Revisionist History - Simmons mentions Rockets

exactly my friend...we didn't need barkley.

1) below average D
2) took shots away from hakeem.
3) lost 2 good role players(cassell + horry)
4) cancer in the locker room

sure barkley helped us get past sonics....but the end goal was not to just beat the sonics....but to win it all.

I'd rather have gotten a better point guard, and a banger Power forward who didn't need the ball in his hands.

Dream was still good enough to be first option over barkely. Sure barkley was better at getting to the line, but overall, i'd rather have hakeem as the primary post option, not barkley.

But oh well, the past is the past.

 

All except for the fact that maybe ONLY (even possibly definitely) KG makes HOF. Pierce/Allen = good? Without a doubt! 3 HOF'rs? Nah.

 

That article was bullsh!t. The only reason we lost game 6 was because of the illegal pick by Malone, not Malloney's play.

And here I thought that I was the only person who remembered these as key points. Man, I wish we would have taken that trade for Dream, who went to Toronto anyway.

 

This is a revisionist history right here!

 

IIRC, another thing that motivated the trade was that the Rockets didn't have much to spend and Sam was making a lot of noise about cashing in as soon as his contract was up. There was a very good chance the Rockets were going to lose him if they didn't trade him first. As for Horry, he was a nice role player to have in the playoffs, but the Rockets needed more than a role player. They needed a guy who would step up and make people pay for running that illegal D on Hakeem. It was pretty clear by that point that Horry was never going to become "The Next Scottie Pippen", as some called him in his first couple of years. You put it together and those two suddenly become expendable and trading for Barkley looks like a good deal to make while the Rockets still had a window open.

 

One thing that article doesn't mention was that Sam Cassell would have stayed a Rocket along with Barkley and Mutombo would have went to the Suns but David Stern blocked the deal and made them change it.

 

You act like Kevin Willis would have joined the Rockets. One of the main reasons he joined the Rockets was because Barkley talked him into coming. Otherwise he likely would have gone elsewhere. And with Cassell and/or Horry on the way out because of contract negotiations that Rockets team was on its last legs.

 

That Jazz team was a completely different Jazz team then the one the Rockets beat during their title run. The Rockets barely survived the Jazz in the first round and the later Jazz teams were deeper, stronger, more athletic and balanced and more experienced then the one the championship Rockets played.

 

Not me. I screamed "Bloody NOOOOO!" at the television when announced, and I still cringe over that trade.

 

The Rockets were a better team than Utah. I don't care what anyone says, the refs ****ed them that year. Look at the tapes. 1998 proved what they could with halfway-fair officiating. Barkley going down was the only reason they didn't get the revenge win.

The fix was in for Chicago. If New York hadn't have been screwed against Miami (a team they knocked off like three straight years after that despite being seeded lower and injury-riddled), they would have at least pushed Chicago to seven games in the ECF, if not defeat them.

 

How exactly would drafting Lewis have offended Pippen? The guy was nowhere near NBA-starting level when he came into the league. Pippen, for all his jackassness has never been one to hold down younger players (as long as the final play isn't drawn up for them). He was quoted as wanting to work with Rodrick Rhodes for crying out loud.

 

Anyway, back to the original article, you can't fault the Rockets for having to go with Maloney at point. They signed Brent Price to shore up the point guard position, and AT WORST, he was a more athletic, more experienced version of Maloney. It's not like the Rockets consciously went out and tried to get an undrafted unathletic white point guard to start for them, he was a last resort they were stuck with.

Now not trading Price for Derek Harper midseason, that could be argued as being boneheaded...

 

i would be satisfied if we can get a future protected first from boston for rafer alston.

 

Greatest dynasty? How about perhaps one of the more storied rivalries in the Western Conference in the 1980s between the Rockets and the Lakers that didn't happen? With those teams playing each other more frequently in the playoffs, maybe Magic Johnson and the Lakers don't win as many championships as they did.

For the 1980s, I will always remember the Rockets being the only Western Conference team to ever knock the Lakers out of the playoffs, which were the only two times the Rockets ever met the Lakers in the playoffs (1981 & 1986) that decade.

 

The 1997 Rockets were a vastly superior team to the 1996 Rockets.

 

me to, and have been with them since.

 

Matt Maloney was schooled by John Stockton if by "schooled" you mean beaten up, held, poked and battered without nary a whistle blown. At one point I remember Maloney came away from a Stockton interaction bloody with no foul called. He was quite literally abused that whole series.

 

He's from Massachusettes, but he's lived in Los Angeles for a while...

 

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