[official Rocket Hero] Kenny Smith Appreciation Thread/Education

you have nothing on me man as a Rockets fan. Nothing.

I've met the Rockets. Gone to the games. Gone to the games with the Rowdies in San Antonio. Gone to a Rockets party at Clutch's house (the Bear). I met and THANKED the Rocket Legends like Otis Thorpe for what they did.

don't even front, you won't even outlast me on this thread. cause you can't:

1. actually put any FACTS showing that Kenny hates the Rockets
2. disprove that Kenny was an important part of the Rockets past

as long as you can't do 1 or 2. you just simply add to the popularity of this thread and someone will read some of the old recaps and feel great nostalgia about the great teams of the past. Thanks. Keep replying.

 

Magic is a co-owner of the Lakers.
Walton talks about every team like that. "Robert Horry the greatest playoff player "..

HAVE SOME

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/bk/bkn/4208817.html

Former Rockets guard Kenny Smith said the team has the "right pieces." He likes the offseason additions but says success will depend on a rebuilt team's ability to believe in its style and each other.

 

Let's see, nothing more important in NBA Television history
than Kenny telling Charles that Yao is a good player
HAVE SOME MORE

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/special/yao/1667560.html

"Charles went bananas over that," Smith said. "I wasn't knocking Steve (Francis) or Cuttino (Mobley), but I was saying that if the Rockets are going to win and get back in the playoffs, it's the big guy that's going to make it happen."

Smith researched the first few career games of Timberwolves center Kevin Garnett, who entered the NBA out of high school, and found that Garnett had similar numbers to Yao's over the first 15 games of their careers.

"One thing jumped out at me, and that was the fact that Garnett had a 19-point game in that span," Smith said. "I said that Yao will have a 20-point game and bump his numbers up, and Charles said that if Yao Ming scores 19 points, he would kiss my (behind)."

Despite the frightening picture Barkley's payment plan will present to little children and sensitive viewers, Smith is resolute.

"America," he said, "is ready for this."

 

Fran trusting Jet's logic and ANALYSIS (not homerism).

http://blogs.chron.com/franblinebury/2007/04/riding_on_the_jets_plane.html
April 30, 2007
Riding on the Jet's plane.

Frankly, I'm more on Kenny Smith's side of the debate here. The Rockets are not ever going to just outexecute the Jazz consistently. They'd be better off trying to constantly push the ball and run Utah. When the Jazz work their half-court offense, they get layups and 6-footers. When the Rockets work theirs, more often than not, they get a 20-footer or longer.

Sorry, Chuck. Kenny's right.

Posted by Fran Blinebury at April 30, 2007 08:08 PM

 

I already had the Clutchfans appreciation thread.

The Rockets had to win, winning 2 championships was a factor in the team staying here. My point is if we didn't win a thing, the odds would be significantly worse. and the team that put clutch city on the map had Kenny Smith on it .

 

This is just the first quarter, Tinman 30 pts Haters 0 pts

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/sports/barron/4581116.html
TNT analyst and former Rockets guard Kenny Smith weighs in via e-mail on Clyde Drexler entering ABC's Dancing with the Stars: "I think Clyde will win. He is 'Clutch City.' Oh, and I do think he is the sixth seed again!" ...

 

http://www.nba.com/history/olajuwon_021109.html
Ceremony signifies end of Olajuwon's career
Rockets Honor Their Dream Player

HOUSTON, Nov. 9, 2002 (Ticker) -- In an emotional halftime ceremony, the Houston Rockets retired the uniform No. 34 of Hakeem "The Dream" Olajuwon, the greatest player in franchise history.

Surrounded by team executives, former teammates and long-time coach Rudy Tomjanovich, Olajuwon was honored with songs and video tributes. Always professional in his approach to the game, Olajuwon could not contain his emotions and fought back some tears.

"Retirement is supposed to be fun, after working all these years," said Olajuwon, who turns 40 in January. "I'd like to correct some perceptions that when you retire, it's a negative. We are so blessed to retire so young."

Olajuwon received replica banners of the 1994 and 1995 NBA championships won by the Rockets and a platinum watch from general manager Carroll Dawson. Olajuwon was introduced by owner Les Alexander, who said there will be a statue of the All-Star center outside the new basketball arena being built in downtown Houston.

