It’s 2:30AM right now, I haven’t written a post in over a month, and I have a meeting with my professor in about 9 hours to discuss my seminar paper discussing David Stern’s veto of the Chris Paul-Pau Gasol trade and potential tort liability. So naturally, I’ve spent the last thirty minutes on Youtube spending as much time as I can on entirely unrelated tasks.
I don’t remember how I came across this, but I remember first watching it unfold, live. I was 14 at the time. My first thought at the time, right after Pippen’s comments, was that this must have meant that one of either Rasheed Wallace or Brian Grant were on their way to Houston. Or, at the least, Jermaine O’Neal. (This was during a more naive, innocent stage of my life, before repeated disappointments had led to the realization that Carrol Dawson was the most inept manager in professional basketball and couldn’t be expected to actually cash in on a bad situation.)
As you of course know, the Rockets did not receive any of those three present/future All-Star forwards, but instead, were gift-wrapped a package of freshly excreted manure, frontlined by one Kelvin Cato.
Note 1: One of the most remarkable aspects of the Harden trade and Harden’s brilliant play is the mere fact that it’s not a certainty for frontline acquisitions to pan out. The Pippen signing serves as Exhibit A.
Note 2: I think the most irritating aspect of the post-“fat butt”, pre-trade period was the fact that the national media almost expected that Pippen would be dealt to L.A. It was almost as if, “because he wants to go there, they’ll deal him there.” This, of course, resulted in an unyielding exercise in apologist gymnastics seeking to convince all of us as to why Glen Rice would be the a perfect fit in the Houston offense. (Recall that Phil Jackson had just joined the Lakers, thus the theory was that Pip was hoping to force his way to California.)
Pip, Francis, and Shandon Anderson on the wings would have been interesting, I think. Well, more interesting than Walt Williams was, anyway. Hmm.
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