Does Anybody Agree With Me Here???

2 tainted championships are better than what Barkley has.

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Yes, the Rockets were very good in those years, and I think they would have beaten the Bulls. Hakeem back then was perhaps as good as MJ and Clyde was as good as Pippen. We also had better role players, and also more desire. But, the most important fact is that Jordan DID play the second championship year. He was taken out by Shaq's Magic, who were later taken out by the Rockets.

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Remind your friend that during Hakeems absence, he led a bunch of overachieving role players to a magical championship run i '94 that included Chuck and his Phoenix Suns as one of his victims. While Hakeem was the lone star, Chuck was surrounded by a very good if not great player in K.Johnson.

Charles had an outstanding career and I totally respect his accomplishments during his career, but Hakeem was just a notch higher.

Azim da Dream

 

You'll never win that "asterisked" title argument, so don't even try. Just be silently satisfied that your favorite team and your favorite player won two consecutive titles and your friend's didn't.

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Also, remind your friend who Nick Anderson stole the ball from in the Eastern Conference Finals to secure the Magic trip to the NBA Finals, where they merely got SWEPT.

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I have a dream.........his name's Hakeem.

 

NO...the championships are not tainted. Its not the Rocket's fault that Jordan went to play baseball. Believe me, if a big market team had won some rings in those Jordan-less years you would never hear this argument. If the Knicks or the Lakers had won, this topic would never surface. Just be happy that your team has some rings.

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If the Rockets had drafted right...and made the right trades they could have had Jordan, Hakeem, and Drexler on the same team...the whole time...REALLY!! Then I woke up to reality.

 

lil pun

i've seen lots of threads on this subject here over the years, but there was one post that reassured me that the championships were not asterisked. according to the post, jordan acknowledges himself that the championships should not be asterisked. he acknowledges that hakeem was awesome, that his bulls were without a legitamate center, and that would have created serious problems.

remember this. the bulls championships came between the sonics once and the jazz twice. now the sonics main players were kemp and payton. jordan equalizes payton to an extent and pippen or their pf (i don't remember takes care of kemp), i honestly don't remember the matchups but anyway. but, in all honesty, if not for rodman, i don't think the bulls would have had a threepeat. rodman annoyed malone enough and jordan and pippen were able to overcome stockton in order to out do the jazz. take away rodman, and there's no way the bulls threepeat cause they can't control malone.

the bulls would never have stood up to the rockets because the rockets had hakeem and drexler, and the bulls centers sucked. our biggest problem was we didn't have a point, but the bulls point wasn't that great either. had we made it to the finals in 96 or 97 i say we would have won those. the jazz pestered us and they pestered the bulls too. if the bulls didn't have rodman and we had made it past the jazz, we would have 4 or 5 championships under our belts. barkley would have loved pounding rodman in the finals. and that would have left hakeem to light it up against the bulls weak centers while drexler and jordan had theirs.

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WHAM!-(noun) 1. the greatest 80s music band. 2. the way in which Dream puts the basketball in the basket after receiving a pass from Franchise who in return gets his umpteenth assist of the game.

 

In the vein of 'your mama':

Give it a few years, and you'll notice the asteriks shows up on MJ's years;

he never had to play against Walt Williams 3:16.

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for Jenna's next trick, she'll convince us all that Karl didn't threaten to leave the Jazz, or for that matter that he ever played with the Jazz

 

The Bulls had no answer for Hakeem. Dream would have poured on the offense and would have swatted shots into the seventh row. Hakeem was absolutely unstoppable. I think Dream in his prime was better than Jordan in his prime.

In '94 we had Mad Max, who would have been all over MJ, and in '95 Clyde would have been on Jordan. MJ may have been better over all than Maxwell and Drexler, they were good enough to keep him from going off for ridiculous numbers.

I think the only Bulls players we would have had to worry about were Pippen and Rodman. Pippen was good, but not that good. Elie could have handled him well enough. That leaves Dennis on the boards.

I honestly believe our Rockets would have beaten them both years. I say the Rockets would have won it in 6.

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I need a new signature.
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Guys honestly people outside of Rockets fans will look at it as tainted. Would the Rockets had won? Noone knows.
It's more of a perceptiont thing. Houston would have had a much stronger case if they would have totally dominated the regular season & post season those two years or if Houston would have made it to the finals to play the Bulls during one of the six years.

