The excitement is still there in a boring offense. The excitement comes in not knowing how we will win or lose, but that tension is there. That to me, is excitement. Going into a game knowing what will happen is boring. I don't think our championships were at all boring. Someone new stepped up every night, but we didn't know who. The key was, we had a reason to watch. We were competing and winning. The Bulls were boring. We knew who would step up and we knew who was going to win. Go Rockets!!!!
I can't pull up the stats, but i can almost guarantee that the rockets in the 90's scored more and had more fast breaks than this so called young and exciting team. Remember the scores between Rockets vs Phoe or vs the Jazz? Does anyone remember the scores in the championship vs the magic. The only time we didn't score a hundred points was against the Knicks who were a rugged bunch. The old Rockets could win slow up ball or up tempo. The reason being the would rebound, Kenny and Max would release and Horry and Thorpe would fill the lanes and very few big men changed ends of the court as fast as Hakeem. Call me crazy, but from one end to the other,Smith,Maxwell,Elie,Horry, and those guys were faster than the team we have now. We not even going to throw in Clyde when he was probably the quickest of anyone from one end to the other. This team is boring because of the simple basketball they can't play, not because of the lack of atheletic talent.
The difference between the 90s and now is defense. We had Olajuwon swatting everything down. We had Horry using his long arms and speed to shut Barkley down. We had Thorpe who was our most underrated player, who could not only play fantastic defense, but could routinely get 20 points per night. We had Mario Elie diving for balls and mixing it up all over the floor. We had Vernon Maxwell who was the only player I ever saw that could REGULARLY shut Michael Jordan down. Rudyball was "ugly-ball" because we made teams look ugly (like the Knicks). Look at the opposition's shooting percentages in those days. We made our opponents force up a lot of ugly shots. Now, no one talks about defense. It's offense this, and offense that. THAT is our problem. Eddie Griffin is a step in the right direction. If we can get a couple of defense-first kinds of players on this team, we can get back to the playoffs.