"Dream has been as important to this city as anybody who ever lived," Alexander said. "Nobody ever did better. We can't give him enough, because he's given us more than we can ever give him."

Olajuwon spoke fondly of his relationship with Tomjanovich, who rode his center's greatness to consecutive titles in the mid-1990s.

"He has been a big supporter, a big brother to me," Olajuwon said. "He has taught me a lot. It was so nice to play for a coach who builds his offense around you for so many years. We had a great time."

"I'm the most grateful guy in the whole building (for) what you did for me," said Tomjanovich. "Every success I had in coaching I owe to you. We can't come close to giving you what you've given us."

Olajuwon became the fifth member of the Rockets to have his number retired, joining Tomjanovich (45), Moses Malone (24), Calvin Murphy (23) and Clyde Drexler (22). Murphy and Drexler also were on hand.

Murphy, a Rockets broadcaster, introduced Olajuwon to the crowd before the team's 111-104 win over Golden State.

Drexler teamed with Olajuwon at the University of Houston and with the Rockets, helping the club win the 1995 title.

"How many times have you seen Hakeem appear out of nowhere to save an easy basket?" Drexler said. "That's an intangible quality. He never gives up on any play. I've been honored to know him as a person and a friend."

The halftime ceremony began with a video tribute set to the duet "Unforgettable" by Nat King Cole and Natalie Cole. It ended with the banner being hoisted to Tina Turner's "Simply The Best."

Also on hand were Guy Lewis, Olajuwon's coach at the University of Houston, and former Rockets teammate Kenny Smith, now an analyst on TNT.

The fantastic ceremony probably came one year too late. After 17 years with the Rockets, Olajuwon left for Toronto after the 2000-01 season.

After spending an injury-plagued season with the Raptors, Olajuwon did not report for training camp this season due to chronic back pain. Last month, he announced he would retire.

He led the University of Houston to three Final Fours and was the best NBA center of his era, outplaying contemporaries Patrick Ewing and David Robinson on the sport's biggest stages.

One of the first truly great international players, Olajuwon is one of just eight with 20,000 points and 12,000 rebounds. The native of Nigeria is the NBA's all-time leader with 3,830 blocked shots.

"You look at film, you see a lot of guys getting beat, but who was there to save the day? Dream," Drexler said. "If you had Hakeem on your side, you had half the battle won."

Although his skills had dropped off in recent years, no one ever doubted Olajuwon's heart, even after he was diagnosed with arrhythmia in 1991.

"Whatever it took, he was there," Dawson said. "Hard worker. Tireless energy. We had to pull him off the court."

In the 1993-94 season, he was voted NBA Defensive Player of the Year and Most Valuable Player as he led the Rockets to their first title.

In the NBA Finals, Olajuwon outplayed Ewing, who had gotten the better of him at the college level. Olajuwon blocked a shot by John Starks to save Game 6, then led Houston to victory in Game 7 and was named Finals MVP.

The following season, Olajuwon led the Rockets to an improbable second title. As the sixth seed in the Western Conference, Houston knocked off the top three seeds in the West before sweeping top-seeded Orlando in the Finals.

In the conference finals, Olajuwon thoroughly outplayed Robinson, who had been named NBA MVP during the series. In the Finals, Olajuwon outdueled the massive Shaquille O'Neal, who still holds Olajuwon in extremely high regard.

The top overall pick in the 1984 draft, Olajuwon is a 12-time All-Star and five-time All-Defensive Team selection who also won Defensive Player of the Year honors following the 1992-93 season. He teamed with Ralph Sampson to lead the Rockets to the 1986 NBA Finals, where they lost to Boston in six games.

On March 29, 1990, Olajuwon recorded one of just four quadruple-doubles in NBA history, collecting 18 points, 16 rebounds, 11 blocks and 10 assists against Milwaukee.


"DONT EVER DISS ANY CLUTCH CITY HEROES OR DREAM WILL DUNK ON YOU!"

