Rockets say beating Blazers supersedes any subplots..

Rockets say beating Blazers supersedes any subplots
By JONATHAN FEIGEN
Copyright 1999 Houston Chronicle

PORTLAND, Ore. -- Perhaps if the new, happy Chuck allowed himself to be drawn into the petty personality drama he would no longer be so happy. Having unburdened himself of the frustration he said had been welling inside him, Charles Barkley refused to revisit the Scottie Pippen divorce, even if tonight he must visit Pippen.

Rebuttal, no pun intended, is not the point.

"It's not about me and Scottie," Barkley said of tonight's meeting with the Portland Trail Blazers. "It's the Trail Blazers and the Rockets."

Barkley said he has not spoken to Pippen since Pippen blasted him, as the Rockets finalized his trade to the Trail Blazers, by ripping everything from Barkley's work habits to "his fat butt."

Barkley said he has no plans to chat when they share a court tonight, never mind finding out if Pippen truly would not offer an apology even at gunpoint.

"No, I don't think there is (a need to talk)," Barkley said.

Actions, of course, would say much more, and not only for the player Pippen ripped from head to backside on his way out of town. The Rockets bring a 3-10 record to the Rose Garden to face the team with the league's best record (11-2) after completing a six-game road trip with a win over the Timberwolves on Wednesday.

The Rockets maintain they are far better than their record. But a victory tonight would prove that much more than the rout of the Mavericks on Tuesday.

"They're playing really well," Barkley said of the Trail Blazers. "They've got the best record in the league, so that means they're pretty good. They're going to make a big deal out of me and Scottie. But we got a lot of guys who got traded from there, so it's a big game. I expect them to be good and I expect us to meet the challenge."

But even if Barkley showed little interest in proving a personal point, a win would demonstrate something about the player Pippen had said he could not win with, and the players the Trail Blazers sent to the Rockets to get Pippen.

"There's a whole bunch of things going on," Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich said. "Those guys were there before. There's only a couple guys who were here with Scottie. There's a lot of subplots.

"Whatever can motivate us, corn flakes or crises in the Middle East, anything to get us fired up, I'll take it."

But like Barkley, most of the characters in the subplots did not seem interested in playing the role of jilted forwards.

"I look forward to every game," Rockets forward Walt Williams said of returning to Portland, the fourth of his five NBA stops. "I've played on a lot of different teams. Going back to play a former team, maybe there's a little bit added. Being on so many teams, you just get ready for every team.

"It doesn't make a difference. I just want to play hard. I want to do what I have to do to help this team."

Besides, Williams said he has nothing to prove, at least to his former teammates. But he did allow there could be some doubters in the arena tonight.

"Just the coach, a couple of the coaches," Williams said. "But for the most part, people knew I could play."

Reserve forward/center Kelvin Cato also said he does not need to prove his abilities. Rather than to feel scorned, Cato said he appreciated the deal, leaving him with no bitterness to bring onto the court tonight.

"I showed them what I could do when I was there," Cato said. "They liked it for what they liked it for. They dealt me away. I'm in Houston. And I'm happy. I can't revert to what happened in Portland. I'm in a new place now."

But for Rockets forward Carlos Rogers, who played in only five games for the Trail Blazers in his season and a half in Portland, tonight's game is personal.

"It's going to be one of the biggest games in my career," he said. "To go down there and participate in a game against them. People in Portland don't even know whether I can play or not. To sit on somebody's bench for 82 games, that's unheard of.

"I hope it goes down to the wire and I hit the winner."

The Rockets, whether for personal or 3-10 reasons, would love for him to get his wish. As much as they said they believe in their potential, beating the team with the league's best record on the road would offer redemption and tangible reason to believe.

"Portland is the best team on paper this year and last year," Cato said. "They just have to do whatever it takes to win. We've got a great team here on paper. We have to get it together in games and string a few victories together and make people recognize that."

"All season long, we've had spurts to get out of it and we revert back."

Perhaps that trend has taken away the luxury to consider personal issues. Proving a point to the team that traded them, or rebutting Pippen cannot take priority over chasing a simple victory when they have been so hard to come by.

"Because they have the best record in the league, it's a big game for us," Williams said. "It would be a big win for us. We need to come out, put a couple of games together and just get on a roll.

"We're just trying to get on a winning streak and keep that thing going."

That would give Barkley a far better comeback than anything even he could say -- if he was interested in such things.

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Please let Carlos Rogers start...please..

 

He gets most of his points off the ball. He has a Robert Horry-esque stature, but unlike Horry he brings it in the regular season.

 

I see that Lhutz is back....