The Ramblings of a Houston Rockets Fan

I apologize in advance for the length of this as I did not intend for it to be just a bunch of ramblings. I started not to post it because it was so long and really did come across as rambling when I read it.

The Influence of a Grandfather

I’ve been thinking about this for a while now about how different it is watching basketball now than it was when I was a kid. In the 1960’s and early 1970’s there was no NBA League Pass, no NBA TV, no ESPN, no cable, no internet, no computers and no 24 hour non-stop sports coverage of any kind. As a kid in Houston I had a choice of 5 TV channels; ABC, CBS and NBC were the three main networks that everyone had and if you were lucky enough you could also get channel 39 (Houston Wrestling) and channel 26 (Dark Shadows). Watching sports consisted of football on Sundays during the fall and during the summer baseball had the game of the week on Saturdays. There was very little to no basketball on TV that I remember in the late 60’s or early 70’s.

Looking back we did not watch basketball (because generally it was not on TV) but we just kept up with it via the news. I was lucky that I spent a lot of time at my grandparent’s house and my grandfather was a big sports fan and always listened to sports reports on the news or read the sports in the paper. I remember there were times that he would either have a football or baseball game on the TV while listening to a basketball game on the radio while reading the sports page of the news paper. My grandfather was a fan of the Colt 45’s before they were the Astros, he was a fan of the Oilers before they were in the NFL, he made me a fan of Elvin Hayes before there was a Houston Rockets basketball team and there is no doubt that he would have been a member of clutchfans had he lived that long.

The Legend Elvin Hayes

Aside from my grandfather, Elvin Hayes is the real reason I became a Rockets fan. When I was a kid everyone knew who Elvin Hayes was and that he played for the Houston Cougars but he was more of a legend because none of us ever got to watch him play. Like Babe Ruth, Big E was more legend than reality. I have seen lots of highlights of “The Game of the Century”, I remember when it happened and I remember being excited that the Cougars and Elvin Hayes beat UCLA and Lew Alcindor (because this was really between Big E and Lew Alcindor) but I have no memory of actually watching it when it happened even though it was on TV. When I was a kid were limited to watching basketball at the schools or on the play ground. I don’t remember Big E getting drafted or playing for the San Diego Rockets but I do remember Elvin Hayes coming home to Houston when the Rockets moved to Space City. This was definitely the first time that I ever gave the NBA a first or second thought. Had it not been for Big E I would have not even known Houston was getting an NBA team.

You can’t say that I was really a Rockets fan in those days because I never got to watch them play but I kept up with them because of Big E. When they traded Big E, I changed my allegiance to the Washington Bullets. I guess I might have been the original HOF (Hayes only fan) back in those days. My first actual memories of watching the NBA were staying up very light at night to watch the Washington Bullets beat the Seattle Supersonics in the NBA Championship game. When the Bullets beat the Supersonics I strutted around as if I lived in Washington DC and had been a season ticket holder. That was when I really became a fan of the NBA.

Moses

While I was doing my best to keep up with Elvin Hayes and the Washington Bullets my grandfather was hooked on the Rockets. After Moses Malone won his first NBA MVP my grandfather talked about him as if he carried a staff, wore robes and parted the Red Sea. I don’t really remember when it happened but at some point about that time I stopped following Big E and the Washington Bullets and started following Moses Malone and the Houston Rockets. My grandfather always had a Houston Chronicle but when I was not at my grandparent’s house I would have to go to the U-Totem on the corner of White Heather and West Orem down the street from my parent’s house in south Houston and spend my own money to buy a Houston Chronicle and a Houston Post just so I could read one tiny paragraph in the middle of the sports page on the Rockets and keep up with the standings and Moses Malone’s stats.

At some point during the 70’s we got cable TV at my parents and my grandparent’s house. It didn’t add much to TV in those days though, I think there was The Movie channel which we did not subscribe to (the extra couple of dollars a month was just too much) but more importantly there were two stations that we did get, WGN out of Chicago and WTBS out of Atlanta. I remember WGN had extra MLB baseball games but I can’t remember if they had extra NBA programming but I do remember WTBS out of Atlanta did carry NBA games although I don’t remember how many games a week. This was the first station that I can remember ever watching the Rockets on with the exception of the occasional game that might be broadcast on one of the major networks.

Finally in 1980 Moses Malone led the Houston Rockets to the NBA finals and I got to watch quite a bit of Rockets on TV. Moses Malone dominated Kareem Addul Jabbar and lead Calvin Murphy, Rudy T, Robert Reid and Billy Paultz to the Rockets 1st ever NBA finals. I remember being certain that the Rockets would win and being pissed when they lost. I can positively point to this one series as the time that I started hating the Boston Celtics.

A year later Moses Malone’s career with the Rockets ends in a trade to the 76ers. While I was pissed about it, by the time the trade happened I had developed another sports crush.