 

Paper: Houston Chronicle
Date: SUN 06/13/2004


BELIEVE IT: 10 YEARS LATER / 'The times of our lives' / For the players and coaches who delivered it, the Rockets' first championship in 1994 remains something to celebrate

By FRAN BLINEBURY
Staff

Ten years and half a world separate him from the time and place. But Hakeem Olajuwon, currently a language studies student at the University of Jordan, can simply close his eyes and go back.

It is June 22, 1994, and the late-night scene at The Summit is so hot, so loud, so joyous and so completely out of control that it feels like a string of firecrackers has exploded inside your head.

There are winners running up and down the court with a glee they barely know how to express. There are losers, heads down, trying to walk through the mob to reach their locker room. There are fans kissing, strangers hugging and an entire city vibrating like one giant tuning fork. There is confetti falling and We Are the Champions blaring from the loudspeaker. Yet one man - the one who more than any other made it happen - might as well be tucked inside a cocoon.

All around him is a palette of color and unbridled emotion. Olajuwon, with the game ball in his arms, is standing serenely to one side of the court, taking it all in. It is intentional, purposeful, like so much of the way he goes about his craft, to burn that picture in his mind's eye, to be called up at will in the future, filling him with the warmth of memory.

``That mental picture is still fresh,'' Olajuwon said recently in an e-mail from his home in Amman, Jordan. ``When I talk about my career, the memory of that game comes back. I'll never forget the sound of the buzzer at the end of the game - that's when you knew you could finally exhale."

A decade has passed since the night the Rockets defeated the New York Knicks 90-84 in Game 7 of the NBA Finals to win the first major sports championship in Houston history. So much has changed about the nation's fourth-largest city in 10 tumultuous years - from Enron to Tropical Storm Allison to the advent of light rail - yet perhaps nothing has altered the way Houston looked at itself more than the exploits of one professional basketball team, led by a transplanted "lifer" from Hamtramck, Mich., in head coach Rudy Tomjanovich and an adopted son from Lagos, Nigeria, in Olajuwon.

A city enraptured

Gone by the time the final horn sounded were all of those painful Houston sports memories. No more nightmares in Buffalo. No more ninth-inning collapses at the Astrodome.

"This city has been so good to me and my family through the years that it was so gratifying to deliver," Tomjanovich said.

"Any championship is special," Mario Elie said. "But when you're the first, that's a very special place. Nobody can ever move us out of there. We raised the bar and the way Houston thinks of itself. It's not about possibilities anymore. After us, everybody knows it can happen.

"To this day, I go out to eat or just about anywhere on the streets, and people will come up and start talking to me about those days. It will always live with me and live with this city."

Kenny Smith, the Rockets' starting point guard that season, recalls the craziness that enveloped the city the night of the clincher.

"An hour or so after we won Game 7, I got in my car and was ready to drive home like normal," Smith said. "But I turned out of the tunnel, and the traffic was stopped on 59, and it was just one big, happy party. I think we changed everything."

"Ah, man," said Sam Cassell, then a nervy rookie out of Florida State and now a 33-year-old veteran with the Minnesota Timberwolves, "you're talkin' about the times of our lives. Do I think about them? Only every day when I'm back home in Houston in the summer."

It was an amazing season that began with a searing 15-0 start that broke the NBA record and served notice that the Rockets were a real contender.

It was a gritty, testing playoff run that saw the Rockets turn the humiliation of their "Choke City" experience - blowing a 20-point fourth-quarter lead at home to fall behind 2-0 against Phoenix - into a rallying point and a battle cry that never would let them quit. Clutch City.

It was a regal, dominating, almost incomparable season by Olajuwon that had him sweeping the regular-season Most Valuable Player award, the Defensive Player of the Year award and then MVP of the Finals.

And it was an intense, grueling, debilitating victory over Patrick Ewing and the Knicks that fittingly went the full seven excruciating games, the last time the league championship has been decided at the limit.

Sour taste in '93

For all the Rockets accomplished that year, it was a championship born out of the frustration of failure from the previous season. The Rockets had followed up a seven-game losing streak at midseason by going 41-11. Then in the spring of 1993 they finished one game behind Seattle in the overall standings.

That one-game difference meant Seattle held home-court advantage in the best-of-seven second round. The home team won every game of the series, and the Rockets lost Game 7 103-100.

