Whoa! Now we're talking about retiring his number? C'mon people. Even if the Rockets win a title with Deke on the roster, you can't retire his number. His best years were with the Nuggets and Hawks. Being a great backup center and reaching a milestone while playing for this organization are not sufficient reasons to say no other player will ever wear your number.
I think another reason the Rockets retired Clyde's number was to light a fire under the asses of the Blazers organization who had inexplicably not retired #22 yet. I believe they finally woke up and retired it the following season.
This is a stupid analogy. The reason that this doesnt happen is because there are 8 playoff spots in a conference. If there were only 4 playoff spots available, I can actually see it happening.
My bad... got the NFL and NBA mixed up again. Anyways, people need to stop looking at divisions in the NBA... THEY DO NOT MATTER!!! Each conference plays the same schedule. There are two conferences, 8 teams from each one make it. If only 4 made it, it would be a BIG DEAL for all 4 of them. The only thing I dislike about the NBA is how the regular season is really rendered meaningless because of the lack of an unbalanced schedule and the amount of playoff teams that do make it. Making the playoffs in baseball is an honor in and of itself.
