Help with archive from Chronicle

Turning point
Rockets trace character, titles to 15-0streak in 1993

By JONATHAN FEIGEN
Staff

The details are blurry now, so many seasons, such tumultuous times forced in between those heady days and the fifth anniversary that slipped by.

There was the narrow win at Phoenix, the two-point overtime victory at Utah. The showdown/Finals preview at New York. There have been too many games since for every night five years ago to stand out over other memories. Instead, Hakeem Olajuwon remembers the feeling.

"It was," he said, "easy to win."

If it didn't turn around the franchise, the Rockets' season-opening 15-game winning streak five years ago showed it had changed. The standard, the expectations had been elevated.

Before the championships, before the uniforms were midnight blue, the Rockets began the season winning their first 15 games, lost at Atlanta and won seven more. And ever since that first month of the season five years ago, they considered only a championship good enough.

"After what happened the year before, we were ready, focused, determined not just as individuals but as a team," Olajuwon said. "We picked it up where we left off. The communication was just there. We were prepared. And after a while, we had something to defend.

"We won games three, four, five. `We have something going here. Let's keep it here.' There was a concept. We didn't want to lose it. It got to eight, nine, 10. We knew we had something to defend. We had the drive. Everything was working. Everything kept building. We had something to keep.

"Fourteen. 15. When you're playing as a team, you want to go somewhere, to be a championship team. Everything comes easy because no one is forcing the issue. Everybody is doing the right thing. We were just playing, having fun on the court and off the court. It flows. And it's easy to win."

The Rockets' 15-game winning streak matched the longest run to begin an NBA season, tying the Washington Capitols of 1948-49. For the Rockets, it matched the best run in franchise history, set just the season before.

But the transformation of the Rockets did not begin with the 15-0 start to the 1993-94 season. That is when the change became public, obvious. The Rockets changed the season before when events transformed the team into champions-in-waiting, and the franchise into one that would accept nothing less.

The previous season, Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich's first full season as head coach, the Rockets had a seven-game losing streak that forced examination of their style of play and tested their faith in their system.

They finished the regular season with a 41-11 run that raised expectations. But they lost the Western Conference semifinals in Game 7 in overtime in Seattle, leaving them hungry for more and determined not to enter another crucial series without the home-court advantage.

"As a team, that summer we grew," former Rockets forward Otis Thorpe said. "Everybody had a year under their belt with Rudy. That maturity came to the team. We finished up the second half of the season better than anybody in the league, and over the summer we had a chance to think about what we could accomplish."

To Tomjanovich, victory was built upon defeat. In that seven-game losing streak, the Rockets lost to some of the dregs of the NBA: Golden State (twice) and Denver. And Tomjanovich, anxious to install his philosophies, called meetings that changed his team.

"That (losing streak) was the turning point of that team," Tomjanovich said. "We went through that seven-game losing streak, and it was to all sorts of teams. We were getting our butts beat all over the place. We had gotten into a mindset we could just take the floor. We had confidence in our offense, but we weren't concentrating on our defense. People were scoring 130 points on us. We had three or four team meetings. We would have tape sessions. I would say, `We have to become a team, and a defensive team.'

"We said the right things but went out and got beat again. We got pushed into a corner and came back home to play some tough teams and played Utah and had a great defensive game there, and we just built on that. The rest of that season, we went 41-11. Then, you add 15 in a row and 22-1 (to start the next season). That's where the foundation of the Rockets was built, how we win. They understood defense had to be a very big part of how we do it."

But the 1992-93 regular season ended with an overtime loss at San Antonio in which the game-winning basket was shot just after the buzzer. The Rockets believed they lost the home-court advantage on a bad call and that they had lost to Seattle because they didn't have the home-court advantage.

The Rockets had won their three home games in the series by an average of 14 points and had two late shots at the victory in Game 7. Combined with the strong finish to the season, the Rockets used the early finish to drive them through the summer and preseason practices to the rapid start to the 1993-94 season.

