<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/EVjl0QRkLoI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Great long article by Clutchfan's own KD http://sports.yahoo.com/blogs/nba-ball-dont-lie/ralph-sampson-hall-famer-163112014--nba.html
Even those few paragraphs are an excellent read. I'll definitely read the big fat article when I get a chance.
Since he's in the Hall of Fame now, we should retire his jersey We wouldn't have that '86 Conference Championship or the game winner against the Lakers without him, or the franchise's only All-Star Game MVP (though I think T-Mac got robbed at the Toyota Center in '06). It'll look real nice next to Calvin Murphy, Glide, Dream, and Moses who are also HoFers (though I think Rudy-T should be in there too, at least as a coach but 17ppg/9rpg/5xASG's might get him in as a player too). His career may have been short but he had a big impact on the franchise nonetheless. On a random side note, we should retire Elvin Hayes' # as well. He only played 1 good year in Houston, but he did get the franchise going in San Diego.
I guess it depends how you define "Twin Towers." Size wise, - Ewing and Cartwright (about the same time as Dream and Sampson) - Admiral and Duncan - Gasol and Bynum Though Admiral and Duncan didnt really play many years together, they were just as dominate by winning 2 Finals.
Do you mean Rudy T should be in the hall of fame or he should have his number hanging on our rafters? Because his jersey is definitely hanging next to those other guys.
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Reaching the heights never came easy for big man Sampson Posted Sep 4, 2012 8:59 AM It has often been said that a man's reach should exceed his grasp. Which meant the bar was always going to be set much higher for Ralph Sampson. At 7-foot-4, he'll become the tallest player enshrined in the Hall of Fame, and yet the enduring image to many is of a would-be star who came up short. Only because he could never live up to the loftiest expectations of others. "Oh my," people would always say upon first glance in a gym or out on the street, "I've never seen anyone quite like you." That was always Sampson's problem. When he was still a gangly colt on wobbly legs in Harrisonburg, Va., the hot whispers about the big kid who could pull alley-oop passes from out of the clouds, dribble the length of the floor to beat a press and then stab in a 20-foot jump shot grew out of control. Throughout his career at the University of Virginia -- three times voted national College Player of the Year -- the tales of his talent and his exploits took a quantum leap. By the time the Rockets made him the No. 1 pick in the 1983 NBA draft, the hype had built Sampson into a hybrid combination of Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain and Paul Bunyan. All that was missing was a blue ox to ride into Houston. We live now in a time when near-7-footers such as Kevin Garnett and Kevin Durant can fly in from the wings to do spectacular feats and launch shots from the perimeter with the casual aplomb of a guard. But spin the calendar back more than three decades and Sampson was the first truly big man who pushed the limits. He could take the ball off the glass, fire an outlet pass with the best of them and run like a gazelle to catch a lob to finish with a dunk at the other end. He could dribble the ball behind his back and between his legs and swish jumpers with ease. He could do it all while curing the common cold and achieving world peace ... or so went the legend. The late Ray Patterson, then the Rockets' president and general manager, went so far as to say: "Sampson is not going to be the player of the decade. He's going to be the player of the century -- the century. Ralph will dominate the league and change basketball. Forget about every other big man you've ever heard about. This is the guy who will be better than them all." It was a brass ring that nobody could ever realistically expect to reach out and grab. "I don't think there's ever been another player in history who came into the NBA with a higher level of expectation," said Charles Barkley, who for a change was not engaging in hyperbole. "Nobody ever revolutionizes or changes the game. But that was all the talk surrounding Ralph. He was set up for the fall." Sampson was a unanimous pick for Rookie of the Year in 1984, a four-time All-Star and MVP of the 1985 All-Star Game in Indianapolis. Until the Rockets made their back-to-back championship runs in 1994 and 1995, he had the biggest bucket in franchise history with his last-second, twisting, 10-foot, rim-dancing turnaround that defeated the Lakers in the 1986 Western Conference finals. And he lived up to much of the hype. In his first three NBA seasons, he averaged 20.6 points, 10.9 rebounds and 2.03 blocked shots. "I would have to think in my mind that he would be even much better if he played with me," Magic Johnson said on the day that he spent tossing passes to Sampson at the Indianapolis All-Star Game. "Put the young fella in the same lineup with me and you could start sending the [championship] trophies to us at the start of every season." Sampson at his best was swift, graceful and breathtaking for his size. There were times when he would come down the court and make a play that seemed unimaginable for a man of his stature. All you could do was shake your head. But after three knee