I'd say it was when the Rockets paid Kelvin Cato $54 million. That took them out of the big name free agent game for years. They could then only build through the draft. Well they've made their mistakes there as well (anybody prefer Griffin to Jefferson? Dan Langhi to Najera?). Finally their biggest mistake to date was signing Steve Francis to one of the biggest contracts in the league. Unless Francis changes his entire approach to the game and loses some of his selfishness, I don't see him taking the Rockets very far, especially if the western conference is going to continue to be as stacked as it's been the past few years.
Your point is moot as I've never claimed that Rudy did a spectacular job either. Nevertheless, the coaching switch was when the Rockets gave the whole thing up. Whether that was due to Larry Smith's inability to motivate the players, his weird substitution patterns, or just the players getting deflated by the news of Rudy's illness, I'm not sure. What I am sure of is this was the time when they lost the season.
So did you mean the crappy teams they lost to when Rudy was coaching or when Larry was coaching? Could you please clarify.
Sincerely, there was really no pin-point point in time our season took the wrong turn. Just how can you pin-point low basketball IQ or dumbness? This season only served to open our eyes - that we have a few dumb players on our team who are unfortunately very influencial of the court of play.
Oh look! pgabriel can say pretty much the same thing twice! Even if it has nothing to do with my last post. I'll avoid repeating myself. You can just scroll up to see why your argument has no bearing on what I previously wrote.
Well going back to your ORIGINAL point. You write that they jumped the shark when Larry was coaching. They were in it till that point. If they would have taken care of the crappy teams they would be in the playoffs. Now, excuse me for being slow, but if you write they were in it till Larry Smith took over, all they had to do was take care of the crappy teams, I assume you mean if they took care of the crappy teams when Larry was coaching they would have made the playoffs. Therefore I contended that point with the team lost to crappy teams while Rudy was coaching. Now if you didn't mean that in your original post I apologize. But if you meant that they should have taken care of crappy teams while Larry was coaching, then that is a point that should be refuted. All I did was ask you to clarify. You didn't have to be sarcastic. Just tell me what you meant. Your first post isn't as clear as you think.
Thanks for the great responses. Some very interesting theories. Historically, the Rockets "jumped the shark" when Hakeem got old. In the mid-90s, Hakeem was so dominant at both ends of the court that the Rockets could surround him with complimentary players and rely on him to carry them to victory. As the decade wore on, his skills began to decline and nothing the team tried — Barkley, Pippen, Willis, etc. — was enough to take them back to the NBA finals. Imagine a world where Olajuwon eternally stayed at the top of his game. The team wouldn't have been making short-term decisions in the late-90s in an effort to win one more title. In 1999, for example, they probably would have made young Antonio McDyess the top free agent priority rather than the veteran Scottie Pippen. Also, they probably would have been more willing to gamble on a high schooler like Rashard Lewis in the draft. Once Hakeem wasn't the best center in the game, everything began to decline. Looking for a "shark" moment this season, I have to believe something changed — whether conciously or subliminally —_after Stevie's 44-point game in the win over the Lakers in Shaq-Yao I. He shot a miserable 1-for-13 in the next game at San Antonio, then the team was embarrassed by Dallas and Detroit before capping a four-game losing streak with a loss in Chicago. I don't live in the Houston area and I don't get to see most of the games, so I can't say for sure what the difference was. It just seemed that the win over the Lakers should have been the start of something big — a moment where the Rockets cemented themselves as one of the best teams in the league. Instead, it was the high point of the season, and very little that followed was encouraging.
