This is just one man's list. Maybe you have others... 10 Trading a first round draft pick for Slick Watts. I know this is going back a long way and a lot of you don't remember him, but dude could no longer play...what a waste 9 Firing McHale after 11 games. Really? After a Western Conference finals appearance he should been given more time than that to get things back on track 8 Trading Elvin Hayes. Again going old school. He went on to have a Hall of Fame career in Washington 7 Getting rid of both Goran and Lowery and bringing in Lin. Lin sucked and the other 2 point guards are All-Stars 6 Changing uniforms after back to back titles. Talk about bad Karma! 5 Letting Yao Ming play for the Chinese national team in the NBA off season. Playing competitive basketball without a rest certainly gave him the "stress" fractures that caused his early demise. 4 Trading Moses Malone after winning the league MVP award. He got a title in Philly and the Rockets got the worst team in the league. 3 Trading the 3 first round picks for Eddie Griffin. One of those picks was Richard Jefferson who is still playing and Griffin never did squat. 2 Trading Cassel and Horry for Barkley. This one still makes me sick. Barkley was almost over and Cassel went on to have a good career and Horry became Big Shot Bob. Ouch...big time blunder 1 OK and the number one Rocket blunder is the trade they never made. The rockets had the first pick and took Akeem. Portland had the second pick but wanted a center not Jordan because they already had Drexler. So they offered the pick to Houston for Sampson. Houston said no and they drafted Sam Bowie and the Bulls took Jordan third. Jordan and Akeem won 8 straight titles on separate teams...imagine what they would have done as team mates in Houston!!!!
Skipping over hometown kid Rashard Lewis, who was sitting in the green room crying and practically begging the Rockets to pick him. THREE FRIGGIN TIMES!!!! Bryce Drew Michael Dickerson Mirsad Turckan That was the day I realized front offices actually do not know more than the fans.
The Barkley trade was smart, we used to get schooled over and over by the SuperSonics until we got Sir Charles. That was not a mistake. The refs are the reason we didn't make it to the finals.
Trading Moses, got us to Sampson, then to Akeem. If we would have kept Big Mo, hmm? 84 draft class was one of the very best.
I think the '84 draft class headed by Olajuwon was the best ever in the NBA. No draft class can even come close with that having so many legitimate HOF's and gifted with the most number of players of all time. Truly awesome draft.
The year they drafted Sampson the also drafted Rodney McCray number 3 and passed on Clyde Drexler. I'm still pissed about that one.
You could add the 2000 draft to #3 - we traded down for Jason Collier and one of the 2001 picks. Collier was worthless while he was here and of course the following year, we traded all three picks for Griffin. Adding in our two second round picks (Langhi and Morris), and the Rockets had a total of 7 picks and got no long term value out of any of them. If we had just gotten value out of two of those picks (either as roster players or trade bait), the Yao McGrady teams might have been deep enough early on to have had more success. Those two drafts set the team back for 6 years (it wasn't until 2007 that we had a deep roster).
Increasingly Morris over Kwahi has to be on the list. Now that Kwahi isn't top player in the league and looking like he will be for a long time. Not sold on your number one. I mean it was a deep draft so this draft isn't comparable. But Sampson was crazy good and they thought they had a twin towers thing locked down. Would the TWolves trade KAT for this years #2 or the Knicks trade Krispy P for this years #2? No. Trading obvious legit talent for a question make is always a risk. But it was a deep draft and that was known so maybe they should have obviously done it.
The 6 Year $42MM Kelvin Cato extention in 1999 Career high 8pts per game and down from there.... (...then it was goodbye along with Cat and Franchise, enter McGrady, Howard and Lue [lol])
The whole handling of the Yao situation..from letting him play year round to hanging on to him way too long...so LES could solidify his Far East contacts/business deals. No rebuild edict by LES.
The Rockets didn't "let" Yao do that. It's more accurate to say the Chinese government let him play for the Rockets. There was no way the Rox could have stopped him from playing for the national team. Neither China nor Yao himself would ever have agreed to that. And it's far from "certain" that the extra wear and tear caused the foot issues. The cause might just have easily been the extra weight the Rockets forced him to carry so he could bang with the big boys. Totally agree. I hated Barkley before he was a Rocket and had to grit my teeth while watching him in the pajama unis. The way I heard this is that Portland offered the #1 pick AND Drexler in return for Ralph. They weren't convinced Drexler was going to be a big star after he averaged less than eight points as a rookie, whereas everyone know Ralph, the Rookie of the Year, was going to be a superstar. So it would have been Dream, Jordan and Clyde. Two shooting guards? Who cares?!?