Phi Slamma Jamma

By the late 1970’s my family had already moved from Houston to East Texas and one of the big star athletes at the high school that in my little town was a guy who played center named Claude Riley. In 1979 he played in the Texas High School All-Stars vs. The National High School All-Stars. I don’t remember who won but I do remember that Claude shared player of the game award with guard named Rob Williams. I wanted Claude to go to U of H but instead he went to A&M, but Rob Williams went to U of H and my infatuation with the Cougars was reborn.

To this day there is no question in my mind that the Houston Cougars had the most talented group of players to all play on the same team. Rob Williams should have been a Hall of Fame point guard in the NBA but he allowed drugs to ruin his career. Akeem Olajuwan and Clyde Drexler are both Hall of Fame players in the NBA and both are at the very least in the top 5 players to ever play their respective positions. Rob Williams, Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwan were all on the Cougars at the same time and each player was the top player that led the Cougars to the Final Four in three consecutive seasons (Rob led the team in 82, Clyde in 83 and Dream in 84).

ESPN was in full force at this time and when I didn’t get to see a game I got to watch the highlights. When Big E was making history in the late 1960’s with the Cougars I was too young and there was too little media coverage for me to truly, fully appreciate it at the time but during the Phi Slamma Jamma days I was fully invested. Thank you ESPN!

I don’t remember being devastated when the Cougars lost to the North Carolina Tar Heels in 82. But in 1983 when Dream stood under the goal flat footed and watched as Lorenzo Charles caught a last second half court pass (or a missed desperation shot) and dunked it for an NC State upset I had reached a new low. The Cougars had dominated that school year and just absolutely ran over every single team leading up to NCAA Championship game. The Cougars were highly favored and with one second left in the game the Cougars and the Wolfpack were tied. I was thinking overtime as was every sports announcer and obviously every Houston Cougar. When Lorenzo Charles scored the game winning basket, it was so unexpected that I just laid on my parent’s living room floor in shock. Both my parents were there watching because even though they were not normal basketball fans, they had become glued to the TV for the Cougars. To this day I still remember where everyone in the house was, my younger brother was on the couch, I was laying on the shag carpet two feet in front of the TV and my parents each had their own recliners they were sitting in. None of us said a word for a very long time; we just stared silently at the TV as the Wolfpack celebrated OUR National Championship. Finally my father just said, “Well, that’s that” and he turned off the TV, got out of his recliner and walked out of the room. To this day I’m still devastated.

In 1984 I was in the Army and stationed at Ft Eustis, VA when the Cougars lost their third try to win the National Championship after three straight trips to the final four. I had expected Georgetown would win because they had been the best team in the NCAA all season. Clyde Drexler had left for the NBA and the Cougs were actually a bit of a surprise to be back in the championship game. I sat in the break room at my barracks watching the game with a bunch of friends (all of them giving me a hard time) and me telling all of them that Dream was better than Ewing. None of them believed me then but they all know the truth now.

And then Akeem Olajuwan was selected with the 1st pick of the 1984 NBA draft by… the Houston Rockets!

The Twin Towers

Just one year earlier with the 1st pick of the 1983 draft the Houston Rockets had drafted Ralph Sampson. Yep I was completely psyched and that draft would have been perfect except for one thing... With the 3rd pick in the 1983 draft the Houston Rockets select Rodney McCray. I have nothing against Rodney McCray and I think he was a very good basketball player, but I was absolutely certain that the Rockets were going to draft Clyde Drexler with that 3rd pick and I doubt I could find very many people that would disagree with me now.

When the Rockets hired Bill Fitch (the coach of the 1980 Celtics championship team), resigned my boy hood idle Elvin Hayes, resigned John Lucas and then drafted Akeem Olajuwan, it was clear that the Rockets were going to make a full recovery from the Moses Malone trade to the 76ers. The icing on the cake was when Robert Reid (who had prematurely retired from basketball in his prime) also resigned with the Rockets.

The problem was that by this time I was stationed at Fort Carson, CO and could only keep up with the Rockets by ESPN and the occasional national telecast. There was still no internet or NBA TV and few Rockets fans in CO. I remember the highlights and the occasional nationally televised game with John Lucas floating lob passes over the rim to Ralph and Dream.

I remember the 1985 play-offs against the Utah Jazz in the barracks break room when Akeem Olajuwan decked former Rocket Billy Paultz under the goal in Utah. None of the officials saw the punch because they were following a fast break heading for the opposite goal. None of the players on the court saw it because except for Dream and the Big Whopper they were all sprinting to the other goal. But all of the players on the bench and all of the fans as well as the TV announcers and everyone watching on TV saw it. Dream had just had enough of Billy Paultz constantly grabbing and pulling on him with no foul called and when none of the officials were watching he gave Billy Paultz an upper cut to the chin that dropped him like a sack of potatoes. The Rockets lost that series and the Twin Towers season was over.

