Rudy t was lucky to have Scottie Brooks, Kenny Smith, Vernon Maxwell and sam cassell in the back court.
Yeah cassell got buckets. The skills was on point for sure. Rudy t always was thirsty on the side line. Rudy would have a cup of his beverage of his beverage of choice at home games.
https://www.baltimoresun.com/news/bs-xpm-1994-06-13-1994164159-story.html So that's 18 ppg for two years in the ACC, which also means that Cassell wasn't exactly underexposed. All the great scouting minds of the Western world had their looks at Cassell, and most rejected him in favor of stiffs who will be European-bound in a year of so. Rudy T did his own drafting last year, by the way, but he is not the sort who would act smug. Hamtramck guys just aren't like that. "His interview clinched it for me," said Tomjanovich. "He showed some of the stuff he did tonight during the interview."
Cassell's game went well with power forwards since his misses was not bricks and forwards like Herrera, Thorpe, hoorry could get tip in rebounds. The danuel house tip shots remind me of the championship years. Those are plays that championship teams have to make consistent.
GM Steve Patterson deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for creating the roster drafting Horry, Cassell, trading for Elie, Thorpe, Maxwell, Les firing him because of the rift between Patterson and Hakeem despite Hakeem hating him. Les bought the team and fired Patterson. Steve Patterson was in the front office Seahawks Superbowl team. The bad was the Texas Longhorns fiasco Steve Patterson did.
Rudy Tomjonovich drinking Transparent Plastic Glass either Pepsi or Coca Cola with Ice on the sideline. Around 1998 I remember.
If zan tabak getting credit, then don't forget chucky '10 day contract' brown. Oh yeah....they signed chucky brown for the rest of the championship season!
Rudy t is the best coach in Houston sports history. Olujuwon is most skilled center of all time without question! Cassell is right up there with Curry. Injuries prevented a third ring for Cassell unless Cassell got a ring with Boston while coaching? Not sure if Cassell got another ring with Boston Celtics!?!?
Spoiler The Houston Rockets were in Phoenix the night before a game against the Suns and Charles Barkley – that benevolent provider of elite soundbites, sharp elbows and pick-up-the-tab-for-the-table generosity – invited Rudy Tomjanovich and his assistants over to his home for dinner before facing his former team. “And he had two surprise guests for us,” Tomjanovich recalled on a recent telephone call. Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods. “It was a phenomenal night,” Tomjanovich said. With a newly retired (again) Jordan around, Tomjanovich had the chance to speak frankly about a never-ending debate fueled by Jordan’s decision to retire following the conclusion of his first three-peat with the Chicago Bulls and dabble in baseball. That 17-month absence from the NBA provided the opening for the Rockets to win back-to-back championships in 1994 and 1995, and for Hakeem Olajuwon to emerge as the only one of Jordan’s contemporaries to leave the game with rings on his fingers. Unprompted, Tomjanovich said, Jordan offered some praise for what the Rockets accomplished. “He gave our team great respect,” Tomjanovich said. “He didn’t feel that they could contain Hakeem. They just didn’t have the personnel to do it. And he said he thought we were the team that gave them the most trouble.” Tomjanovich was familiar with the triple-post offense that the Bulls utilized toward building a dynasty, having played for the late Hall of Fame Coach Tex Winters in the Rockets’ first two seasons in Houston. He knew enough “not to get suckered on certain plays.” And in his first full season as Rockets head coach – which also happened to be the last before Jordan retired for the first time – Tomjanovich’s team swept the regular season series against the eventual champion Bulls. What would’ve happened in any hypothetical NBA Finals the next seasons with Jordan around is anyone’s guess. “It was a great rivalry. It was too bad that we didn’t get there when they got there,” Tomjanovich said. “We would have to go and play. We could all talk about it and stuff, but we’ll never know. It would’ve been a great series.” Without those titles, Tomjanovich is unlikely to get the call he received two Saturdays ago informing him that after a long, patience-testing delay, he was finally going to be inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame. Tomjanovich had previously been the only non-active coach with at least two championships who wasn’t already enshrined in Springfield, Mass. The other 10 – Phil Jackson, Red Auerbach, Pat Riley, John Kundla, Chuck Daly, Alex Hannum, Red Holzman and Tommy Heinsohn –already made it, with K.C. Jones and Bill Russell going in as players. Active coaches Gregg Popovich, Steve Kerr and Erik Spoelstra are all likely to follow whenever they’re done coaching. “I was very relieved. I had been through the phone calls several times and got the, ‘Sorry, not this year.’ And it was so good to hear them say, ‘Rudy you’re in,’ ” Tomjanovich said. “Still getting use to it. Still bouncing on a cloud. I feel really good about it.” Tomjanovich is more than the guy who coined the most legendary, post-title phrase after the Rockets beat the Orlando Magic in 1995 — “Don’t ever underestimate the heart of a champion!” He’s also more than the guy who had his career ruined by the most gruesome sucker punch in NBA history. Although he is reluctant to accept the credit, Tomjanovich is responsible for introducing the predecessor to the “pace-and-space” era that is prevalent today by turning small forward Robert Horry into a stretch power forward to complement Hakeem Olajuwon and give him room to operate. Tomjanovich admits that the innovation was created more out of developing a scheme to defend Barkley without double-teaming than some prescient vision. “We thought could give the other teams problems and when we moved Robert Horry,” Tomjanovich said. “Robert did a great job. He started his string of big shots against San Antonio. He made a big one at the buzzer there and he had a tremendous career. When you put a shooting big out there, whoa, they really have to rotate a long way. That’s basically what we saw there. And then, we really used it a lot after the championship runs with the guards, so that we could get penetration and we always looked for shooting. We didn’t have the computerized stuff at that time.” In his 13- year run as a head coach Rudy T learned many things, including the importance of video coordinators, a role he served in his early days as an assistant coach under Bill Fitch. Spoelstra and Mike Budenholzer have all used their experience in the video room to become successful head coaches, with former Tomjanovich video guy Jim Boylen taking a similar path toward coaching the Chicago Bulls. “I know the pitfalls of being in that job,” he said. “You feel separated. You’re locked in a room and you’re looking at video. I tried to bring coaches in and then rotate them, so that they don’t feel away from the team. I’d have two guys on the bench and the third guy doing the tape and then rotating another guy in. And I thought it was good for the mental health for the team, for our guys. That’s a tough, lonely job.”
