Houston Rockets Mount Rushmore

VSpan
Royce
Matt Maloney
and of course...
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with Tito Maddox, Bryce Drew and Ty Lawson being honorable mentions...

 

Elvin Hayes
Moses Malone
Calvin
Akeem
Yao

 

The question is which 2 of the 3 between Moses, Rudy T and Murph. Peak dominance versus longevity and post career repping.

Dream
Harden
Moses
Rudy T (coaching the clutch city teams gives him the edge)

Calvin Murphy barely on the outside

Yao at his peak was certainly a better player than Rudy T and Murphy, but he played far fewer games because he was always hurt and has basically severed ties with the city. He has no argument to be ahead of Moses who was elite in his time here.

The top 2, top 5, and top 6 are pretty much no real argument calls as far as I'm concerned. Next discussion would start after Yao

 

I didn’t factor in post-playing career ties at all in my picks (Dream, Harden, Moses, Calvin), but if I did I agree that RudyT probably makes it in before Calvin or Yao. Even focusing only on playing career, Rudy has a case that I probably underrated. Calvin playing 1000 games with the Rockets and making the HOF as a player gave him the edge to me (though part of that HOF consideration was likely due to his collegiate career).

 

Hakeem Olajuwon
James Harden
Moses Malone
Rudy T

Honorable Mentions: Calvin Murphy, Yao Ming. If you feel like Malone had more impact as a 76er, you can swap him for one of those two Rockets lifers. Its just hard not to include a MVP winner who carried us to the 81 finals.

 

Hakeem
RudyT
Harden
Murphy

Really hard to leave Yao out, but at the end of the day he didn't win anything and other guys had longer/better careers. I'd probably take him if you only factored in playing career, with RudyT being dropped out.

 

Hakeem
Yao
Murphy
Moses or Harden

 

Sorry to be a broken record, but if only factoring in playing career you'd take Yao over Moses?

 

Yes. I'm taking Yao being here longer into heavy consideration, despite not playing substantially more games (and fewer minutes) than Moses. But I get preferring Moses.

 

Agree with those leaving Yao out of the top 4.

 

Hakeem
Rudy
Calvin
Big Shot Bob