Trying to remember what happened that year Did we just get totally outplayed or what happened to the team that year? Were there injuries? Etc
They were better and the plays the Rockets made to win games in the 2 title runs just weren't there.One of the games in Seattle they set a record for most threes made in a game and won by 4. The knockout game went to overtime. The Rockets just could never get over the hump and win against them that year.
Simple Les changed the uniforms from classic Red and yellow to Dildo and stripes We have never won since Les messed with the classic
here's how crazy that was. the year before, the rockets broke the playoff record of 13 3's in a game by making 19 against utah. absolutely shattered the record. fast forward to this 1996 matchup and the record for 3's is still 19 and 13 3's is still tied for 4th. in the game you're talking about, the rockets made 13 of 27 3's, i.e. what would have tied the record just a year ago except for our own record-shattering performance. seattle made 20, beating the record we had shattered. how many attempts did they have. 27! the same as us. i believe they were 8 for 8 in the 3rd quarter. their bench went 12-14. no other team would make 13 3's in a game the rest of the playoffs. the 33 combined 3's in a playoff game would be a record that stood for a long, long time. i think it made it into the mid-2010's. i wanna say it was even the record when including regular season games for quite a while, but maybe i have that wrong. edit: if i looked it up correctly, it looks like the teams that broke it were golden state and....houston in 2015 with 20 for gsw and 17 for houston (except we won this time). it seems like 37 has been tied a couple of other times.
Yeah they shot crazy from 3. Team was probably burnt out a little. Horry wasn’t gonna be able to handle reign man or Sam Perkins who was sneaky good in the post on cross matches. They played illegal defense on nearly every play and dared the refs to call it. They knew Dream wasn’t gonna be guarded traditionally.
Injuries decimated that team. Clyde, Mario, and Sam all missed over half the season and barely made it back for the playoffs. Sam Mack was a starter for over half of the f’n season. Even then when all was lost and we were being swept the crew staged one of the most amazing comebacks ever. We were down huge in the 4th and Big Shot Bob and Sam started to go nuts from three and brought us all the way back from down 20. Sam hits a three with less than 4 seconds remaining to send the game into OT. What happens next is we gut the team and send Bob and Sam to Phoenix for Charles Broccoli. The saddest part of all of this is that even Rockets fans forget how many injuries we played through and just thought that we were through. That same team had they been healthy would have beaten any other team in the league and would have had a great chance of beating Seattle. Instead we trade our heart and soul, force Clyde into retirement, and essentially put Dream into an awkward situation of trying to peacefully keep Clyde and Broccoli from killing each other and also trying to allow Chuck left block touches(Dreams favorite spot as well).
The Rockets could never solve the Sonic's defense, either. Gary Payton and Nate McMillan ate the Rockets alive.
We sucked against them and Karl's illegal zone D. Open secret is that we lucked out in 94 when Seattle got bounced by Mutumbo and #8 Denver.
True. The Sonics lost in the first round in both 94 and 95. If you’re gonna put an asterisk on the Rockets titles, it should be for that, not Michael Jordan.
A lot of people resent that trade for Charles, but after having gotten SMOKED by Seattle in 1996, we beat them in the playoffs the very next year with Charles. The post-Horry/Cassell team with Charles, Dream, and Clyde was in the WCF and was an illegal screen from Malone away from possibly playing against the Bulls in the Finals. The trade was not a total eff up as many try to make it out to be.
It was the match up. They just had our number, like we had the Jazz and we had the Bulls. That's why it is always so silly to say we would've lost to the Bulls. We were a bad match up for them.
Seattle's zone-defense-before-zone-defense-was-legal was Rockets Kryptonite. Rockets couldn't get the ball up court, and when they did, they'd turn it over. If you've ever seen a college team destroyed to the point everybody has a 1000 yard stare by an opponent with a really tough full court press, where you expect every trip up court to be a turnover, you know how frustrating that series was. The effort was supreme, and they fought to the end but Seattle b****slapped them. Barkley used to carve them up with the Suns so the debacle with the Sonics was serious motivation behind the Barkley trade, so that series had repercussions for the next half decade.
Right now basketball is at the same place that wwf wrestling is at after Owen hart passed. They can cancel the season and I can watch highlights and replays of 90s.
SAM MACK reference. Damn. He could HOOP. Mario Elie's career was about to hit ANOTHER LEVEL before he shattered his wrist. He was on his way from role player to big time difference maker. The west was paper/rock/scissors back then and Sonics were our kryptonite. Lots of important reasons have already been listed, but, REBOUNDING was (and will ALWAYS be) critical. When you have skinny Horry starting at the 4, you're not going to be a great rebounding team. The Sonics and Bulls were the best rebounding teams and met in the finals. Rebounding is the same reason THIS YEAR'S post-Capela Rockets are a let down. Sure Covington is a great player, but.... No rebounding. You can play small - no biggie. But you can't NOT rebound. Unless you have super team mega-talent.
We should have had crazy Jay Will on our team. Mad max ruined that for us. Still love Max but man.... also wonder if he had a better attitude and we had kept him if he would have helped us play some small ball against the sonics. I hate the fact that we gutted our future for Charles Barkley. To this day I wonder what could we have possibly accomplished if we had gone the Spurs route. Kenny Smith would retire and Sam would have taken the reigns and started and become more of a focal point in the offense like Parker. Dream would get the Duncan/Robinson treatment. Drexler might have retired and we could have seen what big name free agent would have jumped at the opportunity to win a ring with our core and system. Les was spineless and greedy and ruined something wonderful and full of chemistry. I envy how the Spurs and Pop run that organization. They do it right and that's why they have the rings that they have. You don't **** with a core that gave the city and organization everything. Dream Cassel and Horry Kenny and Elie were the heart and soul of the franchise. We had some injuries to the team that year and Les just panicked and saw dollar signs with Chuck's name.
The tank was empty, all those grueling 7 game series caught up with them. Also Kemp and GP were unarguable in that series. Following year, we got a motivated Barkley and we beat the sonics. Team was grittier that year.
