that is just absurd. outside of mchale, just the first half might literally be the 10 best post/face-up moves in almost any other big man's career. and i'm including any of the all-time great big men.
I really think our supporting cast was undervalued. Its crazy how fast Kenny/Max/Sam were getting out in transition and then if teams stopped the break we had the most versatile post scorer in league history to kill teams inside.
i don't know when i really noticed it, but i was watching an orlando finals game when i had the same observation. you don't think of us as a running team, but damn, when we had a chance we went hard at fastbreaks and were very good at executing them. the guy with the ball always seemed to make the correct shoot/pass decision and the trailers always seemed to know where to be. any long rebound or loose ball just turns into an all out sprint. the synergy of all our moving parts that rudy built was incredible. you don't just roll out of bed and coach a 41-41 team into a title winner 2 years later just because you have hakeem olajuwon.
I remember reading an article and it was talked about how we were the fastest team end to end in the league in those days, but you never thought of us as that type of team because of Hakeem.
obviously everyone knows we took a lot of 3's, but without the nba playing they've been showing a ton of hardwood classics and i've been watching a bunch of rockets championship highlights and seeing it all at once, you realize just how revolutionary our play style was. no one else was doing this. it's like watching the first year steph started consistently shooting 30 footers. it took almost a whole year before people went "oh, i guess he just does that now". you can see those 90's teams clearly are not used to a team that just launched 3's off of post-up kickouts, pick and rolls, off of offensive rebounds, or a team that would shoot even if a defender was sort of nearby and it wasn't a great look (horry really did this). in that whole highlight you basically don't see portland shoot a 3. but we've got 5 people ready to launch at all times. you can tell how much it stands out because in pretty much every telecast the announcers are constantly talking about how we will just keep shooting 3's and how you have to guard us out there. even well into the 2000's you can watch playoff matchups where they don't take 3's like we did in the mid-90's.
Back then teams would let you shoot those 3's because its such a low percentage shot, but I guess the volume or we were making enough for teams to see you better start defending out there are you are getting blown out. I heard on the Jazz highlights they said Utah was the worst defending the 3 in 94 and 95 and it costs them both years.
i think it was game 2 in '95 where we hit 19 3's against utah. the playoff record before that was like 12 or 13. i don't think they knew what hit them.
I think so and we had lost game 1 by 1 or 2 on a Stockton drive down the lane that Hakeem almost blocked. I think we scored like 140 in game 2 and it was over before the 4th quarter started.
Also underrated was our barely beating the Danny Manning Clippers in 93. We struggled, but escaped, and think that opened doors for us that had been closed off for a long time. They needed to know they could win a series.
That Clippers team had talent and Larry Brown was the coach then so we didn't beat some scrub team. Danny Manning Mark Jackson Ron Harper Loy Vaught Stanley Roberts Gary Grant Ken Norman Of course in Clippers fashion they didn't keep them together and it imploded.
Of note, re-watched that series, and Winston Garland was our starting SG in that series. Winston Garland.
Max had missed like 6 weeks with a broken wrist and I don't think Rudy put him back in the starting lineup until game 3 and he was still not 100%
