Murphy's latest

Taylor marks second-straight quality acquisition
AUGUST 31, 2000 Print it

The Rockets are taking it easy these days. Rudy Tomjanovich is in Hawaii, putting the Dream Team through its paces. The rest of the staff is kicking back, waiting for training camp to open.

And they all have silly smiles on their faces.

For the second straight year, the Rockets nabbed a pretty good free agent at a bargain-basement price. Last year it was Shandon Anderson who took the exception to sign with the Rockets.

This year it was former Clipper (aren't they all former Clippers eventually?) Maurice Taylor who jumped ship for a safe (and sane) harbor in Houston. Not a bad haul for the Rockets, who could probably comb through a flea market and find a Matisse.

For his part, Taylor is ecstatic to be with a real team for a change.

"Just being in the atmosphere of a team that wants to win a championship, it gave me chills," Taylor said. "Looking at the pictures, hearing C.D. (Rockets' executive vice president of basketball Carroll Dawson) talking about the parades, about the rings, I had chills going down my spine.

"It proved to me I do belong here. You look a team that's been to the mountaintop like the Houston Rockets, I'm going to put pressure on myself to be the best possible player that I can be. With the pieces they already have in place and myself, we can do some amazing things next season."

This guy must be new. It's going to take a lot more for the Rockets to compete in the West, but at least they now have some offensive firepower to complement the guards. And it turns out the guards had a great deal to do with bringing Taylor to town.

Seems Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley did more than their part in the recruiting the 6-9 power forward.

"I told him," said Francis, who did more recruiting than the Marines when you consider his work to keep Mobley in town, 'we've got years together. We have an opportunity to be good immediately. We were missing a physical forward, and you can be it. We haven't proven anything in the NBA yet. We're all young. We all have potential. A lot can happen.'"

Mobley knew that teams were going to be keying in Francis and him, which is why he worked so hard to help land a guy with Taylor's scoring punch.

"We talked to him, not just in Houston, but in D.C., wherever Steve and myself were," he said. "We need Mo. He knows it. And now that we have him, we're a more explosive team. Mo averaged 17 on a team that wasn't a good team. The way we run, play `D,' get steals -- the way we're young, he's going to be even better"

Young? The addition of Taylor, 23, completes one of the most remarkable roster turnarounds in recent memory. Just look back to 1998, when the Rockets roster had more fossils than Olduvai Gorge in Olajuwon, Clyde Drexler, Charles Barkley, Eddie Johnson, Mario Elie, Kevin Willis and Charles Jones.

The team practically needed Louis Leakey as the team doctor. Since then, though, the Rockets have made an almost complete roster turnover with players like Francis, Mobley, Taylor, Kenny Thomas, Bryce Drew, Kelvin Cato, Shandon Anderson and Jason Collier.

PLAYER ANALYSIS

If there's one thing the Rockets are going to have to do, it's learn to play with a power forward who has legitimate size. They've been going with relative midgets like Charles Barkley and Kenny Thomas for so long that they probably won't know what to do with a 6-9, 260-pound power forward.

The last time they had a big, dependable power forward (other than Mark Bryant's demitasse before being shipped out as part of the Barkley trade) was back when Otis Thorpe helped the Rockets to the 1994 NBA title. Since then, however, it's been mostly "room for runt" in the locker room when it comes to the power forward spot.

Taylor seems to think he'll have no problem fitting in with the Rockets, who are in dire need of some inside scoring.

"If you watched Houston's team, they needed another presence in the post to score some baskets, get some rebounds, help the guys on the perimeter," said Taylor, neglecting to mention the fact that he spent much of his time with the Clippers launching 20-foot jumpers.

"With Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley and myself, we can do a lot of things that the Houston Rockets are used to doing, such as making it to the playoffs, playing well, and the ultimate goal -- winning the championship."

Carroll Dawson said he became obsessed with adding Taylor's versatile game to the lineup "because he fits our team so well."

"He can play out on the floor, with his back to the bucket, he's got range and he can put it on the floor," Dawson said. "He makes your mouth water when you watch film of him. The more film we watched, the more we got to want him."

Tomjanovich agreed.

"I think we have a real gem of a player in Mo Taylor, a potential superstar and a great kid," he said. "Larry (Smith, Rockets assistant coach) and I went up to see him and had a great three-hour talk, and we left that meeting convinced he was right for us and we were right for him."

WHAT'S NEXT

There's a light at the end of the arena tunnel.

At last.

The Rockets have finally agreed to participate in a fall election on the downtown arena, clearing the way for the Harris County-Houston Sports Authority to call a Nov. 7 referendum on the issue.

The Rockets had been hesitating to do so, trying to gauge whether organized opposition, which is largely credited with killing last year's deal, would again surface to shoot down the modified deal.

"The Rockets and Comets want to be in Houston," said George Postolos, the Rockets' chief operating officer. "We've worked with the public's representatives to fashion an agreement that's reasonable and fair. Now we're asking the voters to approve it."

Hallelujah.




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