Best Rockets Front Line Ever?

It's got to be the 85-86 Rockets...they went against two hall of fame frontlines (Lakers -Jabar,Worthy,Rambis,Lucas off the bench, and the Celts - Parish,Bird,McHale,Walton off the bench). They dominated the Lakers frontline and took the Celts to six games (that Celts team lost only one game at home the whole season). Man if it weren't for injuries and drug suspensions, that 85-86 Rockets could have eventually been real dominant during the Bird-Magic era.

 

Gotta go with Dream, OT & Horry/Elie.

The current frontline is awesome on paper, but has yet to produce anything, let alone 2 (or should that be 1.5) championships.

The 86 team is before my time, and the internet , so I have NFI about them, and as such can't vote for them. From what people have said, it sounds like a very impressive group of players.

 

Horry was clutch because the Hakeems, Shaqs, Duncans, and Bryants of the world put him in a position to be so. Without those 4, he'd be just another guy that played in the NBA.

TMac is arguably one of the 2-4 best SF's to play the game in the last 2 decades, championship or not.

 

The beauty of this poll is that arguably the weakest line in terms of talent is the one that gave us a championship. I'll have to think about this one...

 

85-86 Had the Talent

93-94 Had the Results

96-97 Had the Disappointment

98-99 Had the Hype

05-06 Has the Potential

Until matched, the title team gets the nod. Although I'm very confident that I'll be changing my vote next year.

 

That's my vote. That '85/'86 Celtics team was arguably the best ever, and the Lakers were the defending champs. Hakeem and OT were close, but OT was no Ralph Sampson, pre-injury. Not even close, regardless of how much I liked Otis.

The best argument... Pat Riley's Knicks would have been blown out by Pat Riley's Lakers, and they would have been roadkill for Bird's Celtics of that season. Worse than roadkill. Just a smear on the pavement. God, the NBA was great back then.


McGrady and Yao have to do something first to even be considered, in my opinion.

 

I gotta go w/ results. While I agree that on the surface, the 93 teams is the weakest, Hakeem was SOOO good that he singularly made up all the difference. If Swift can live up to the hype and Yao can improve on last season, then this team may challenge. But this team hasn't done ANYTHING yet so I just can't vote for this team yet. The 86 team is a close close 2nd to the 93 team but I gotta go w/ results.

 

not sure how the 86team isn't dominating this thread..

 

Gotta say '85-'86 - for those of you that didn't see them play that year they were incredible, just happened to play against the best starting five of all time - the '85-'86 Celts (Bird, Parrish, Ainge, Johnson & the Black Hole (McHale) plus a great coach and bench - KC Jones and Walton, Wedman, and Schisting). The original Twin Towers (yes, I know NY had a unit they called the "twin towers" before the Rox, but they were not equal or even comparable with our team.) We Rock, they Suck, end of story.
Damn shame we didn't win with Ralph, Akeem & co. Drugs suck...Lewis Lloyd, Mitchell Wiggins, & John Lucas's cocaine habits destroyed any chance we had of our 1st Dynasty.

 

Well Ralph's knee problems didn't help either.

 

Inevitably, with discussions such as the "best frontcourt/backcourt/lineup", people tend to go with the most balanced lineup. For example, balanced Denver and Detroit teams are often brought up in terms of the "best starting 5". While star-heavy teams of SA or Miami gets overlooked. But the reality is that one incredible player can more than make up for deficiencies elsewhere.

With that being said, I believe the 93-94 frontcourt of Olajuwon, Thorpe, and Horry is the best in Rockets history. Why? Because Hakeem truly was The Dream in that season. His performance that year was far and away the BEST season any Rocket had ever had. Malone, Sampson, Olajuwon in the 80s, T-Mac... None of them dominated the league even close to the level Hakeem did in 93-94. And superstars win games in this league.

 

Yeah, all we got outta him was a tired guy (sleepy) and a fellow that didn't really care (joe barely cares).

On Aother Note - I just finished Hakeem's autobiography, and he said the Blazers offered Clyde and their first round pick in '84 (they choose Bowie, (but Jordan was picked third) for Ralph Sampson. Imagine if we would have accepted that trade; Jordan, Hakeem and Drexler all on the same team. Friggin' incredible! Damn shame it didn't happen.

 

If I had to use three guys for one game? I'd take Akeem, Ralph, Rodney - that creates such nightmarish matchup problems for the opponent, it's hard to see how anybody could deal with that. Hell the celtics barely did and they were oozing HOF players in their prime.

 

Of course the best is the 93-94.

 

Gotta be 93-94 Rox until Tmac/Yao/Swift prove otherwise.

93 Hakeem was at the peak and played smart, dominating great players
like Robinson/Ewing. While the 85 Akeem was a force, a 40 years old
Kareem still dropped 40+ pts quite a few times on Sampson and him.

 

In 1986, towards the second half of the season and of course the playoffs, we pretty much owned the hell out of the Lakers in every possible way. I don't recall Kareem dropping too much, except his head in embarrassment.



edit: If I remember one laker hurting us the most, it was always Worthy or Magic. Of course Houston's "Finest" had their revenge on worthy.

 

I totally agree!! Ralph was such an athletic big man who moved from his natural center position to pf to accomidate Dream at center. Had his knees held up, I can safely say we would have had the 1st 7'4" point guard in NBA history.

Seriously though, that was the most talented group of team players we ever had.

 

I loved the twin towers + rodney (with Granny coming off the bench...sometimes...every once in a while... Hey! he did do great in the playoff game against denver!)

But I have to go with Hakeem in his prime. He towered so high at that time, could put an entire team on his back and completely take overa game...Even if you put him with a couple average decent guys in the front court and he still creates monumentous problems... but putting quality guys like OT and Horry, Elie...that line up becomes a nightmare for opponents! So I am tipping towards that line up as the best...

It would be fun to see a game where Akeem, Ralph, McCray go against Hakeem, OT, Horry, Elie...I really enjoyed both of those teams..

Now, the new guys are interesting too... I cant wait to see those guys gell and start terrorizing the league... I like this combo...still, we'll have to wait and see...

 

Man those were all good groups. You look at that and have to realize just how long we have wanted for true quality guard play. I went with 86, but 93/94 and 95/96 were all great. If you vote the current line you need a reality check. At the time Ralph was considered (by many even moreso than Akeem) to be one of the potential greats of all time. It was kind of like having wow... Imagine 4 years ago having Duncan and Garnett playing 5 and 4 and maybe Lewis as the 3. Ask anyone older than 25 or so who was a Basketball fan and they'll recall the fear other teams (and coaches especially) talked about when they came to Houston. Its hard to say, I mean Yao SS and Tmac might eclipse it... but in terms of potential at the time? hard for me to believe.

Mike