"That was a bad experience," said Robert Horry, who would win five NBA titles with the Rockets and Lakers and is now a member of the San Antonio Spurs. "But it made us who we were the next year."

"Everything grew out of the disappointment of losing to Seattle the year before," said Rockets general manager Carroll Dawson, who was then an assistant coach. "It hammered home to everybody that the regular season, the home court was important."

The game that took their record to 15-0 came Dec. 2 in New York and maybe was an omen. The Knicks had talked loudly leading up to the game that the Rockets would not break the record in "our house." But the Rockets thumped the Knicks from the start and won 94-85. Nobody knew it then, but that victory allowed the Rockets to eventually finish with one more win than the Knicks (56-55) and ultimately put Games 6 and 7 of the NBA Finals in Houston rather than New York.

"All the difference in the world," Olajuwon said.

How time flies

They are, of course, all a decade older now, every one of them gone from the Rockets except Dawson, who has moved into the front office, and Rudy T, now in the role of a consultant. Only Cassell and Horry are playing in the NBA. Carl Herrera is pursuing a basketball career in his native Venezuela. Vernon Maxwell is in jail.

"Ten years? Are you kidding me? I hadn't even thought about that," said Smith, now a national analyst on TNT who seems to have every other number and stat on total recall. "In my mind, it only seems like four or five."

"I don't think about it in one specific way or in terms of one specific play," said power forward Otis Thorpe, who is retired and living in Round Rock. "It means that these days I can sit down in front of a TV and watch the championship games in all sports with an extra sense of appreciation. I can say, `I achieved that. I know what it takes to get that done.' "

Olajuwon had reached the NBA Finals in his second pro season in 1986, when the Rockets lost to the Boston Celtics. It took him eight more years to get another chance.

"Success doesn't come easy in anything you do," he said. "You always have to overcome obstacles and challenges, and that is what gives you the taste of satisfaction when you finally do succeed. That's what winning a championship is all about - life lessons."

Test of character

Choke City was the label they had to overcome. Actually, it was the headline on the sports section of the Chronicle the day after the Game 2 catastrophe against Phoenix.

"Nothing that ever took place, the first championship and especially the second, wouldn't have happened without `Choke City,' " Tomjanovich said. "It became the last thing that made us a team. It drove us."

"Oh yeah, we needed it," Elie said. "It tested our character. It actually propelled us."

So they climbed back to beat Charles Barkley and the Suns in seven games. They dusted off Utah in five games to win the West. Then it was the Knicks in the NBA Finals.

New York was a brutish, defensive-minded team molded by coach Pat Riley after his move from the Lakers and the TV booth. For Olajuwon, it was a rematch with college rival Ewing, who had led Georgetown past Houston in the 1984 NCAA championship game.

"From a big man point of view, there was special satisfaction in beating New York, because they had a legitimate big man," Olajuwon said.

"It was Madison Square Garden, the mecca of basketball, and that just added a different level of accomplishment," Horry said. "If you're going to announce to the world that you've arrived, you do it in New York."

It was the series many believe gave the NBA a changed face that exists today. The Rockets cracked 90 points only twice during the series.

"I remember watching Kenny trying to bring the ball upcourt against Derek Harper," Matt Bullard said. "He was literally getting beat up."

"It was New York, my hometown," Smith said. "It was so intense, I could hardly breathe."

Assist from Rangers

The teams split the first two games in Houston and arrived in New York with the Rockets back on their heels.

"One of the things that has been overlooked through the years is that while we were in New York to play the Knicks, the Rangers won the Stanley Cup," Dawson said. "Our players got to see firsthand how a city could just go crazy. They watched the parade. It was like an assist from New York. I think it helped our guys want it more."

It began to look like a return trip to "Choke City" when the Rockets blew a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter of Game 3. But with the Knicks holding a two-point lead and Ewing, Charles Oakley and Anthony Mason providing a triple-team blanket, the shot clock was running down when Olajuwon spotted an open teammate at the last possible second.

"I saw it was Sam," Olajuwon said. "All I thought was, `Good!' "

And it was. Cassell's 3-pointer with 32.6 seconds remaining put the Rockets in front 89-88. He added four free throws. Seven points in barely half a minute, and the rookie, whom the New York tabloids had linked to a late-night dalliance with Madonna during the series, saved the Rockets.

