What a fantastic find. Thanks! Our 41-41 Rockets, playing before a loud, packed Hofheinz Pavilion, take their only win against a great Celtics team. They're the defending champions and won 60 games that season (yet end up losing in the EC Finals to the Washington Bullets, with Elvin Hayes and Wes Unseld). This clip is of better quality than we usually see from that era. Rudy T shows us his sweet hook shot here. He had 28 to go with 12 boards. The other starters were his road roommate Calvin Murphy playing point, excellent SG Mike Newlin, SF Ed Ratleff and center Kevin Kunnert. Some interesting trivia - our coach's father, Paul Silas, is there playing 37 minutes at the 4 for the Celtics, much of it going up against Rudy. Silas went to the All Star game that season as a reserve.
I was a huge Ralph fan and it was a shame that injuries ruined his career. He was the original unicorn. My personal favorite Rocket memory... What a great team that should have been a dynasty.
I remember watching that game and being on the edge of my seat the entire time .... that series with the Celtics was pretty epic too. What broke that team up was Lew and Wiggins getting busted on drug tests. Sweet Lew was really important to that team, he never missed a game over 3 years and scored in double figures in every game. Losing both those dudes was too much to overcome .... after that the injuries took out Ralph.
