorpe, Carl Herrera had gone absolutely berserk in the weeks leading up to the trade. Herrera made Thorpe expendable, in light of Clyde’s availability, and in a way, was the linchpin of the Drexler trade. This is one of the most neglected facts in Houston sports history and it must be brought to attention. Herrera played no role in the title run, but without his explosion, there is no second banner hanging from the rafters.
- A quote from either Worrell or Peterson in preview of ’96 extolled the “versatility” of the team at the 4 with Chucky Brown posing as the ‘athletic’ specimen, Chilcutt as the shooting specialist, and the newly acquired Mark Bryant as the bruising force. Hilarious in retrospect given that they were all scrubs.
- I was expecting Mark Bryant to be Karl Malone, I think, given that I didn’t understand the concept of free agency at that time. ”If the Rockets signed this guy, he must be good.”
- Robert Horry’s final quarter as a Houston Rocket is never spoken of, but considering the circumstances in facing elimination with a 20 point deficit in defense of a title, it was the greatest shooting exhibition I’ve ever seen to this point in my life. Horry went berserk, hitting 5-6 from deep in that 4th quarter, bringing the team back before fouling out, and adding evidence to the thought that something of a different sort fueled his veins in late game moments. There is probably a Game 5 if Horry does not foul out that night.
- Gary Payton will never be topped as the greatest Rocket killer of all-time. Had his Sonics not been ousted by Mutombo’s Nuggets in ’94, there is no banner hanging in memory of that year.
- Remember the first iteration of the Barkley trade? It would have sent Horry and Cassell to Denver, Mutombo to the Suns, with Charles coming here. The talks broke off, for reasons I can’t recall, leaving me in despair, even at that age.
- Remember the pre-season Oakley body-slam of Charles, leading to the latter’s one game suspension? If I recall correctly, Hakeem described the former as “evil” or something similarly hilarious.
- To this day, I’ll defend the Barkley trade tooth and nail against the detractors. Not only was it necessary, as the team could not afford to pay the extensions Cassell and Horry would be due, but Charles did what he was brought to accomplish and that was getting the team past Seattle. Scratch that. Charles willed this team past the Sonics. His 4th quarter in Game 7 of that series should be required viewing for any Rockets supporter.
- I wish there was a clip of the Kevin Willis – Shawn Kemp fight somewhere online.
- Fast forwarding for a second, before I forget, it should be mentioned that Antonio McDyess would have kicked Dream’s *** had that scuffle not been distangled.
- Now if we’re talking about Dream pre-spiritual catharsis, McDyess is probably 6 feet under at the moment.
- The NBC segment when Charles remarked that “some of the guys on the team, because they’ve already won it, don’t play with the same sense of urgency that those of us who haven’t won it, like me and Kevin Willis” would have set the internet ablaze had it been uttered today. Speculation was that the comments were in reference to Clyde as it is public knowledge that the two never got along.
- To this day, I’ll never forgive Jalen Rose for what he did.
- The last 7 minutes of Game 6 against the Jazz were like the archetypical horror movie scene where the bad guy is in the vicinity and everyone but the protagonist can foresee what is about to occur. Failing to sign someone better than Sedalle Threatt to shore up the ’1′ is what did the Rockets in in ’97.
- My time here is up but we’ll pick up where we left off tomorrow as I will no doubt attempt to expend the entire post on ’98 in hopes of postponing discussion of the dreadful Francis era for as long as possible.
