Your right about one, thing. Getting Tracy was just a illusion of having a contender. Keeping Steve and Cat would have actually gave us a team, with more heart and determination, more exciting to watch and left us with less gaping holes. The Tracy era has caused the Rockets bad karma and was a low in Rockets history.
You guys must be high to think that team was trending up. They pretty much peaked in 04, and based on the selfish play of Cat and Francis the team needed to be shook up. They won over 50 games the very next season and would have never done that with Francis running the show. Francis was a terrible point guard when he had to run an offense and not iso every possession. He was even worse on the fast break if he tried to pass he would dribble it off his knee. This team would never have won anything with him at point guard.
The point is this team never won anything with Tracy. He's was fool's gold, the fact was that he was a "me" person, with poor work habits. He was not a leader or one who inspired. The fact that some call Steve and Cat selfish can be understood at face value, but you have to understand they were the only players capable of putting the ball in the basket at a high percentage. They had no problem putting the team on their shoulders. Yao was still a rookie that hadn't come accustomed to the NBA yet. Remember all the turnovers Yao would fumble? Steve looked for Yao all the time, Yao couldn't get low post position. Don't act like Steve and Cat held Yao back, they took him under their wing. They were BFF's, I don't believe Tracy and Yao were ever that. And the Roxs only advanced in the playoffs with Tracy on the bench. Lol. Wasted years, horrible years, really hard to watch. We've been paying ever since.
Toward the end of Francis' tenure here even the radio (Peterson) announcers were making fun of him..."Steve goes in for another uncontested dipsey-doodle, over the head, under the leg shot for a turnover."
i seriously don't think t-mac was fools gold. its just that les did not do a good enough job surrounding mac n yao with talented role players. les felt like tracy was good enough to turn players jon barry, ryan bowen, scott padgett, another bums into servicable role players, and it just did not happen they way cd and les wanted it. rockets management did a terrible job looking for that third scorer to help mac n yao out, and when they finally got artest both our key stars ended up being injured as usual.
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Wow, was that video compiled on a Sinclair ZX Spectrum? I had one of those. They were great. They had a 256 x 192 pixel resolution and 8 colors.
Sorry, but: Brooks/Lowry McGrady/Wafer Battier/Artest Scola/Landry Yao/Deke ...is a much better team. It really is too bad that Deke got hurt. We would have gotten past the Lakers with him. If TMAC played as well, we would have been champions, IMO. That team was staaaacked.
