How did you feel about the Rockets in the early 90s?

Before '95, they were Dream and 4 other guys on the court.

It took a while for Dream to have any sort of confidence in his teammates (offensively). But when it finally started clicking, it seemed Dream was ALWAYS a constant, dominating force and someone else on the team would step up. Could be anyone on any given day.

'95 we had Clyde. After that we had Barkley. If we coulda had a healthy Dream-Clyde-Barkley team, we probably woulda had 1 more ring. But by then Clyde & Dream were fading.

Honestly, before '95 I think we were overachievers. Definitely proving that the whole could be greater than the sum of its parts.

 

Houston was paying it's dues at the time. Everybody does. We were lucky that Seattle was the team that kept beating us. It made us stronger.

 

George Karl's Sonics team played ZONE defense on Hakeem when it was not allowed in the NBA. They would double team Olajuwon before he could get the ball and illegal defense was seldomly called. The refs would call it once or twice but would stop after that.

 

1) Seattle 's full court pressure, aka "the Glove", flusters the Rockets' guards. We either lost the ball or had not time to set up/ execute a good play after. We often took bad shots after breaking their press.

2) Seattle's half-court double team/ switching defense was faster than the Rocket's passing and execution. (No other team in the NBA was as quick as Seattle at the time). Hakeem never was a great passer. Instead of throwing the ball away, he ended up shooting over double team a lot. (Since he was a great scorer, he could still score a lot but they made him work for his points)

 

Beat me to it. Sonics had our number because our offense relied on zones being illegal. Karl took the approach that the refs couldn't call everything and played a zone anyway. As a match-up, the Sonics were much tougher for the Rockets than anyone else was; and the Sonics were tougher on us than they were against anyone else.

 

Good explanation ragingFire! The way I see it was, it didn't matter if G. Karl used the ZONE. Our offense wasn't built to beat it. Why? Well...

1) Akeem centric team.
2) Very few plays called for any of our guards
3) Not much cutting or motion because, well, Hakeem didn't play like that. He wouldn't pass. Not unless it was predicated on him getting the ball back.
4) Our guards were quick. But the Soncis guards were QUICKER! And they had guards that could take our guards off the screen or dribble. We didn't.

Once Rudy took over, Hakeem started to pass. But it was a 3 point pass, not a cutting or guard play. Even then, we sucked at playing against the Sonics. I'd say the only time we really started playing the Soncis well was after getting Charles Barkley.

We had a 13 game losing streak vs the Sonics until the 1995-96 season. After we got Chuck, I think we beat them 4 straight that year. I have three of them on tape.