I will always remember the Rockets being a few bounces away from winning both games in Oakland. The way the team laid down in game 3 made no sense to me. Plus in hindsight the turnover fest by Harden in game 5 should have been a sign that he was done being coached by McHale. It set the stage for what the 15-16 season eventually became.
1977 vs Philadelphia in the East; lost in 6 1981 vs Kansas City; won in 5 1986 vs LA Lakers; won in 5 1994 vs Utah; won in 5 1995 vs San Antonio; won in 6 1997 vs Utah; lost in 6 2015 vs Golden State; lost in 5 2018 vs Golden State; lost in 7
I am Brazilian and we are natural "rivals" of Argentina. But MAN, how I loved Argentinian BB players. Scola, Prigioni, Ginobili, Delfino, Nocioni... No wonder they beat the USA in 2004 Olympics. Take that!
Moses led that '77 team as well. and most folks here probably don't know that Rudy T played on both the '77 & '81 teams, although his role was diminished in '81.
This is a Rockets forum, even if they didn't see him play then I reckon most people here know Rudy T. was an all star player before coaching the team. But yes by '81 he unfortunately was on his last legs, career cut short by that incident in LA even though he came back to make the all star team one more time after.
I don't know why. To be able to sit on the bench, seemingly without pouting and while still happily cheering on his team at many points shows a lot of maturity... Not to mention that he then came back with a 31, 8, and 7 is pretty solid. Why is it a stain on his career that some of his teammates played OUT OF THEIR ******* MINDS, while the Clippers were utter garbage, for one quarter of basketball?
I don't think that team ever had a realistic shot of beating GS, unless we were fully healthy, especially with Warriors #refball. We were missing 40% of our starting lineup by playoff time, if you recall. Donuts (who was a bigger piece of our regular season success that year than Dwight) and Patbev were both out, leaving us with a geriatric point guard rotation, and a relatively 1-dimensional frontcourt. It's a testament to Harden and that team's heart that they put up as good of a fight as they did... outside of that abomination of a game 3. OK, and a rather mediocre game 5 (the turnovers tho).
Moses didn't really become Moses until Rudy went down in the next year. He was just acquired in training camp 1976-77 and he didn't become the #1 offensive option until Rudy went down after the punch. Moses started to do it in the playoffs but you have to remember Moses was just 21 when the Rockets traded for him and had really hadn't come into his own yet. They made the deal trading a #1 pick for him because the coach at the time Tom Nissalke had coached him in the ABA and thought he had the makings of a superstar big man.
