After the Damian Lillard shot, I had to find somewhere online to vent my frustration, anger, and depression. Clutch Fans was the perfect place.
Brother in law showed me this forum in the 90s. Found out the forum has sources from the Rockets organization and I could get scoops on trades before they were announced on TV. Made an account when Yao got drafted. Was really hopeful he'd be the next best center in the league and could hopefully help carry the Rockets to a chip.
It was 2001, I was trying to buy all of the clutchcity.com, .net, .cc names to sit on them and make millions. I failed ... but discovered clutchcity.net.
Man, I don't have a clue but I know it was before .com Hell I had no clue how to work a computer and when I did find this , I was always screwing up the computer. My wife about killed me, it took me a few years to join and then forever to post. I've been here almost everyday and all day some days. Hell this is a part of my life and I feel like I know some of you and others I wish I didn't know, hahahahaha.
Honestly don't remember. It was before '99. Back when we had "member #s," I was number 20, but I know there were more than 20 members when I signed up.
I was way too busy for message boards and whatnot before 2005 or so, but at that time I was living in Austin and there was very little Houston Sports news available so I started looking. I found a few boards that were pretty good, in particular one Astros board that was VERY quiet but everyone who posted there was top notch quality and that's what made me realize that there could be some value to sports message boards. Anyway, that worked for a while and I was more of a lurker on those early boards for a few years. During that time, I found other boards that were more active and moved on to them and on those boards is where I first heard of CF.....and it was 100% bad, and that kept me away for a few years. I think it was probably 2012 when I finally decided to see what everyone was talking sh*t about and my first impressions were pretty awful with the sheer volume of crazy hot takes flying around in the GARM, but not bad enough to where I never returned. About a year later I signed up for whatever reason and the rest is history.
I had frequent long shifts where I was struggling not to fall asleep, searched for Houston Rockets forum and found the potential to be entertained
Back in the early 2000s I used to frequent the ESPN message boards. The Rockets board was a cesspool littered with trolls, front-page glitchers, YOFs, and all-around degenerates. Few conversations were ever thoughtful or civil. However, there were a handful of decent posters including this one dude called "the_daddy" who was like the bossman laying the smackdown on all the little children running wild kind of like the public service @tinman and @Zboy perform by penning all the LOFs in one zoo. Anyway, the_daddy and I used to tag up on these fools and thus began a camaraderie. I think he was also member on this board and pointed me in this direction for die-hard Rockets discussions. I was a long time lurker here before I finally joined in 2006. Also, I believe membership was restricted prior to that point if I remember correctly. Anyway, are there any ESPN refugees here like me?
From USENET group, forget the group name, something like rec.sport.basketball.nba.rockets. Moderator (I think) was this guy named Anthony (last initial P., I believe). Back then, you came to this site (or rather, its predecessors) for news and articles, as the bbs was full of either folks who talked hard core basketball stuff (plays, strategies, rotations, etc., and not JCDenton style) and frankly were pretty intimidating, or just plain weirdos (fast forward 20 years...at least we still got the weirdos...), so there was really no impetus to register back then. Ultimately signed up because, IIRC, the pick or trade frenzy brought the bbs to its knees, and Clutch restricted access to only registered members (which I think also happened prior to that with, if memory serves, the Shandn Andersn signing). (Found an article in the course of refreshing my memory of the times: https://basketball.realgm.com/nba/news/wiretap/archive/2002/5)
For nostalgia purposes, I took a screenshot of clutchcity.net using https://web.archive.org/ This is the front page on April 5, 2001
I didnt find this site....this site found me. Rockets fan since 1983, right before the greatest of all time joined us.
Googled: "Houston Rockets Trade Rumors" at my first corporate job on a late night while I was alone at work bored... better than the alternative when you're at work alone and bored. This site came up and I joined shortly after.
I was a Rockets fan since I was a kid but I never had a way to discuss it other than some idiot friends who were obsessed with Kobe Bryant and AI. I always went to this OU forum soonerfans.com to talk about football. I figured there was something like it for the Rockets but didn't search very hard. I would just post on the dumpster fire ESPN boards. It wasn't until the 07-08 season until I found this site. I lurked for a few years until I created an account. It seems weird that I recognize most of the posters names but not that weird when I consider that I have been reading this forum 4-5 days a week for 10 freaking years.
I was commuting from Houston to Huntsville 2 days a week finishing up 2 classes before I could graduate. 1st class ended at 9:30 and the 2nd class didn't start until 2, so I hung out in the computer lab for 4 hours searching for Rockets info and found CF. This was probably around 1996 or so. I didn't discover the actual bbs until I started working at my current company in 2002. This was my first job that actually had internet access (LOL). When I was registering, I accidentally put my password (ima_drummer2k) into the username field, so that's how I came up with this silly moniker. By mistake. I remember perusing through the AOL chat groups like @FranchiseBlade . There was a user named MManual or something like that who used to mention CF all the time, but I didn't know how to get here....
Like anyone who walks upright would have sex with you. Major, fka shanna introduced me to it in the summer of 1998. I joined the BBS before he did though. He joined with the name shanna just to punk me in a thread. It worked.