They looked pretty smart getting to the Finals 2 years later no one knew Ralph was going to get hurt and things would implode like they did. You could say the bigger blunder was drafting McCray over Drexler, but in fairness coming into the draft Drexler was a 6'5 small forward with no outside shot and McCray was a guy who was a good passer defender and was 6'8.
You beat me to it. I was surprised no one mentioned Royce White in the first page of this thread. Hiring D'Antoni might turn out to be a top 10. We'll see.
Slick Watts ? after google search the man is worth a first rounder just by the way he wears his head band !!! Biggest Blunder in ROCKETS history = Not having Calvin Murphy on the TV game call!!!!
Not only did they offer us the 2nd pick in the draft, they also offered us Drexler to go along with the pick. So instead of having only tail end Drexler, we would have had him for his prime, along with the GOAT and the best C of all time
Trading for Derek Fisher. However this was fixed by cutting him before he ever played a minute for the Rockets.
Obviously that would have been a great deal, but at the time, Ralph was The Man. He was just 1 year removed from being the best player to come out of college in decades and was supposed to revolutionize the entire game. Remember when he wanted to play PG? The Rockets wanted to hold on to him at all costs and it was tough to blame them....again, at the time. Taking McCray over Drexler was a totally different story. I'm still trying to figure that one out. McCray was a role player on a great team (Lou) but Drexler was (arguably) the best player on a great team (UH). Even if they were equal, you still take Drexler just because of the PR with the home town hero being drafted. Hard to believe 13 teams passed on Drexler because they didn't think he was ready for the NBA. Can you imagine the Twin Towers with Drexler playing the 2? Even when that team imploded, Drexler would have probably stayed around just because of his friendship with Hakeem and/or his love of the city.
Not an all-time fail. We had 3 mid 1st round picks. If we only had one pick, no way we select him. Low risk / high reward pick. Unfortunately, you can't eliminate all risk. Same goes for Ty Lawson. Low risk / high reward. NOBODY expected that to turn out as bad as it did. I also don't consider Barkley an all-time mistake. The dude played hard for us. We knew we only had a few years left of Dream so it was a win-now move. Then Hakeem got hurt and Barkley actually carried the team on his back for a while. I'm not a fan of Barkley but the trade wasn't a failure because Barkley played well, as opposed to Scotty Quitten. One big mistake was not managing Yao's minutes better.
Yeah, I always think about that... Houston would have been unstoppable. Unfortunately, I also wonder if Houston would be competent enough to draft Jordan, Lol "we have Drexler... Let's get Bowie!! Twin Towers!!"... Oops, haha... When Jordan was picked at 3.. Chicago was even questioning trading the pick or if a SG at pick 3 was the right move. So silly, they almost screwed up too.
I agree to some degree you can't eliminate all risk, but everyone knew his fear of flying and you spend half the season on a plane... just a waste of a mid first rounder imo