surgeries, three more teams and six painful, ineffective seasons, Sampson limped out of the league as a symbol of potential unfulfilled, averaging just 2.2 points in his final NBA stint with Washington in 1992. The criticism was always that he was soft and couldn't be effective in the low post like a traditional big man. He had no championships at Virginia or in the NBA. Even in Houston, where he dazzled and had that spectacular start when healthy, Sampson's legacy faded in the white hot glow of his one-time teammate Hakeem Olajuwon, who would take the Rockets to the mountaintop. "Not to take anything away from Dream," said former Rocket Kenny Smith, Olajuwon's teammate for the title years. "But one was hurt and one wasn't. I hear people say that Ralph only did it for three or four years. But for three or four years nobody could touch him. He'd have been [voted] a Top 50 [all-time] player if not for his knees. When it comes to Sampson, everybody seems to want to go for the easy negative instead of looking for the truth." Though he can't change the prism through which others view him, Sampson long ago came to terms with the great and outlandish expectations. "I've always been comfortable in my own skin," he said. "I was tall as a young boy and I never really had much choice about if I would stand out in the crowd. There are so many what-ifs. What if I had left school a year earlier and gone to the Lakers and played with Magic? What if John Lucas, Mitchell Wiggins and Lewis Lloyd didn't go down to drugs and broke up that Rockets team that went to The Finals in 1986? What if my knees didn't go? "But injuries are part of the game. I wish I could have played at a high level for many more years. I wish I could have spent more time playing with Hakeem. Obviously, if I'd have had a 15-year career at that early level, there's another perspective on everything. "When I played, people said big men are not supposed to be playing away from the basket. Now I see Kevin Garnett all over the floor. "Hey, I had my time. I played my game." There once was a time when nobody had ever seen anything quite like that game, nothing quite like Ralph Sampson. That was always both his allure and his burden. Fran Blinebury has covered the NBA since 1977. You can e-mail him here and follow him on twitter. The views on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the NBA, its clubs or Turner Broadcasting. http://www.nba.com/2012/news/features/fran_blinebury/09/04/hall-of-fame-ralph-sampson/index.html
[ESPN] Sour Grapes I didn't even read this... just based on the tone of the beginning it turned me off: http://insider.espn.go.com/nba/story/_/id/8347861/nba-why-ralph-sampson-hardly-belongs-hall-fame Spoiler Sampson hardly a Hall of Famer Numbers reveal overrated college career and mediocre pro stint By Neil Paine | Basketball-Reference.com When Ralph Sampson enters the Basketball Hall of Fame on Friday, it will feel a bit like a fait accompli -- something that was always ordained to happen -- whether Sampson actually earned it or not. Ask anyone who was around at the time and they'll tell you Sampson was practically destined for Springfield ever since his days of averaging 30.4 points and 20.5 rebounds per game as a heavily touted high school senior in Harrisonburg, Va. Although he stood 7-foot-4, which eventually would make him the eighth-tallest player in NBA history, Sampson also was freakishly athletic -- he would later go on to jam from the free throw line in the 1984 NBA Slam Dunk Contest -- and possessed the quickness and dexterity of a much smaller man. Such physical tools had pro scouts drooling over Sampson's potential during his time at Harrisonburg, and their collective longing for Sampson only intensified after he led the University of Virginia to an .830 winning percentage over four seasons in Charlottesville, winning three national college player of the year awards in the process. After Sampson's freshman year at Virginia, none other than Red Auerbach predicted that he would become the next Bill Russell; meanwhile, the quest to land Sampson in 1983 led the Rockets to engage in what we would now call "tanking," producing an impossibly bad 14-win season that guaranteed them a coin flip with Indiana for the No. 1 pick. In the end, Houston got its man and he put together three healthy seasons as a Rocket (two as part of a "Twin Towers" combination with Hakeem Olajuwon), winning NBA Rookie of the Year in 1984, capturing All-NBA honors in 1985 and helping Houston upset the Los Angeles Lakers in the 1986 Western Conference finals with a twisting, series-clinching buzzer-beater that sent the Rockets to the Finals. But, in the 1986-87 season, Sampson hurt his knee while slipping over a slick spot on the court, the first of many injuries that ultimately would derail such a promising career. Or so the Sampson myth would have us believe. Although the curse of "what might have been" has tarnished the legacies of many an athlete over the years, in Sampson's case, it seems to have been a blessing in disguise, propping up Sampson's suprisingly meager Hall of Fame case despite ample evidence that, even if left unhindered by injury, the totality of his career would not have reached the requisite level of greatness typically needed for induction. In fact, Sampson might be the first player elected to his sport's Hall of Fame completely on the basis of potential rather