"When you see the disappointment like Game 7, when we lost the series in Seattle after we won three games pretty handily, we thought if we got home-court advantage, it would have been different," said Rockets vice president Carroll Dawson, then an assistant coach. "That was a motivation. We felt not having home-court advantage cost us, and we didn't want it to happen again.

"I felt we could have gone (to the NBA Finals) the year before. The confidence started to rise. Everybody saw the potential. The system was wholeheartedly endorsed by the players. Our talent level was good, but more importantly the chemistry was really good."

The streak began innocently enough, against non-contenders New Jersey, Portland, Golden State and Minnesota. The Rockets beat Charles Barkley and the Phoenix Suns 99-95 in the fifth game before a home sellout, then a rarity (only one of the other five home games in the streak was sold out).

A three-game road trip to Philadelphia, New Jersey and Indiana pushed the steak to eight, the Rockets overcoming a 12-point fourth-quarter deficit to beat the 76ers. The Rockets whipped the Clippers at home in the fourth game in six nights. They beat the Bulls, the three-time defending NBA champions who were without Michael Jordan at the start of his baseball sabbatical, 100-93.

The greatest test was expected to be at Utah, in the second game of a back-to-back. The Rockets won 95-93 in overtime, Olajuwon getting 29 points and 17 rebounds. With the streak at 11, the Rockets remained on the road to beat the Kings and Clippers, nearly letting the streak end on the fourth game in five nights, an 82-80 win in Los Angeles.

They ended the month with an impressive 102-91 win at home against the Bucks, only the second time in 20 years any NBA team had an unbeaten month. Olajuwon was named Player of the Month as a matter of course, having averaged 25.4 points, 13.5 rebounds, 4.1 blocked shots and 3 .3 assists.

But the team was more balanced than it had been in previous years. Vernon Maxwell had averaged 14.6 points and a team-leading 4.9 assists. Thorpe averaged 14 points, making 61.1 percent of his shots, and 9.9 rebounds. Robert Horry averaged 10.4 points.

Rookie Sam Cassell started four games when Kenny Smith was hurt, averaging 11 points in the starts. Mario Elie, in his first season with the Rockets, and Scott Brooks combined to average 16.1 points off the bench. And the Rockets played the sort of defense Tomjanovich had called for in all those tape sessions the year before: No opponent reached 100 points or shot 50 percent.

But even with the Rockets 14-0, the Knicks were considered the heirs apparent to the Bulls. Knicks forward Anthony Mason predicted the end of the streak and referred to it in the past tense. Knicks fans in Madison Square Garden chanted, "14-1, 14-1." The Rockets responded with one of their best games of the season, leading by 10 at halftime and by 19 going into the fourth quarter of a 94-85 victory.

"The 15-game winning streak changed the way people looked at us, in Houston and around the league," Dawson said. "And our confidence decidedly went up."

In the streak, nine wins had come on the road, three in the second game of back-to-backs. The Rockets had traveled to both coasts twice. And though the travel was grueling, it was in many ways a key to building the team that would win its first NBA championship six months later.

"After a home game, you win and your team goes home," Tomjanovich said. "On the road, you're out there together. You're on the plane going to the next city or you're on the road and you probably go out with a couple of team members. That brings you close together."

The next night, the team had too much togetherness. The flight to Atlanta was delayed and did not arrive until 3 :30 a.m. The team did not get to sleep until dawn and sleepwalked through a 133-111 defeat.

But the streak proved not to be a fluke. The Rockets won seven consecutive games before losing again. And though they eventually would slump, briefly even losing their Midwest Division lead, they had been changed.

...

`The Streak' revisited

Highlights of the Rockets' 15-game winning streak to start the 1993-94 season:

Matched the franchise's best-ever win streak and the league's best to start a season (equaling the Washington Capitols' 15-game streak to begin the 1948-49 season).

Nine of the 15 wins came on the road.

Three of the wins came on the road in the second night of back-to-back games, one at Utah in overtime after beating the Bulls in Houston the night before. New Jersey had one day off before its game against the traveling Rockets; the Jazz and Clippers each had three days off before playing the Rockets.

In one stretch, the Rockets had four games in six nights. In another, they won eight in 13 nights with six coming on the road.

