IIRC, Allegedly Patterson had Akeem on tape saying that if he didn't get a new contract, then his leg hurt. Akeem, I believe tried to file a grevience, but the Union would not stand up for him because of this. It was going to an ugly end, until that plane ride in the preseason to Japan, and we had a happy ending. Never give up, never surrender. DD
Yeah, that fake injury stuff was ugly as hell. We probably will never know the real truth. I think if Dream was traded then, his legacy with Rockets fans would have been VERY different even if he won with some other team.
If he was traded and won elsewhere, his legacy would have very much been like Moses Malone's. He would have been respected amongst Rockets Fans, but not worshipped like he is these days.
This is a period in Rocket history I am glad to forget--Steve Patterson mishandled relations with Hakeem Olajuwon - alienated our franchise player and put the owner in a very awkward position. Focus on the positive--i.e. In '92 - 93 we were the best in the NBA- likely would have won our first championship one year earlier had a David Robinson shot counted after the clock expired -causing us to lose HCA against Seattle- a series we dominated at home. By '93 Steve Patterson and Charlie Thomas were down the road and the Rockets succeeded without them. Are you a San Antonio fan? I get it - they are very good this early season. Go to a SA forum and bask in that success............
i wasn't too concerned with this back then mainly because i was pretty young and in awe of watching the dream team dominate their competiton. never seen such a collection of superstars that worked so well. anyway, i remember the '92 season and it wasn't a great one. only bright spot was thorpe making the all star team. chaney was fired with rudy being named interim head coach. hakeem missed a few games early in the season with an irregular heartbeat. got suspended later on for faking an injury. we'll never know the truth if hakeem did really have an injury according to his personal doctors or if he was faking it because he wanted a trade. i know steve patterson firmly believed hakeem was feigning the injury because they refused to renegotiate his contract. i remember he was almost traded to miami for rice and seikaly, to the clippers and even to the sonics for mckey, benjamin and mcmillan. i think hakeem was just tired of all the first-round exits we piled up. that, and he felt that the balance we had in our offense wasn't resulting in success so he wanted the offense to run through him. that's exactly what rudy t ended up doing. look what he says here, after dominating david robinson in game 5 in 1995: "When your teammates realize you're not in competition with them and that you are supposed to compliment one another you're capable of so much more," Olajuwon said. "I've been on teams where players want to compete with you for shots and are wondering why the ball doesn't go to them more. That's small-minded. "When you have a legitimate center, you have to center the offense there. People used to say I'm selfish. Now I take more shots, score more points and you don't hear that. It's a team game now." http://www.nydailynews.com/archives/sports/1995/06/01/1995-06-01_hakeem_shakin__up_the_admiral.html don chaney didn't realize this. he thought balance was the key to success. he gave the guards (mad max, sleepy floyd, wiggins) way too much of a free handle and had hakeem operating from the high-post at times. the amount of plays run for hakeem weren't comparable to what he had in the rudy t years. that's the main reason for houston's improvement in '92-93. mad max, smith, thorpe etc all had their shots minimzed, hakeem became the go-to-guy down the stretch and everything ran through him. it's why his assists, scoring and efficiency went up and we became a title contender. i've always maintained hakeem should've been '93 mvp and rudy t should've won coy.
Isn't Coach of the Year a curse? Byron Scott, even our own Don Chaney? Did Riley or Jackson ever win?
heh, i'm not one of the people who believe it's a curse. chaney wasn't a good coach at all but he did a good job adjusting to hakeem's eye injury in '91 and thus deserved coy for that particular year. scott was overrated. his team's records had more to do with the elite pgs they had (kidd, paul) than his coaching. i can't check right now but i know phil won coy in the 72-10 season and riley won at least two. one in miami's 60 win season in the late 90s and one with the knicks. he might've won with the lakers, not sure. rudy's contributions were definitely overlooked. we were the first team who emphasized the 3 pointer and had the whole "dump it to the post and kickout to shooters" strategy. i remember us setting a bunch of records from deep. doesn't happen without rudy. i know the strategy sounds simple now and plenty of teams use it but no team was built like this back then. we innovated and revolutionized that offense and i feel rudy never got the credit he deserved.
Rudy was great at motivating players and milking every drop of their talent. IIRC, he was the one who convinced Hakeem to trust his teammates and pass out to the open man from double team. Dream finally realized that passing actually gave him more good shots because the defense couldn't just zero in on him. The result was the extreme inside-out offense that we saw. And he milked Francis' iso game until they changed the illegal defense rule.
Malone didn't demand to be traded, let alone threatening with an "injury" if they didn't meet his demand. That's a world of difference. If Hakeem was traded after that ugly crisis, I think we would still be debating whether we should respect him or despise him. (And tinman would have been starting a lot more threads about this topic. :grin: )
No Clutch City the Rockets move to Louisville Clutch doesn't make this site and decides to join a small startup called GOOGLE this site will never exist none of us would ever be here
