Horrific flashback Welcome back to the 1994 NBA Finals. If you have repressed the memory of that series, that was the one that set the league back two decades, the one from which America turned away in revulsion, the one that spurred a slew of rules changes that continue to this day. The one between the Houston Rockets and New York Knicks, in which only the participants themselves found beauty, and even that might not be unanimous. Those who successfully had buried their recollection of that muckfest had a frightening flashback Sunday night. Game 3 of the current Finals at Continental Airlines Arena went to the Spurs, but even they recoiled in horror at the sight afterward. -- David Steele, San Francisco Chronicle link Critics love to hate on the 2 championships we won!
Well those 'critics' can just kiss my big winky, because I know, without a doubt, that the Rockets would have beaten the Bulls both of those years..
So why didn't it turn abck around when against Orlando every game was in the 100's? In the 4 games vs the Magic, the Rockets scored 156 pts for a avg of 114ppg. Why didn't that revert the trend?
Ugly? What was ugly were some of those Bulls-Jazz games, including that 80-55 one. Oh I forgot that's right, michael was involved, it was sheer artistic brilliance!
That was a pretty ugly series but that was because of the Knicks style of play and not the Rockets. The Knicks dictated that the games be ugly low scoring defensive battles. The Rockets were able to survive that series and win.
i think it says more about the knicks and pat riley than it does about the rockets. anyone who follows basketball knows that. look at his heat teams now. they give out free burgers from mcdonalds to all fans attending the games whenver the heat score above 80
I look at it a different way. In "ugly-ball" every basket means something. What does 1 basket mean in a 135-133 game? Kind of like baseball. 1-0 is better than 11-10 IMO. Am I the only one that actually enjoyed gm 3 the other night?
Heres some uglyball for you: 1998: 6/14/98 Uta 86, Chi 87 6/12/98 Chi 81, Uta 83 6/10/98 Chi 86, Uta 82 6/7/98 Chi 96, Uta 54 6/5/98 Uta 88, Chi 93 6/3/98 Uta 88, Chi 85 1997 6/13/97 Chi 90, Uta 86 6/11/97 Uta 88, Chi 90 6/8/97 Uta 78, Chi 73 6/6/97 Uta 104, Chi 93 6/4/97 Chi 97, Uta 85 6/1/97 Chi 84, Uta 82 12 whole games, and one team broke 100, once! To be fair, I must say I really enjoyed watching that 54 point game because it was so much fun to watch stockton and malone and co. be humiliated so on their way to an ignominious place in history.
Once all of the youths who were around whenever the Rockets won those 2 championships grow up and become sports writers and journalists, we might see a big change in all this Rocket-bashing horsecrap.
I like the 'ugly-ball' too. Games that are just shooting exhibitions usually aren't fought for with hustle, defense, or any kind of HEART whatsoever. The 94 Finals was probably the hardest fought championship series in any sport in the last decade.
This sums it up... Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Ugliness, on the other hand, is readily apparent to any onlooker, especially when it comes to professional basketball.
agreed. those beeyotches are what i call "ass-kissers-of-the-lakers-90's bulls-knicks-and-more-teams-not-in-texas". those people are so arrogant and ignorant as those who compared D-Rob to Dream..
Uh, it's called the Finals. Both teams had great offense, but both teams could play smart defense too. Just by default, you'll get lower scoring games because of more intensity. But if you watched the games, they were not ugly. They were constantly on edge of each other scoring. It's not like they were two defensive teams going at it. It was two teams trying to hold the other off from scoring. It was on the edge of your seat defense because you knew that any team could score at any time. I can't believe you can actually think the JAZZ or BULLs played ugly ball. Both had two of the most efficient running offenses ever.
I used to actually care what the elite Northeastern media said about us. I just don't anymore. What difference does it make?
DavidS, why do you diss the rockets 94 team so much? you always bash the offense despite the fact in the regular season they scored 101 ppg. it was on the knicks to make that as ugly as possible. then Sam Fisher shows that the jazz and bulls didn't do didly squat in terms of scoring for 2 years running and it was great basketball, constanly on the edge in scoring, and for some reason the two most efficient offenses not against great defenses couldn't score. they may have been efficient, but they were walk it up, set it up, deliberate teams that played low-scoring affairs and were decently physical underneath. my only real interest in the series was that i haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaated the bulls (i just haaaaaaaaaated the jazz) and thus was watching intently hoping they would lose. if i'm not a fan (or hater) of either team, i don't find that series any prettier than rockets/knicks just b/c the offenses were efficient. if MJ isn't in that series, it would be considered boring and fairly ugly by the media.
agreed, but efficiency does not equal pretty. 78-73 does not equal pretty. it may equal intense and exciting to watch (as did our series) but it doesn't have to equal pretty.
I don't know why people are so fascinated with points. I have no problem watching a low scoring game if it's close. Even in football, the dirty games are still fun to watch. Players going through so much to win a game with so much resistance. Dirty games have a lot of heart and desire involved but no glamour. I guess these days people need points to keep their attention on a game and soccer and hockey suffer because of this. Sometimes we should enjoy the beauty of a game and not worry about points.