The Rockets played on both coasts twice.

No team scored 100 points or made as many as half its shots against the Rockets during the streak.

Only seven of 15 opponents reached 90 points.

The Rockets had only five games decided by five points or fewer, beating the Suns 99-95 at home, the 76ers 88-84 in Philadelphia, the Jazz 95-93 in overtime in Utah, the Kings 92-89 in Sacramento and the Clippers 82-80 in Los Angeles.

Nine of the 15 opponents would become playoff teams.

...

Breaking down `The Streak'

Game by game

Date .. Opponent .. Score ..

Nov. 5 .. New Jersey .. 110-88 ..

Nov. 7 .. at Portland .. 106-92 ..

Nov. 9 .. at Golden State .. 102-93 ..

Nov. 11 .. Minnesota .. 107-99 ..

Nov. 13 .. Phoenix .. 99-95 ..

Nov. 15 .. at Philadelphia .. 88-84 ..

Nov. 16 .. at New Jersey .. 90-84 ..

Nov. 18 .. at Indiana .. 99-83 ..

Nov. 20 .. LA Clippers .. 108-86 ..

Nov. 23 .. Chicago .. 100-93 ..

Nov. 24 .. at Utah .. 95-93* ..

Nov. 26 .. at Sacramento .. 92-89 ..

Nov. 27 .. at LA Clippers .. 82-80 ..

Nov. 30 .. Milwaukee .. 102-91 ..

Dec. 2 .. at New York .. 94-85 ..

*-overtime

...

Best overall starts

Year .. Team .. Record ..

1969-70 .. New York Knicks .. 23-1 ..

1993-94 .. Houston Rockets .. 22-1 ..

1966-67 .. Philadelphia 76ers .. 26-2 ..

1970-71 .. Milwaukee Bucks .. 17-1 ..

...

Best undefeated starts

Year .. Team .. Record ..

1993-94 .. Houston Rockets .. 15-0 ..

1948-49 .. Washington Capitols .. 15-0 ..

1957-58 .. Boston Celtics .. 14-0 ..

1982-83 .. Seattle SuperSonics .. 12-0 ..

1990-91 .. Portland Trail Blazers .. 11-0 ..

1964-65 .. Boston Celtics .. 11-0 ..

1993-94 .. Seattle SuperSonics .. 10-0 ..

1972-73 .. Boston Celtics .. 10-0 ..

...

Rockets' top win streaks

No. .. Dates ..

15 .. Nov. 5-Dec. 2, 1993 ..

15 .. Feb. 13-March 18, 1993 ..

13 .. March 3 -28, 1991 ..

11 .. April 1-22, 1993 ..

 

Thanks for coming through Codell..Thinking about the streak is a helpful way to heal the wounds of this years dissapointing season.
During the streak I remember thinking, this team is something special, something different from all of the Rocket teams of the past.
It also points out how much better the 93 team was than the current version. OTs stats were better than Yaos, and OT got most of his points on putbacks..nobody was tring to get him the ball. The Dream dominated. In game 15 Pat Riley tried Pat Ewing one on one with the Dream..The Dream demolished him,
on Ewings home floor. It was a confidence builder that carried over into the 93-94 finals.
The Atlanta thing was a bad break, Atlanta was the weakest team we played, the delayed flight from NY on a back-to-back ruined a streak that should have been 23 games in a row.

 

I was at that Spurs game to end the 92-93 season, when a Robinson put back after the freakin buzzer cost us the home court advantage in the Seattle series.

 

You can argue that we would have had 3 championships instead of 2 because of that "shot". I think we would have beaten the sonics in a home game 7, easily taken care of the Suns, and beaten the bulls for the title. Our record against the bulls 1st 3 championship teams was pretty good if I remember right. Something like 4-2, maybe?

 

I believe it was 5-1.

 

i still wonder what would it be when we defeated the sonics and the jazz back then and faced the bulls in the finals. i bet we can make jordan have a run for those 2 championships coz mayn, they got nothin for hakeem.. who they got back then, longley?? please..