Those Bulls-Jazz games were kinda boring also until the end or when Jordan took over. The difference between the Rockets stagnation and the bulls was Hakeem had to wait for someone to give him the ball while Jordan could start the offense and end it with him. I do accept the fact that it was more team ball despite low scoring games during that series. The baskets that were made were from the triangle or Utah's precision offense. Of recent memory, the most well played series were the 95 Hou-Orl and the Lakers-Pacers. All the games were free flowing and consistent throughout all the games. It wasn't all that grappling and gropling and none fo the major players were in foul trouble. Check out the scores to Indy-La: 6/7/2000 at Los Angeles Lakers 87 - 104 0 - 1 6/9/2000 at Los Angeles Lakers 104 - 111 0 - 2 6/11/2000 Los Angeles Lakers 100 - 91 1 - 2 6/14/2000 Los Angeles Lakers 118 - 120 1 - 3 6/16/2000 Los Angeles Lakers 120 - 87 2 - 3 6/19/2000 at Los Angeles Lakers 111 - 116 2 - 4 Check out the scores to Hou-Orl: 6/7/1995 at Orlando Magic 120 - 118 1 - 0 6/9/1995 at Orlando Magic 117 - 106 2 - 0 6/11/1995 Orlando Magic 106 - 103 3 - 0 6/14/1995 Orlando Magic 113 - 101 4 - 0 Thats basketball the way it should be played. In all honesty, once Chicago lost Ho Grant, they were never as good offensively as they were before. When they had Grant, their pt differential used to be like 10ppg. In 90-91, they scored 109 and gave up 99. In the 72 win season the pt diff was like 7.
-The Rockets offensive style may have been predictable, but some of the points by David S I take issue with: -the rockets offense was off and on? Well, duh. What offense can this NOT be said about? If Jordan's having an off day, the Bulls offense is not pretty to watch. Ditto for any team. Bottom line is that they were in spite of their style a high scoring team in the regular season AND the first 3 rounds of the playoffs, till Pat Riley made the NBA finals about as physical as the Baltimore Ravens defense. -There's simply no way a team with Hakeem can ever be considered boring to watch, at least relative to the nasty a$$ SA spurs. Simply put, Hakeem was the most entertaining big man to watch with all his grace and his diverse, all-rounded game, and I know many non-rocket fans would agree with this. Rockets games were fun to watch just because you wanted to see what move Hakeem would invent next. -Also, because of Hakeem and the rockets interior D, the rockets were a very good transition team. All the bigs (hakeem, horry, and OT) ran the court well. Fast breaks are always fun to watch. They couldn't showcase this against NY, but Mad max and sam i am were good transition players as well. You don't average 101 pts by not being a quality offensive team. That team was very good at turning good D into fast breaks. -Also, I disagree that the 94-95 team had been "figured out." I think it was more a case of complacency after winning a title and getting the monkey off the back. Teams that didn't double Hakeem usually watched him kill them (it was very rare that hakeem wasn't doubled anyway) The Clyde trade without a doubt gave the team a better offensive repertoire but i think the main value of that trade was injecting life into a locker room which was just too content after a title the year before. Kind of like how LA went thru this year with their malaise.
Go get a grip fellas. we have lots of extreme, die-hard rockets fan here. the rockets team which brought us the 2 championship rings were good. But they werent great. Jordan would have spanked the rockets A** if he been played those years.
the way i look at it is the bulls probably could have beaten the 93-94 rockets championship team but no way in hell could they have beaten the 94-95 team. That was truly a special team
DavidS, the fact that you stayed up all night making new posts in this thread underscores the fact that it is futile to try to change your mind, but a few closing points: David, if you don't like the STYLE of offense, as compared to the triangle or whatever, as a matter of personal preference that's fine. But the end result of the spokes-and-wheel offense was undeniably good; it worked, the Rockets scored well. DId it run into problems in the finals? yes. As did the triangle. As for "role players standing on the 3 point line"? That pretty much describes any Bull or Laker not named Jordan, Pippen, Shaq or Kobe from 1996-2003. You portray it as if the 1994 Rockets struggled mightily to score points and were "stagnant". This is simply not true, and you have yet to prove otherwise. Hakeem had 26 points a game that year, David. The Rockets scored 101.7 or something. Those other 75 points came frome somewhere, no? You know as well as I do that the Rockets had many other capable scorers, including Vernon, Kenny and Cassell, as well as spot up shooters in Horry and Elie, and insided scorers like Otis Thorpe and Carl Herrera. You claim that the rockets had to live and die by Hakeem? then how come in the finals, the Rockets' key finals victories were all punctuated by big baskets from their role players? Game 3 with Cassell scoring 7 points in the final minutes, Carl Herrera coming up huge off the bench in Game 7, they simply couldn't stop his hook shot, I have no idea why, Vernon Maxwell hitting the 3 that put Game 7 out of reach? Robert Horry's wicked alley oop off the inbounds? And this, I just had to jump on this: Rockets scoring = Olajuwon creating, Thorpe finishing off the pick and roll or tearing the basket down, Herrera's post up game, Horry's threes and alleys, Kenny's knuckleball shot or running the floor and finishing, vernon's explosive jumper, Cassells fearless penetration..... Wow, that proves that you and I are able to describe all the ways each team could score. Great. Your logic is all over the map on this thread: the Rockets are ineffective, then they are effective but boring, the Bulls have team play (even though they were consistently unable to score in the finals) and are better because they have role players. The rockets, meanwhile, are challenged because all they have is a bunch of role players The problem is that you are hell bent on proving the 94 Rockets as offensively inept for some reason, and you won't accept anything to the contrary to the point of being absurd. Well , these two things are true: They were a good offensive team, and in the Finals they did slightly better, and certainly no worse, offensively than did the 97, and 98 Bulls or Jazz. (even the 96 Bulls played in a very low scoring finals, btw, but I won't include them.) They are true, and you can either accept them or continue to make all sorts of specious arguments against them. That was what the initial point was in this thread before you embarked on your one man crusade.
