In 1993, the previous series before 1996, Seattle won in game 7 in overtime. Not exactly a whalloping... In fact, I think every series-ending win by the Sonics ended with an overtime.
adam and matt also talked about how Kenny Smith would piss in his pants every time we played seattle. Seems true, because Kenny was a spot up shooter, and not much driving to the basket.
Yep. Rockets lost in 7 in '93, with all the Rockets' home victories being blowouts, and Seattle's Game 7 win going down to the wire. Home court decided that series, and the Rockets should have had home court (SA game). '96, Hakeem just wasn't the same, and the Rockets weren't 100 percent. Of course in '97, the Rockets beat them. It wasn't the zone in '96, it was age and injury on behalf of the Rockets.
Seattle's illegal defenses made them the one team that the Rockets could not run the same left block play over and over. This was more about Rudy being out coached than anything else. He refused to adapt to what the Sonics was doing. They just kept expecting the dump it into the left block play to work. He should have have Dream around the free throw line to stop some of the Sonics' tactics. I can recall, many times 2 Seattle defenders would BEAT Dream to the left block and the Rockets would still try to pass the ball to him.
Yet in '93 this wasn't a problem. Why? Seattle wasn't as good, Houston was better. '96 was a 64-win team against a 48-win team. Hakeem couldn't jump-hook in '96 and his explosiveness dropped off huge. Plus the other guys couldn't hit shots. Big difference. Read Gundy the other day talking about not abandoning your bread-and-butter. The problem was nobody could hit shots, outside of Game 2 when Seattle got seriously lucky and it wasn't enough.
And let's not forget that Cassell and Clyde were both playing hurt. I love Barkeley, but I really felt that this team deserved another shot...
Another drawback was that Barkley & Dream both liked the left side. Barkley wasn't effective from the right side so he couldn't take any pressure off Dream. Plus he had declined also. I was excited about the possibilities of getting Barkley, but I also thought the Willis signing would of been enough by itself. However I don't think Kevin would have signed with us without Barkley.
So what? All teams pretty much play with some type of injury, our team this year certainly won't be anywhere near 100% going into the playoffs. I don't think there is any other way to say this, and it embarasses me to confess it, but here it goes: the Sonics simply ass-whopped the Rockets in that series; Drexler proved to me that he was overrated, Dream was clearly just unable to break through that stifling defense, and the Rockets championship team from the previous year was nowhere to be found. But hey, they had Payton and Kemp and Shrempf, one of the best trios in the league at the time. But we did get our butts kicked, no ifs or buts about it.
Didn't the Sonics kill us with outside shooting? I recall one of the games they hit 20 3's. Its hard to win a game when the other team hits 20 3's no matter what defense they're playing.
