Some motivation for this time, a look at Rockets recent past

Everyone is feeling down, so how about a pick me up?

For those of us who didn't start following the Rockets until after their championships, the Rockets Lakers series was literally the best time we would have as fans. Sure, we had some great moments with T Mac (13 in 33, dunk on Bradley vs Dallas, 22 game win streak) but these were either meaningless regular season contests or what amounted to eventually inconsequential playoff results. The streak was historic, but we lost in the first round anyway. The 13 points had no effect on anything. The dunk gave us the most hope of anything we've seen until that point, going up 2-0 vs the Mavericks, but subsequent referee/rule changes killed any chance we had at going forward. Besides that, we never got out of the first round of the playoffs.

The Lakers series was a different story. I think every true Rockets fan KNEW that the Rockets were the 2nd best team in the West, and by extension, the 2nd best team in the league. The West had some teams that could provide us matchup problems, but not any that we had a chance to face. Denver (the only other team that we would have played after the Lakers) was very beatable. The East was not an issue whatsoever: Yao dominated Dwight. The Cavs and Lebron could not beat us. The Celtics had a good chance to beat us, but that year they did not make it to the finals and our path to the championship would be complete, provided we could get past one team: The Lakers.

In the first round we faced Portland. The garden variety fan saw this as a tough matchup, and would of course err on the side of the higher seed. However, the rockets fans knew that we were 2-1 against the Trailblazers throughout the season, and the 1 loss was on a Brandon Roy miracle shot at Portland. The result was lopsided. After a great playoff victory against the talented Trailblazers (with what we thought would be a career defining perfect performance by Yao in Game 1), we knew we had a chance. The Lakers were next, and if we could beat them, the championship would be ours. For the standard NBA fan, the one who watches some fun teams and listens to ESPN and sees some highlights once in awhile, this would not even be a series. But to the Rockets fan, they knew this was the real NBA Finals and that it would go 7. In fact I didn't have any doubt in my mind that it would go 7 (until Yao went down, at least). Vegas apparently had the garden NBA fan variety as bookies, and had insane odds on the Lakers winning Game 1. Anyone who didn't take those odds was an idiot. Sure, the Lakers led the season series against the Rockets, however ALL of those games were close and affected by various injuries (Artest was missing from one at least).

The games progressed as we all remember. Game 1 was a great win on the road, and all of a sudden Phil Jackson's infamous 100% record of winning all series that he wins Game 1 in was gone. Game 2 was very tough, and Artest was unfairly ejected. Kobe played the dirtiest I've ever seen. Refs blew several obvious calls, Landry's goaltending in particular. Game 2 was very winnable if certain calls went our way. Game 3 the Lakers took it to us and beat us at home. We know we trounced them in Game 4 after losing Yao, giving us hope we could still win. Game 5 seems out of reach if you look at the box score, but if you watch the first quarter it was very tight and the refs made some of the worst calls in history on Scola and Hayes. In fact, one call on Chuck Hayes was so terrible it is still the worst call I've ever seen in any sort of pro basketball game, and that's saying something. All of a sudden our bigs were in such terrible foul trouble that COOK was in the game. Game 5 could have been very different had we not gotten into early foul trouble. We know what happened in Game 6, punctuated by Landry's running dunk off a Hayes pass. That moment gave not just Rockets fan excitement and hope, but Lakers haters everywhere. At that moment, EVERYONE was a Houston Rocket outside of Los Angeles. Game 7 of course I hoped, wanted, expected it to be close and maybe just maybe we'd be able to pull out a victory. It didn't happen of course, the Lakers were more talented throughout the entire series. However, this still stands as the most recent Rockets fans shining moment, especially for those who were not able to personally witness the championships.

This video series I began watching on youtube awhile ago, it's really fun to watch and the creator made it really dramatic. Sometimes its overly dramatic, but at the very least it stirs up some emotions. Even his non-rockets videos are entertaining (he focuses on the Kings), but today we'll look at the two he made about the Rockets-Lakers series. Watching the games live I had more of a gut feeling that Game 2 was going to be a loss anyway, even though the creator said it was stolen by the refs. He also says Game 5 was stolen but not as much so, and I remember my gut during Game 5 was that we could've won until we got in such terrible foul trouble early on. Anyway, these videos get me pumped up to watch the Rockets, its the ultimate Rockets basketball and its what characterizes ALL Rockets teams of this modern era: Grit, hard work, toughness, teamwork. Despite the overly dramatic flair of these videos it does at least showcase that and stir some good emotions. I hope you enjoyed them like I did. Also, if you have any other thoughts on that series I'd be glad to hear them and discuss, or if I made any factual errors (besides the ref speculation).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ugEXkndvw0M

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXK0vC5rgi8