Sampson's injury was at the Garden but it wasn't during the series but during the regular season. It is really too bad that injury and drug use destroyed that Rockets team as it was something special. The front line up of Olajuwon, Sampson and McCray was the best front line in Rockets history and that starting line up with Lewis Lloyd and Robert Reid was devestating not fogetting Mitchell Wiggins, Jim Petersen and Allen Leavell coming off of the bench. Consider that the 1986 Celtics team is considered one of the greatest NBA teams and prior to the championship they had lost only one game in the postseason. The Rockets took two from them including a blowout at the Summit.
i think the injury at the Garden during the series was his head snapping back and slamming against the ground
To be honest, I think McHale was better than Yao. He was very versatile and deceptively quick. To be honest, I forgot how good he was until I saw this video.
Yao & company should look at how they got entry passes into Olajuwon. Keep it crowded & then suddenly open it up & feed. Pay attention to the 8:30 mark on. 2 diff entry passes into Dream the done the same way. Granted things are different now, but do you think some coaches look back to OLD tape to see how it was done?
To be fair to the current Rockets' entry passers, if the entry pass wasn't spot on, Olajuwon was able to effortlessly jump up, or up and towards the passer, to catch the ball. The announcer here compares Olajuwon to an offensive rebounder in receiving the pass. Olajuwon had the strength to create/maintain position, but also the athleticism to react if position wasn't enough. Yao does not have the mobility to compensate for even slightly errant passes, and because he's largely a stationary target opposing swarms can more easily bat imperfect passes away.
That was during the regular season. Sampson played every game during the Finals except for most of the game 5 when he was ejected for brawling.
i think you were right http://www.chron.com/CDA/archives/archive.mpl?id=2006_4062974 What the Rockets also didn't know was the first crack in their foundation had appeared when Sampson was undercut while going for a rebound at Boston Garden on March 24. There was a sickening thud when his head cracked against the parquet floor. However, the real damage was done to his back and left hip. Big man hobbled Sampson sat out for the first time in his career, missing three games and coming back with a limp. When he began to overcompensate for the pain in his hip, it led to the start of knee problems that would require three operations and cut short his career as an All-Star player. For the final six weeks of the regular season, Fitch closed practice to the media to keep a lid on the extent of the injury. "It was hard thing to see," Fitch said. "A lot of days, he could barely run, and he couldn't do anything to stop Dream defensively." "I was never the same from the time I went down in Boston," Sampson said. "It was like I couldn't play my game." The Rockets started the next season 2-0 but then struggled. On the morning of Jan. 13, 1987 they were 15-18 when word came down that Lloyd and Wiggins had failed drug tests and been suspended by the league.
Thanks Tinman. I was searching for that online just to check if I was going senial. I just started another thread on it but mods please feel free to delete that thread.
The difference is McHale was a PF. He was playing against Hakeem because there was no way Parish would be able to keep up with Olajuwon. If McHale played Yao and was only allowed to play 1-on-1, Yao could score over him, but McHale would have Yao in foul trouble by halftime if Yao tried to defend him. No power forward played the post any better than he did. He was one of the best defensive players of the day and probably the only person that could even remotely be considered Hakeem's equal in terms of number of post moves.
Look at who was in front and behind trying to block him from the rebound - Walton and Bird. Screw the double team. Slice it and dunk over it. lol.
I actually think Yao is under-appreciated for his man to man defense. Clearly, he would have some troubles with McHale's quickness. But as with any time Yao is guarding a good scoring big man who is effective due to their quickness as opposed to their size, the contest would come down to McHale hitting his fair share of 15 foot jumpers...or not. I don't think, for example, McHale would have nearly as easy a time faking Yao out as he did with Sampson....Yao has gooten very good at understanding his strengths and limitations, and in the post, he is just not very susceptible to ball fakes anymore. He is susceptible to dribble moves and fakes, which is why he backs off on defense...too much than you'd like, but he knows he can't recover quick enough. It's not a one on one game, obviously, but I think Yao would hold his own against McHale. Yao is clearly nowhere near as athletic as Hakeem, but I think one of the takeaways from this, and if you remember the Hakeem/Yao training session, is that a lot of times Yao has to be quicker and more decisive in his moves. I don't want him to be too quick, mind you - a lot of the current offense is predicated on getting a double team and lulling the defense to sleep (as was the championship years teams), but way too often, when Yao does get the ball in the post, he is way too deliberate. Hakeem got the pass and was already into his moves and countermoves. Yao actually did this quite effectively in Game 1.