It was a wonderful 2 championships, but to the rest of the NBA it will be perceived as tainted.
As a side note I am a huge CB fan and it is definetely the 2 championships that puts Dream over CB. I love CB but I realize he will never be on MJs or Dreams level just because of their championships.

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The championships are not tainted, especially because Jordan was back when the Rockets won thier second title. I am a huge Charles fan and before Chuck went to Houston I always liked the Rockets, but Phoenix and Philly came first. It was really hard during the Suns vs. Rockets playoffs though. As for comparing Chuck and the Dream I think they are both some of the greatest down low players ever. Being the Chuck fan that I am I defend him in any situation. They both have incredible numbers and some edges over each so I'll just leave it at that. Charles is the greatest power forward of all-time and Hakeem is the greatest center of all-time.

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THE DEAN

[This message has been edited by DEANBCURTIS (edited April 12, 2000).]

 

Actually, the only people who can legitimately think of our championships as tainted are the Chicago Bulls themselves, and their fans. That is the issue that can never be resolved, because it's nothing more than a fantasy matchup.
As for the other 27 teams in the league, they have ZERO argument about any asterik. Else, why didn't they take advantage of Jordan's absense and win a championship of their own? The answer is, of course, that they couldn't. Because the Houston Rockets were the best team in the league both years. There were 28 teams who could have taken advantage of a Jordan-less title, and only one did.

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"There are three kinds of lies:
Lies, Damned Lies, and STATISTICS..."
- Mark Twain -

 

NO Rockets fan worth a damn would even entertain the thought that OUR 2 NBA Championships are tainted!!

Also, any basketball fan that claims the titles are tainted is obviously jealous because their team sucked so bad that they couldn't beat the lowly Rockets.

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The lottery sucks!

[This message has been edited by RocketsPimp (edited April 12, 2000).]

 

And also remember: The Rockets were the only team in the NBA to have a winning record against the bulls during the Jordan era. We always caused them serious problems, and quite honestly, its Jordan who should thank his lucky stars that he decided to leave the league those two seasons. Otherwise, he might not be considered as great as he is now.

Essentially, we were the to the Bulls what the Sonics were to us.

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"I would like to thank... everyone... for their contriboootions" Hakeem accepting his MVP award at the 1999-2000 NBA Finals.

 

> The Rockets were the only team in the NBA
> to have a winning record against the bulls
> during the Jordan era.

I don't know if we were the only ones, but in the games from 84-93 where both Jordan and Hakeem played, we were something like 12-5 against the Bulls.

As for asterisks, you could also say the Bulls' championships were all tainted. After all, when the Lakers and Celtics were playing each other, they were playing playoff-tested teams. When the Bulls played in the Finals, they beat a Lakers team without Magic or Byron Scott, and the Blazers, Suns, Sonics, and **** in their first trips to the Finals. The team with Finals experience usually wins against a team with no Finals experience. The same holds for the Super Bowl. So the Bulls had an easy ride because until 1998, they never had to play a team with Finals experience (the **** in their second trip).

Now no one in their right mind would buy this argument, any more than they would buy the argument that the Celtics' 86 championship was tainted because they played the Rockets instead of the Lakers. The best team won.

I'm sure if you searched hard enough, you could come up with compelling reasons why every championsip in every sport was "tainted" in some way. After all, the Bulls' 93 championship was tainted because the Rockets hadn't peaked yet, and their '96 championship was tainted because the defending champion Rockets were decimated by injuries (esp. to Cassell and Drexler) .....

 

Sorry for the **** in my previoous post. Replace **** with the only slightly off-color word that sounds a lot like "Jazz."

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That's just stupid. Will the 2000 championship be tainted because Hakeem and Barkley were injured? How about every championship after Magic and Bird retired? Did Jordon ever play Bill Russell in the playoffs?

The Rockets were the best team in the NBA for 2 years in the 90's. That's what a championship means. It doesn't mean you're the best team ever. It doesn't mean that a team couldn't be assembled of better players. Sure, IF Jordon was on the Bulls they might have won in 94 and 95. Just like, IF Jordon was on the Rockets they might have won in 96, 97, etc.

This isn't like an individual record from one era to the next, like the single season home run record, where one era played fewer games than another that actually affects the significance of the feat. Each team in 94 and 95 played by the same rules and the Rockets were better than all the rest.

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