Here's the link to a story by Dick Stockton at fox sports regerding the predicted absence of the rockets from this years playoffs http://www.foxsports.com/columns/stories/bk1214fox_stockton1.sml
Also, he says that the '81 Rockets gave the Celtics no resistance. The Rockets had that series tied 2-2, shocking the pundits. Malone then made his famous "me and 4 guys from the Petersberg playgrounds" remark and the Celtics closed them out.
It's a bad article. One, the article never addresses the question of why the Rockets won't make a push for the playoff that was asked in the headline. Two, it has big holes in it's history of the Rockets, mentioning only '81, '86, '94, '95, and '99. His argument is that the Rockets show up to contend and disappear again very quickly, but he somehow doesn't mention '93 or '96 (in which the Rockets were very much contenders) because it would have shot his theory to hell.
