I've been reading it since it began. I mean, when it really began. Memory's kind of hazy, but I think I started reading it because I was posting on the Rockets newsgroup on Usenet and Clutch might have posted a message telling people to check out this new Rockets site he had designed. So I checked it out and it turned out it was pretty damn nice. Smart and informative, extremely well designed, and stuff like the Clutch Mario columns gave it a lot of personality. So I just kept reading it and that's pretty much it. It took me awhile to start reading the BBS when that was added but eventually I started lurking occasionally and stayed that way until Ming was drafted. Since the BBS was closed to non-members shortly after that, I figured I might as well finally sign up, so now I occasionally post a message
For me, I have been here since at least '96, but back then I only read the front page. I was new to computers and did not see the appeal of posting messages on a board. I liked the live chat much better. It took a while for me to come around to the board, but my desire to find out about possible trades finally won me over as I started reading the board more. I then lurked for a while till I finally started posting some time in '97. I don't even remember what I called myself back then. It was a little known site The Launch Pad I think that referred me to Clutchcity. As I remember it, The Launch Pad seemed to be a better, more informed site back then. Come to think of it, I think it was the same site that Isabel may be referring to. The guy's name was duece who ran the Launch Pad. Can someone confirm this? He shut the site down for good and I became a member of CC.net for good as well.
Wow, my memory is really fuzzy about this. I know that I had been a real casual sports fan for many years and didn't know much about the Rockets save for Dream, Clyde, Barkley, and Pippen. Well, I remember most of the championship team as well, but I'm not gonna name everybody. Anyways, In 99', when we traded for Steve, I had no idea who he was. I didn't know much about anything about the rockets that year. I didn't even know we had Steve until one day, I was reading Sports Illustrated in my highschool library and I came accross the NBA preview issue. I remember him saying something about how his job was going to be giving Dream, Barkley and Pippen the ball. I was impressed with what this unknown rookie was saying, but not very much. Then a friend of mine had an issue of ESPN the mag, and there was one of those "In the Cross Hairs" things where they have a big 2 page picture of the guy. It was of Steve and it had all those numbered boxes pointing to things and one of them mentioned a 48" vert. He also said something about his mom being the one that helps him jump high, that she carries him every time he jumps. Anyways, I was intrigued by this guy, he was a member of the new breed and it was cool to see that our once ancient team had an exciting new player in the fold. So I started hitting up the internet during the fall before the season looking for sports sites. I came accross Sportstalk.com when it was free and not owned by ESPN. They had a section with links to clubhouses for each time, basically, the mini sections on ESPN and CNNSI that have all the Rocks info. One of the links was to this site. I believe that was my first time visiting, but I can't shake the feeling I came accross this site before. Anyways, I only passed through to read Clutch's and Jeff's articles on the main page and didn't even know what a BBS was. I started reading some things in 2000 and I tried to join, but i think i remember the registration asking for an email address that wasn't like hotmail or yahoo. I think I became a member of the board last year when I used my university email account to sign up and havn't left yet.
