If you want to meet Rafer just go to the Golden Nugget just about any weekend at 2 am and walk by a Pai Gow table. I've seen him my last 3 trips there.
I thought Rafer was a solid PG for a few years here. He was certainly more important to the team than a lot of people here admit IMO.
I met him like 2 or 3 times at Ra Sushi off Westheimer back when he was playing here. Pretty cool guy to be honest
Cool story and Rafer was a cool cat. But man...that teardrop of his would bring tears to my eyes. He sucked! lol
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Yup! Just thinking about the 07-08, 22 game win-streak team - the Rockets lost to Utah in 6 games. Rockets were 0-2 without Rafer and 2-2 with Rafer. However, game 6, Rafer ended up leaving the game early because of an injury, and was replaced with an OLD Bobby Jackson. Rafer got a lot of grief, but he was probably the best "true" PG the Rockets have had in recent history. They've gone through Aaron Brooks, Kyle Lowry, Goran Dragic, Jeremy Lin, and now Pat Bev since then.
Skip was solid. He grew a lot during his time with the Rockets. I was disappointed to see him get traded for Lowry, who hadn't shown much of anything up to that point. Clearly that was the right move in hindsight. But Skip had speed, handles, vision, and was a good defender on the ball. The only thing that was missing was shooting. He wasn't a star by any means, but he was definitely a competent PG and someone you could go to war with in the postseason. Orlando had better success in the Finals with Skip than with a broken down Jameer.
Very cool! Rafer's a nice guy - he came to our Network for a show one day & I told him I was a huge Rockets fan. We're not allowed to take photos with the guests though.
Love rafer alston. Hated his tear drop at times but best pure PG Yao Ming ever played with. Great ball handler and at setting the tempo of the offense. Also (kind of) met him one time in Downtown Houston as he was about to get into his BMW 6 series with his friend. Saw him from a distance (I was with some of my friends as welll) and yelled out "Whats up Rafer?!!" and waved. He looked back and said "Whats up!" waved back. Seems like a cool guy! Nice pics OP!
Yep, and thus ended the Brooks should start over Alston argument, but started the Lowry should start over Brooks arguments. Soon to be replaced by Dragic over Lowry, and (surprisingly, quickly) followed by Bev over Lin. Culminating in Lawson over Bev.
You know, I'm going to go on a bit of a rant here... ...seeing all this newfound love and appreciation (or respect, at least) for Rafer Alston around here. I remember, personally, that Alston got the lion's share of the hate floating around the Rockets from 2005 to 2009. ...well, maybe the lion cub's share (there was bigger game to target, after all)... I always wondered what exactly Jeff Van Gundy liked about Rafer Alston. Because it seemed odd to me that everything that Alston excelled at offensively (ball-handling, passing, decision-making) was well above average from most NBA players, but those things rarely (if ever) got incorporated into the Rockets offense. I’m kidding, of course…Van Gundy loved Alston’s competitiveness and defensive ability… "Skip" had a very good college career at Fresno State, by the way... ...but Van Gundy never seemed to do much to accentuate what Alston did best on a consistent basis. Not that he necessarily should have…Alston wasn’t a star caliber player, no matter what they said about him on that And1 MixTape tour. And this goes into those factors of creating and building a team identity as much as shot charts do. Van Gundy didn't make very many missteps in his time as coach of the Rockets. People who believe Van Gundy helped shorten Yao Ming's career by moving him from the high-post/elbow down to the low blocks on offense just weren't paying attention. A large part of the reason why Van Gundy traded Steve Francis was to make that transition happen. Yao doesn't become the player he did if he continued to pretend that he could play in space, essentially, for extended periods of time and be effective, let alone dominant, for a man 7'6''. And the only way Francis could have played with Yao was for Yao to set high screens for him at foul line extended. Just not the best use of Yao at all. Rafer would be what's called a "facilitator" on offense nowadays...a player who excelled at getting people whose inclination was to score (either as slashers, jumpshooters, or post players)... ..except that, aside from Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady, the Rockets didn't have anyone else who could consistently hit the floor if they fell out of bed every morning. But to focus on developing Yao Ming into a virtually unstoppable low-post player (the absolutely right thing to do) meant that Yao would need to be surrounded by consistently good jump shooters in the half court sets, if you wanted to avoid the frequently unsightly occurrences of college zone defenses effectively neutering your all-star pivot man. The Rockets, defensively under Van Gundy, were very good (and they had to be, in order to keep Yao out of foul trouble, because as much as a deterrent presence as Yao was, he did lack for quickness...and having a parade of people flying at the basket every other second would have been a bad sight, too)... ...but too often, they could not take advantage of that defense in transition for easy baskets...something that Alston would have done very well with, if he had the players to consistently run with him. I don't know if Alston created or controlled game tempo for the Rockets...not so much as he made sure that the Rockets ran their sets as often as possible (playing the game at Yao's speed, essentially)...he certainly could have if given the opportunity (and a way to kind of see what I mean is to look at Rajon Rondo…people tend to play at HIS speed…meaning that they move and cut in the half-court, and they sprint like demons in transition…Rondo will get them the ball if they’re open…) ..but the obvious lack of offensive variety in the Rockets' offense at that time doomed them as much as injuries and inconsistency did. There were more than a few rumblings, I remember, about who should shoulder the playmaking abilities for the team. Ideally, that role would have fallen to Alston by default...but again, you have the problem of too many players around him not being good enough to finish offensive opportunities he might be able to create for them... ...and the fact that Alston was, at best, mediocre offensively himself. People lament the poor efficiency that Alston had with finishing offense for himself (rare to see a guard in a pick-and-roll situation not have ANY consistent individual offensive answer, like we often did see with Alston, for instance)... ..and Van Gundy was, of course, euphoric about the passing, ball-handling and decision-making of McGrady (not to mention the fact that even if McGrady was not having a particularly effective night offensively, he still garnered enormous amounts of attention from defenses)... What I would have liked to have seen more of from the Rockets was less of McGrady and Yao on the same side of the floor (whether in pick-and-roll or post-up sets), and more of Alston on the same side as Yao in those sets... ...there often didn't seem to be enough movement from the Rockets on offense, I thought, because too often, with both Yao and McGrady being very willing passers, the defenses would force the ball away from them and over to the other side of the floor, where somebody else was bound to miss a shot or make a mistake... ...but because Alston was so poor offensively himself, it was difficult to create that balance of having Yao play on one side of the floor and McGrady on the other... ...(people will remember that when Hakeem and Clyde were reunited in 1995, and how quickly and how well that worked--aside from the fact that they were two of the 30 greatest players in NBA history--it was largely because neither of them occupied the same half of the court at the same time)... ...as it happens, once Rick Adelman arrived, he changed the team's offensive approach (mainly by being able to play both Yao and McGrady in similar fashion, but with expanded roles for other players), and Alston surprisingly thrived, if only briefly... ...but I think that the reason why things couldn't last or develop before Adelman arrived was because the team couldn't build any kind of identity, with its two "star" players routinely in and out of the lineup. You see often that teams may need some time to grow and jell...to understand and take each other's measure...where there's not as much need to dictate as there is to anticipate... ...chemistry, in other words...and you don't build any chemistry with broken chemistry kits... ...Alston, as I said back then and I'll say now, was much better than most of us knew or believed. But because the Rockets needed much more than what they had available, his weaknesses were too often exposed. ...and when you see the worst of something too many times, it's very easy to forget that there were some very good things, too...
I met Rafer at a casino in Lake Charles last year. Talked with him about the 08-09 team. SUPER NICE!! Took a photo too, I'd post it, but I'm terrible with that junk.