The Knicks won the next two. Game 5 was noteworthy for being interrupted in midstream while NBC cut away to the infamous O.J. Simpson white Bronco chase. The game was off the air for most of the third quarter. The fourth quarter was shown in a split-screen format - half basketball and half murder suspect on the run.

"It just made the whole thing more of a circus," Bullard said. "It added to the mystique of the series."

The Rockets were returning home down 3-2 with all of the burden on them. Or so it seemed.

"We were in the elevator, leaving the Garden, and I had my head down," Elie said. "Dream (Olajuwon) just looked at me and said, `Mario, we are going home. It will be OK.' "

It was. Because of Olajuwon.

Dream finish

New York's John Starks was electric in Game 6. He scored 16 of his 27 points in a fourth-quarter comeback. He'd hit five 3-pointers.

The Rockets held an 86-84 lead as Starks had the ball in his hands directly in front of the Rockets' bench with the clock running out. He let go a wide-open trey with two seconds left.

"I'm standing there, lined up perfectly behind Starks and the shot, and I'm watching and saying, `Damn, it can't end like this!' " Tomjanovich said. "Then he shows up. The Dream."

Olajuwon had slipped but then recovered and, on his second effort, reached up with his right hand to get barely a fingertip on Starks' shot. The ball wound up in the arms of Thorpe, who cradled it like a priceless vase.

Game 7. Starks' shot had vanished. He vainly shot 2-for-18. Olajuwon finished with 25 points, 10 rebounds and seven assists.

When Maxwell nailed a 3-pointer with 1:48 left in the game, he rolled on the floor, his teammates piled on top of him, and the celebration began.

The final horn made it official.

"You start running all around, looking for somebody to hug," Bullard said.

"You're just overwhelmed because it's so big," Thorpe said. "You can't begin to describe it."

One man still can. The one who stood there smiling and soaking all of it in. A decade later, from the far side of the world, he types onto a keyboard, and his emotion spills off the computer screen.

"Seeing the confetti drop all around us was exciting, and the fans rushing to the floor was thrilling," Olajuwon wrote. "It was a great feeling to see the entire city celebrating with us. I can go into my memory, and I'm back there."

Ten years in the blink of an eye.

...

WHERE ARE THEY NOW?

Catching up with the members of the Rockets' 1994 team:

Scott Brooks: Denver Nuggets assistant coach.

Matt Bullard: Radio/TV analyst for Rockets and Comets. Lives in The Woodlands.

Sam Cassell: Minnesota Timberwolves point guard. Lives in Houston.

Earl Cureton: Retired in Detroit.

Carroll Dawson: Former assistant coach has been Rockets' general manager for last eight seasons.

Mario Elie: San Antonio Spurs assistant coach. Lives in Houston.

Carl Herrera: Playing professional basketball in Venezuela.

Robert Horry: San Antonio Spurs backup forward. Lives in Houston.

Chris Jent: Philadelphia 76ers assistant coach.

Vernon Maxwell: In a Florida prison for non-payment of child support.

Hakeem Olajuwon: Arabic language student at the University of Jordan. Lives in Houston and Jordan.

Kenny Smith: TNT analyst. Lives in Houston and Los Angeles.

Otis Thorpe: Retired in Round Rock.

Rudy Tomjanovich: Personnel consultant for Rockets.

 

I know Kenny just got a house in LA, he probably has a home in Atlanta and still has one in Houston.

Kenny unites East Coast, South and West Coast.

Kenny is hip hop.

 

I was in Htown during Save Our Rockets so all my traffic tickets went to the Les Alexanader.

People with the found memories of the Rockets winning were the ones that helped keep the arena. Its not like Save Our Grizzlies . com.

New Cub fans don't disrespect Ernie Banks or Ryan Sanberg or Andre Dawson if they become successful outside the Cubs and give their honest opinions.

Bulls fans don't diss BJ Armstrong as an analyst. They don't go "BJ Doesn't RESPECT the BULLS" blah blah blah

Kammy on my wayward son

 

I just want to see BJ Armstrong bust out a joke or something when he's on TV.