....wait one second.....did someone say Mobely is able to take over games, and Yao 'took' it Shaq.....
-What's up with idiots not knowing that Jordan did play in 95. And spare me the "he wasn't ready in game shape BS". His playoff stats from 95 are better than he had from 96-98. That's an indisputable fact. The team just didn't have Rodman and wouldn't have in 94-95 either. When did Jordan ever have success against rhe Rockets? How bout some actual reasons rather than just "jordan is god."? Why would jordan have spanked the rockets ass when the rockets owned him in all the regular season matchups? The way Hakeem was destroying MVP caliber centers like Robinson, Ewing, and Shaq, explain how stiffs like Longley, Perdue, Pennigton would have fared better at controlling him? Hakeem averaged 33 ppg in the 95 playoffs on 56% shooting. Those stats are sick. I'm sorry but the run he had in that year's playoffs was better than any playoff run Michael Jordan EVER had. He was a 7' Jordan for about 3-4 years there, who impacted a game defensively in a way MJ could simply not due to being a guard. If the Rockets and Bulls played that year, MJ would have been the 2nd best player on the court the way Hakeem was balling out of his mind. The Jordan idol worshippers need to get a grip. I wonder if some of these people even watched basketball back then or just mimic the rhetoric they hear from the media. -You don't win 2 freakin titles in a row without being a damn good team.
You tell them!! These people just don't understand that we matched up well with the Bulls, even more so than the other teams that we did beat. We had the personnel to stop their primary weapon while they didn't have anyone to stop ours. If Jordan had played and made it to the finals, in 94, we would have had Mad Max going jaw to jaw with him, and in 95, a tall and still quick Drexler to slow him down. And if he could get by our perimeter defense, Hakeem would have waited in the middle and swatted those shots back down his throat!! How I had actually wished so much that they could get by Orlando!! It was not our fault that they couldn't.
Exactly! The only reason ESPN is doing this is because the level of play in the current Finals forces a comparison only this time it's the Spurs who are playing ugly ball in order to stifle the fast-breaking Nets.
HUH? Clyde Drexler slowing down Jordan? what have you been smoking buddy? Obviously you were watching with your eyes closed when the Bulls played with Drexler's Blazers in the finals. Jordan Left Drexler in the dust. Overratted Clyde is more like it. How in the hell did that guy get into 50 of the Greatest players? Whoever voted for him must have been riding his jock-strap.
Ok, I got carried away a little there! (I am a homer, what do u expect? ) But I did say slow down, not stop. If the Blazers hung on in that game 6, who knew what could happen? In Portland, Drexler did not have Hakeem plugging the middle either.
Personal preference. Yep. That pretty much sums it up. But isn't that what this tread is about? Talking about half-full, half-empty (concentrating on what the Rockets did wrong, rather than what they did right) is another story. You can talk about what Horry did here, and what Smith did there, and "got the job done," "it worked" etc, etc...you're preaching to the choir. But this thread is about why the fans (non-Houston) bash the 94' Rox. And most people, NOT FROM HOUSTON, found the 94' Rockets boring. Period! We can debate our personal offensive philosophies until the cows come home. That's for another thread. But the points I gave, are the reasons that most non-Houston fans find the 94 Rockets boring and why the media always bash that team. You can stick your head in the sand all you want. That's just the way it is. Remember, you can't force people to like the 94 Rox. So, the next time you see an article about "Those boring ulgy 94 Rox" don't be surprised: "Who? What? What are they talking about! The 94 Rox were the most dynamic offense in the history of the game, blah, blah, blah...!!!!" By the way, is your real name Keith Jones? Heh...
No, most people recall them as being boring, based on the misperception that the 1994 Rockets couldn't score a basket to save their lives -- gathered from that finals series. As we both know, the 94 Rockets was a quality offensive team; when they hit their shots, which was more often then not, they were basically unstoppable.
And do you think the 93-94 team was better offensively than the 95 team (w/Clyde)? Remember, Clyde is one player. But superstars are equivalent of TWO good players... At least that's the effect they have on their team. And the moment that Clyde played his first game with the Rockets (here in Maryland against the Bullets), the team changed like night and day.
the reason I posted it is because other people were posting similar quotes from the media. I just wanted to back that up w/ another quote. i was actually pretty worried i spelled "diss" wrong. I was expecting like a 300 reply thread on how to spell diss. i guess you can spell it dis or diss.
No, you said the 1994 rockets BEFORE clyde. 1993-94 was better than 94-95 before clyde, I think thats pretty obvious from the W-L column. I drove up from college in VA to watch that game at the cap centre. Hakeem was great that night, it was a fun game.
for whatever its worth, the average score in 1994 over 7 games was: Houston 87, NY 88 Over 6 games in 1996: Chicago 88, Utah 87 over 6 games in 1997 Chicago 88, Utah 80 but I think this year's is well below even those low water marks.
