Agree or disagree: this is by far the most disappointing season in Rockets history

Not even close to that season with Yao and Tmac, I think 05, where EVERYONE got injured and we won like 30 games.

 

Bye, Ty!

 

There's a difference between sucking because your team is injured and sucking because your team just doesn't give a damn. To me, the latter is a much bigger disappointment.

 

Even when we did not have the "championship pieces" or was plagued by injury, the franchise played with heart and showed the league our spirit, that was our identity.

 

Personally, the '87 team was far worse...not even close.

Many of us came into this season thinking that the Rockets could be contenders though I don't think many really thought that we were favorites to beat GS.

Going into the '87 season, nobody in the country doubted that the Rockets were going to win a title. It wasn't a matter of "if" it was a matter of "when". We were projected to be a dynasty.

That team was huge, incredibly talented, versatile and young. Two franchise centers who could score, rebound, block shots and run the floor at elite levels. The shear size and athleticism of that team was amazing. 6'8 PG, 6'6" SG, 6'8" SF, 7'4 PF, 7'0 C. Every starter was a good to great defender and we didn't have a weak offensive player in the starting lineup.

The rest of the league saw what we had and immediately teams started trying to assemble twin tower lineups to try and counter Houston.

If we had only had even 1 or 2 more years with that team...

 

This is bad but... 96-97? 3 legit HOF'ers... got passed Seattle and the pain known as Utah.

 

The most disappointing season BY FAR to me was 2009 when Yao broke his foot in Game 4 of the playoffs against the Lakers.

That was soul crushing for me. Sad sad sad.

 

I think any season that includes Patrick Beverly playing actively is a disappointment.

 

To me, this season doesn't sting as much because the Texans and Astros both played better than expected.

This Rockets season doesn't sting as bad as the Yao/TMac years.

 

Bev was legit in 13-14 until he got hurt....

 

agreed

 

I think this team will play better in the second half. That's all I'm saying.

 

Great post and the long view. We'd just really pushed Bird's great Celtics team and had taken over the West from the Lakers. Hakeem was improving literally every month, we had a solid coach the players respected, and the sky was the limit. Then, everything came apart but Hakeem. He was left like a superhero in a pile of rubble.

This season doesn't even compare. We got demolished in the WCF and knew we had serious holes in this lineup and at coach. We knew we had an aging center with some injury issues and a young star wing who doesn't commit to D.

So the drop off to mediocrity is much less steep and much less surprising.

 

Yes, most disappointing, with this amount of talent

 

Agree.

 

All the folks bringing up the 86-87 team are absolutely right. I recant my earlier statement.

This is such a great/depressing read:

http://grantland.com/features/an-oral-history-hakeem-olajuwon-ralph-sampson-1980s-houston-rockets/

 

No way. '

- 1987 when Wiggins and Lew Lloyd were kicked off the team for coke
- Rockets championship run ending in a sweep by sonics
- Brent Price tearing ACL and leaving Rockets without a pg - eventually losing to Jazz
- Yao/Mac era of injuries constantly killing hops of contending.

This team is probably up there, but not above all of them.

 

Nope, not by a long shot.

Us not winning with Dream, Charles, Glyde & later on Pippen, is still the most frustrating period of basketball to me.

 

Nothing will beat Stocktons game winner..

 

Not really, I figured that with our hope on a Ty & Harden backcourt, Harden's off-season or lack thereof and our injury history I actually thought a 42-40 season or similar was very much possible.

I agree that the Yao injury in the 2009 play-offs, but also Mutombo, was heart breaking. This is far from heartbreaking, more like we get what we asked for.