Edit: I mean the guys we have right now HAVE the potential to one day surpass Ralph and Hakeem etc. Maybe even the best frontline ever?
Man, watching that Twin Towers vid brought back awesome memories over "what could have been." People forget just how athletic and smooth Ralph was for 7'4" That front line was scary good.
that is exactly what i was thinking when the question popped into my head. Ralhp and were Great with McGray but they both lacked power (in Akeem's early days) but with the 94 line up you had OT that was all power, Horry had the three and the hops, and Hakeem was just Hakeem.
The Big Three - Hakeem, Chuck, and Clyde Were it not for one episode of cheating and one freak injury to the arm of the RMoR this group could have gotten a pair of rings, and that is with the diminished returns from Olajuwon. A couple of championship would probably have smoothed things out between Barkley and Drexler to the point where Clyde would not have run away like a sissy girl after the '98 season and we could have avoided the hideous Pippen debacle.
Until Tmac/Swift/Yao win some championships, it's hard to beat Horry/Thorpe/Dream although Pip/Barkley/Dream would have been dangerous if they weren't past their primes.
Hakeem and Charles didn't compliment each other. It was an ill-conceived idea. As far as talent, yeah you can't argue with it but it didn't function well. The only way it would have worked is if Chuck would have checked his ego at the door and completely focused on rebounding and let Hakeem have the lane on offense. But you could see the friction. One time Dream comes down and set up on the left block the next time Barkley. It begin to look like they raced each other to get to the spot first. And I could have told you it wasn't going to work when the trade was made. Do you guys remember that first game Barkley had against Phoenix when he grabbed like 30 rebounds. Well maybe not that many. If he would have just focused on rebounding like that, it may have worked.
It doesn't seemed like Barkley was trying to get the left block. I remeber some tv commentator (I think I was Isiah Thomas) said the Rockets got great players, Hakeem, Barkley, etc, however they're not complimentary players, all like to operate on the left block.
Edit, I mean it does seemed like Barkley was trying to get to the left block and Hakeem liked to operate on the left block... What the hell is wrong with me today, whenever I try to type do it becomes don't, and does becomes doesn't. Must be the drink.
Akeem,Ralph,and Rodney In hindsight,if we had kept Ralph at center,and played Dream at PF,most likely Ralph doesn't go down,and this duo would have ruled for years.Such a shame to see Sampson play so well, only to be remembered by many as a bust,all because of his knees.I mean we were the only team in the 80's besides the Lakers to go to the Finals from the West.Ralph played a giant role on that second team,and figured to get better.
Olajuwon Buck "The Blade" Johnson Jim Peterson (remember his Kroger commercial where he was doing the spaztic poor man's dream shake?)
Um, in '96-'97 Chuck missed 30 games, Clyde missed 20 and they still won 57 (they were .500 without Sir Charles, about .800 with him). If they had all stayed healty, that could have been a 70 win team. As is, a Karl Malone bearhug kept them out of the NBA finals. There were certainly some redundancies, but to say that the idea was ill conceived and didn't function well is to ignore the results. Having both Dream and the Mound as unstoppable low post scorers meant that you did not wear one of them out and if one was having an off game you could turn to the other. It wasn't even the two of them that could not manage to coexist. It was Clyde's ego that got in the way of that threesome working long term (and the age issue).
I believe he had 33. That was an amazing game. But sad at the same time to see Horry struggling on the suns and playing for archnemesis Ainge as his coach.
oh, btw... I'll go with Hakeem, Horry, Elie from the '95 playoffs. But you can't really separate out the frontcourt on that team, because everything clicked so well as a unit and it was kind of hard to define who played what position.
