You're lucky cabb. At least you live in Houston. Imagine being a Rocket fan in Pennsylvania. No radio talk shows, no newspapers, never have met a fellow Rocket fan up here. The internet was a godsend. The chat room was my only source for Rockets games. I had WebTv and couldn't access audio feeds. Antisonic, rockHEAD and RoCkO were the only regulars back then. keeley, Surguy and Clutch would pop in at times.
The one thing I remember from"back in the day" was the loneliness of working an all night shift with only myself and one or two other posters online. At least once a week,some troll would show up late at night and try to "impress us".... Aaahh, the days of the Sergeant at Arms........check out this thread from 2000, at 1:15 in the morning. http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=5976
Now I remember the Rhodes article. I think Leventhal offed himself, very sad. Sad about Rhodes too, I thought he was at least a top-15 rookie in 1997-98, a surprising pick to be sure, but he had to start a few times and acquitted himself well. I laugh every time I see your name, cabbage, because during the Lockout year Matt from OnHoops put up a poll that went like this: "We're sick of calling the Lockout "the Lockout," so we've decided to change the name. You get to choose the new one. The choices are: "Frank" "Water Closet." "&" "The Cabbage" "Benoit Benjamin" And "the Cabbage" won. We had to write "serious" articles for a week or two after with lines like, "Hunter and player agent David Falk warned the NBAPA to save up during the 1997-98 season, because they were convinced the Cabbage would last in upwards of six-ten months."
Isn't he Desert Scar? I seem to remember a post where SS explained his switch to DS. Could be wrong...but don't think I am.
Imagine living in another country then. On the other side of the world. With very little to no Internet access till I started Uni. Thats how I first stumbled across this site. I was and always will be a Barkley fan and joined the Rockets fanbase when Charles was traded here. After searching for articles and reports on the Barkley trade and the Kevin Willis signing, I finally came across www.cluthcity.com. Have since witnessed it develop into ClutchCity.net, and now into ClutchFans.net. Have always been somewhat of a lurker, don't really contribute much to Rockets discussion as such (well, with no pay-tv and only being able to watch the games until well after the next 2 or 3 games have been played - courtesy of Rockets2K) cause in all honesty I don't have much to contribute. But still enjoy fans perspective on things, who played well, what needs to change, how soon we should fire Van Gundy and whats the best players we can get in return for trading Yao. In the past 7-8 years since I found this site, it is just about the only site that I make sure I visit at least once a day.
Well, I could make you feel even worse and tell you I was talking Rockets and Oilers on BBS's and Internet forums back in the mid-to-late 80's. The way I found this forum in August(?) of 1999 was because of a posting someone made on a Houston Rockets Usenet newsgroup about the Steve Francis trade.
The first time I came here was in 1999..I wanted to know who the hell Steve Francis was and how big of a deal we were actually talking about
While doing a search for old threads on Usenet, I came across a thread in 1997 where Clutch and I posted at the exact same time on the same day. His sig had a link to ClutchCity.com. Now why I didn't click that link back then I'll never know... lol. I also found the link on Usenet where Clutch posts that Clutch City '97 is moving to clutchcity.com. Nostalgia's kinda cool... *EDIT* : and now I found a post in August 1999 by Turbo asking people to join CC.com for Rockets talk. It may have been the post that pulled me here. Yeah, nostalgia's cool...
I am not sure if it was ever *really* verified....but he was reportedly in bad health last time he posted and was never heard from again, and evidently emails have never been answered...so I guess it is kinda assumed. as for HP...afaik, he hasnt been officially banned(tho Im sure Clutch will correct me if Im wrong)...he says that he has taken off voluntarily in favor of having more of a real life offline. His last posting was in the Classified forum regarding tickets. I know for me the thing I remember most about the early days here were being so impressed with the depth of knowledge the original members had....I didnt even think of registering back then since I knew I would have nothing to contribute..... the things I miss most? No more special columns from the Crew...Keg Notes and The Truth were always the first thing I would check when I visited....hopeing to see new ones.
Hey man, being a nerd gets you paid. (... the comeback to this is obvious... who's the loser that's gonna take a stab at it first?!)
i was the same way back then as well. i lurked for the most part, only posting occassionally, because everything i wanted/would've said had already been expressed.... usually much more intelligently then how i would've worded it. I did enjoy the Keg Notes.
I think I almost qualify as an old schooler (not to blow my own horn ) Back in the late nineties, when I still had the time, I used to keep track of the Rocket's salary cap situation and I had a website that summarized it ( http://rocketdavo.tripod.com ). The web page was even mentioned by Lance Z on 610am one day. I remember getting into some serious arguments over the Salary Cap and the Collective Bargaining Agreement with Heypartner, Refman and aelliot. Ahh, those were the days....
great memories... I had forgotten all about Tod the Bod... I used to go to the Launch Pad regularly. Deuce posted links to the original Clutch City '97 (before it even had its own domain name) and I would try to go there, but usually it just freaked me out. There were weird things on there like "Clutch Mario" and I couldn't figure out wtf was up with that. But when Deuce closed down the Launch Pad and told everybody to go over to Clutch City, I ran out of options. So here I've been ever since... I didn't post much before the Hangout, since others are a lot better at analyzing the games than I would be, but it was fun to read and occasionally come into the chat. The Truth and Keg Notes were great... ...and it is weird how many "kids" have grown up on this bbs. I remember one time when AntiSonic posted something that made me think, "how could our little AntiSonic have grown up so fast... isn't he only like 15... oh, that's right, it's been a while". And even that was a few years ago.
Clutch...I'll bet you could piece together some of the old archived stuff and current stuff and you would come up with a pretty darn good demonstration and reflection of how internet technology and web graphics have developed over the years!
I'm right there with you, I used to read the front page and links to stories everyday back when I was in college but never registered. I'll still never forget that Spurs April fools joke, Hell, I was pissed the whole day until I found out it was a joke
for some reason I was just thinking about some of the great meltdowns that have happened... One of the ones that stands out in recent history was the one thread that led to three bannings(that I know of)...SRJ, dimsie and Elvis. http://bbs.clutchfans.net/showthread.php?t=50680&page=1&pp=30
