Barkley was measured at 6' 4 1/2" for the Barcelona Olympics - many of the NBA players measured shorter than their NBA-listed heights. That's common for the NBA though, most players are shorter than their listed height. There's no way Hakeem was 7', for example.
malone needs to give up just like barkley did, what pride is it to win a championship the way he is trying to do it now. He couldn't do it with stockton so he has to jump on the laker bandwagon. Barkley could have gotten in shape and joined the spurs or lakers and won a championship. malone is just a hypocrit
I agree more with the Freak here. The Rockets in 93 & 94 were very evenly matched with Seattle. In 93 they would have eliminated Seattle in Seattle had Maxwell's shot gone down. The 94 Rockets team was even better with Horry and Cassell being more steady and with the arrival of Elie. Seattle might have beaten the Rockets in 94, but personally I doubt it, I was glad not to find out though. Also, the way the 95 team got rolling I think it was pretty clear once they got clicking in the Phx series in there was no team including Seattle that could have played with them. 2 things killed that Rockets team. The inability to simulatanously acquire a solid all around vet PG like Harper or Porter (who I think were available as FAs that yera or the year before) and the fact Hakeem's defensive ability had really started falling by 96. Not Hakeem's fault, he was still one of the best players in the league, but it was the first time since his rookie year he fell below 3BPG and also had his lowest SPG since that same rookie year. He was no longer the most dominant defensive force probably to ever play basketball no longer a player who could almost single handidly decimate the opponents interior game, and he steadily declined from there.
Seattle in 93 won in 7 games in OT where the home team won all games -- the homecourt advantage was decided in Seattle's favor when, after the final buzzer had sounded and the Rockets season had ended, the officials allowed a tip-in by David Robinson that was clearly after the buzzer. Draw from that whatever conclusion what you will. This whole "seattle.. in 94" argument is absurd...teams that don't make it out of the first round can't "would have' beaten anybody, especially the eventual champion, because they didn't even bring enough to get past inferior opposition in round 1. If they "would have" beaten the Rockets, they "would have" been able to get past round 1 -- bad matchup or not.
Didn't Kenny and Max have @3 shots between them at the end to win Game 7 but couldn't get any to go down.
another nice article about the sheer love of karl malone... http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=wiley/040527
