Kenny just said the Rockets may have 1 less championship if they had to play seattle in 94-95

Dude, the Rockets won a title in 1995. You mean 1996.

 

Good Article showing the Sonics matchup advantage

 

No i don't. I obviously meant regular season matchups. Do you really think I don't know when the Rockets won a championship?

ugh

 

did he mean 93/94? because the Sonics didn't really do anything in 94/95

 

No you didn't. If you had indicated "1994-95 regular season," then it would have been clear.

 

Man, that sweep was devastating. Even prior to that year, I remember the Sonics being one of our, if not the, toughest matchups for us. I'm glad Kenny can admit that.

Also, I still fear George Karl to this day.

 

Tinman on suicide watch.

 

He was right. We couldn't stop Sam Perkins and Schrempf (sp?) for a few years and we nearly lost to the Nuggets that year if it wasn't for Clyde's miracle shot that kept us going. You can't forget about GP and Kemp of course...

 

"No mention at all that the way the Sonics defended the Rockets was actually against the illegal defense rules of the NBA?"

^posted by someone in the comments section. Can someone elaborate on this for me?

 

95-96 doesn't exist in my Basketball mind. I've wiped it out. Same w/ 96-97.
Those were our years to return to the finals and face the Bulls! OUR YEARS! OUR YEARS DAMNIT! (Don't cry, don't cry bruh, not now!)

 

It was always a contentious issue then that the George Karl Sonics WAY bent the rules of illegal defense.

(I might NOT be accurate)
By official rule then, you could NOT DOUBLE TEAM players who DO NOT have the ball in their hands. You ONLY can double a player AFTER they receive the ball. Also a defender HAD to be guarding a man, you couldn't have some roving defender in space NOT guarding anyone in particular.

Basically its requiring just man-to-man defense, no switching off unless you're giving help d on the actual ball handler. Zone defense wasnt legally allowed until early 2000s. (You couldn't do any 2-man fronting defense on Yao Ming WITHOUT the ball then)

But the Sonics always ran a quasi-zone defense against Hakeem. Some guys were clearly in that in-between 'I'm not guarding anyone in SPECIFIC" space sagging WAY off their man ready to help on Hakeem. You'd think that Rockets 3 point shooting would be natural "zone buster" neutralizer. But it didnt happen that way. But give Sonics credit for finding a wrinkle and daring the refs.

 

He has a point.

I just remember how incredibly difficult it was to get Dream the ball down low. Since the Sonics played a zone defense that was hardly ever called out by the refs.

 

Karl admitted they played a zone.

They did it so much, the refs quit calling it.

 

oh I remember that and I remember when Walter Mondale was president and when Isiah Thomas was on the Dream team

 

if they called it every single time , Dream would get 30 free throws a game.

 

Any of you people who forgot history figured out that the ultimate demise of the Sonics was Shawn Kemp getting fat?

 

You know what's funny, people keep mentioning the Sonics in 93-94 but guess what, we were much closer to playing the Nuggets. And guess what else, the Nuggets were a really tough match up for us as well and they could've also prevented us from getting to the Finals.

 

Didn't the weight gain start his 2nd season in Cleveland when he got hurt? He still played solid with them though. I think he led them to the playoffs as their clear cut leader right?

I really don't remember though. Was he a free agent or did he get traded to the Cavs?

 

Its no secret that the sonics were the rocket's kryptonite. Its kind of like if the Mavs won in 07 some people might say that if they played the warriors they wouldn't have won. Its all irrelevent though because nobody remembers the specifics, its all about the trophy.

The Heat maybe the best team and were last year too, but the bulls were clicking much better and Rose got injured. They had an easy path to the finals and some may say that if rose didn't get injured Lebron doesn't win his first. But nobody cares, the results are what everybody remembers.

 

It's possible but it's not like the Sonics dominated the Rockets in 93 it went to 7 games.

Just an interesting "what if"