than on what he actually accomplished in games. College dominance? The first dubious element of Sampson's candidacy is the supposed dominance of his NCAA career. Although the Cavaliers did put up an impressive 112-23 record in Sampson's college run, the most successful four-year stretch in school history, Sampson's individual numbers are hardly the stuff of legend: 16.9 points, 11.4 rebounds and 1.2 assists per game (in fairness, Sampson also added 3.5 blocks per game and shot 57 percent from the floor, but, in a sign of things to come, he turned the ball over 2.6 times per game). That career scoring average of 16.9? It's exactly the same as what recent UVa star Sean Singletary put up, and roughly 2.0 PPG less than the immortal Jeff Lamp was producing concurrently with Sampson. Granted, points aren't everything, and Sampson affected the game in a number of ways that didn't show up in the scoring column. But given how much of Sampson's Hall of Fame case is contingent upon his college career, his individual stats at Virginia don't exactly leap off the page. And, if his college résumé is based more on team accomplishments than individual production, it bears mentioning that, despite the gaudy record, Virginia made only one Final Four in Sampson's college career (his sophomore year of 1981), flaming out early with a Sweet Sixteen loss to UAB in 1982 and an Elite Eight defeat at the hands of NC State a year later. In fact, the most defining moment of Sampson's college career wasn't a victory at all but rather an improbable loss (as the top-ranked team in the country) to tiny Chaminade on Dec. 23, 1982, a debacle that still ranks as the biggest upset in the history of college hoops. Mediocre pro Sampson's professional credentials are even sparser. Through the end of the 2012 season, Sampson ranks 239th all time in Basketball-Reference's Hall of Fame probability metric, with a mere 2.7 percent predicted chance of being inducted based on past voting patterns. He played just three full seasons before injuries limited him to an average of 35.5 games per season in the final six seasons of his NBA career, finishing with lifetime per-game averages of 15.4 points, 8.8 rebounds, 2.3 assists and 1.6 blocks. Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images Sampson was part of the NBA's "Twin Towers" fad with teammate Hakeem Olajuwon. Even in those three healthy years, Sampson was good -- but certainly not great. Most notably, he proved a gifted scorer who could create his own shot but was not particularly efficient in doing so. Paired with Olajuwon, Sampson often played away from the basket with a more finesse-oriented style, attacking with his face-up game and midrange shooting. For some bigger players (Dirk Nowitzki comes to mind), this approach has worked wonders, but Sampson was far too turnover prone as a pro, losing the ball on 9 percent of his touches in those first three seasons. And defensively, although Sampson was solid by virtue of his sheer size, his shot-blocking numbers were actually pretty underwhelming for a player of his stature. Sampson did hit the vaunted "20-and-10" scoring and rebounding averages in his healthy seasons, but are a mere three years of that production, especially when coupled with the limitations of his game in the pros and an overrated college career, really enough to justify a Hall of Fame nod these days? When Sampson gets officially enshrined, he might just be Springfield's least-accomplished center. Arvydas Sabonas and Bill Walton played a comparable number of games to Sampson, but each was far more productive in the NBA -- Sabonis' and Walton's career PERs were 21.2 and 20.0, respectively, and Sampson's was 16.0 -- and arguably made a bigger impact before joining the league (Sabonis' international work is legendary; Walton's NCAA career is a very rich man's version of Sampson's). Sampson similiarities Perhaps the most fitting comparison, then, is Bob Houbregs, who put the University of Washington on the map in much the same way Sampson did for Virginia before embarking on a five-year pro career from 1953 to '58. But doesn't it say something about Sampson that his closest comparison, in terms of accomplishments, among centers is a 6-7 guy from the 1950s who didn't even play the position full time and averaged 9.3 career points per game? In terms of pure physical tools and raw possibilities, Sampson had the potential to soar into the same stratosphere as some of the game's all-time greats. But the Hall of Fame should be based on actual achievements, not theoretical ones. Just because a player's place in Springfield seemed fated from the beginning doesn't mean he should get a pass for what is clearly not a Hall of Fame-worthy career résumé.
Great memories watching the replays this week of the 86 team and the playoffs. Sampson played with a smoothness unequaled by a big man before or since. WIggins, Lloyd, and Lucas had the drug problems, otherwise who knows what might have been? Those guys could play. Ralph is deserving of the HOF and having his jersey retired with the Rockets.
The person isn't wrong. Players like Kevin Johnson and Bernard King did not get in and they had a better career than Sampson.
Yes, that's what I said, he should be in the hall of fame as both a player and coach, but if anything it'll most likely be coach. Speaking of Houston Basketball coaches, Guy Lewis not being in there is a joke.