1986 was a season of ups and downs. I was still stationed at Fort Carson but I was able to keep up by watching nationally televised games and nightly ESPN Highlights. The things that stood out the most were Ralph Sampson’s fall in Boston. I only saw the ESPN footage of the fall and of Ralph being taken out on a stretcher on his back. At that time I did not know how that fall would lead to Ralphs bad knees and eventually ruin his career. I remember the ESPN news that John Lucas had been kicked off of the team and I will always be bitter about that because I’m still convinced that cost us an NBA title.

But after all of the bad news, the Rockets got to the play-offs and defeated the Lakers in the WCF to get to the finals. I watched every game of that series in Colorado Springs with some of my army buddies and none of them gave the Rockets any chance to win that series. All they talked about was how Ralph Sampson had no heart and that there was no way the Rockets would beet Magic, Kareem and the Lakers. I watched the final game of the series sitting at a friend’s apartment drinking Tanqeray and OJ. My buddies were all over me when Akeem got tossed for fighting current Lakers GM Mitch Kupchack in the last game telling me the Rockets were going to choke. But Ralph finally had his one transcended moment in sports. With 1 second left on the clock and the Rockets down by 1 point, Ralph Sampson hit a game winning volley ball shot into the basket. I will never forget what it felt like to be sitting in a room of none believers as I watched Ralph Sampson leave the court with the rest of the Houston Rockets hanging from his shoulders. That night I jumped from the second story balcony, drunk into the pool below. Yes I was happy!

My hate for the Boston Celtics was solidified when they lost to the Celtics in the NBA championship. They never looked to be on the same level as Boston and the highlight of the game to me was Sampson taking out Jerry Sichting. I will hate Boston forever. But I had no clue that this would be the end of the Twin Towers. I am convinced that both Kupchack and Sichting were intentionally sent at Olajuwan and Sampson in order to get them tossed from those games. Ralph and Akeem were easily Houston’s two best players and Kupchack and Sichting were fortunate to just be playing basketball period. I couldn’t help but notice that it was not Magic or Bird that tried to fight the Twin Towers.

The Move Back to Houston

I ETS’d out of the Army on July 4th, 1986 and moved back to Houston. Finally for the 1st time in my life I could watch the Rockets almost every single night. For the 1st time I actually realized who the hell Bill Worrell was. I loved watching Hannah Storm on the pre-game and half time shows. I could go to Cooters on Richmond Avenue and get a free meal between 6pm and 9pm and then watch the Rockets and have drinks. The friends I was hanging around with were all Rockets fans and I would regularly go to the Summit and sit in the 9 dollar cheap seats. Games were over by 10:30 with plenty of time to chase girls. Life was not good, it was great.

The only problem was that the Rockets started to unravel. Ralphs knees were shot thanks to the big fall in Boston that had hurt his back and he was soon traded to Golden State for Sleepy Floyd and Joe Barry Carroll. Lewis Lloyd and Mitchell Wiggins were kicked out of the league for substance abuse. And just like that the newest NBA Dynasty was over before it ever began.

The Dream

In 1991 I got a job in Dallas, and once again I had to move from Houston. Houston had turned into a good team but not great and Akeem changed his name to Hakeem. It seemed like there was always rumors about Hakeem being pissed at the Rockets, but what was the worst was that I could not get my nightly fix of the Rockets during basketball season that I had become accustomed to. Dallas, TX the one place where it’s the absolute hardest to find anyone that does not celebrate a Houston Rockets defeat. There was no coverage of the Rockets at all for the most part, Michael Jordan played for the Bulls and that is what dominated ESPN. The news papers in Dallas did not care about the Rockets, talk about being alone in the sports world!

But the Rockets the Rockets had traded for Otis Thorpe and Kenny Smith before I had left Houston. The team made some good draft picks: Sam Cassell, Carl Herrerra and maybe the best was Robert Horry when we all wanted Harold Minor. The team fired Don Chaney and hired Rudy T as the coach and all of a sudden the team was on top of the world again. They started out 1994 with a 15 game winning streak and suddenly I was watching more games again. The airline I worked for employed a lot of people from the north east coast so when the Rockets went to the finals against the Knicks obviously they all thought we were going to get stomped. After a 7 game series and an O.J. Simpson police chase, Hakeem was crowned NBA and Finals MVP and the Houston Rockets had won their first ever NBA championship. To borrow a phrase from the great Gene Peterson, “Oh how sweet it is!”. It was great to watch all the sorry little East Coast Whinny Knicks fans cry about how they were robbed. Boo Hoo. Next to my daughter being borne that year that was definitely the highlight of my year.

Next season was even better because after a horrible start the Rockets righted the wrong they made by skipping over Clyde Drexler in the 83 draft and brought him home. What was better was the way they completely sucked the life out of every single fan in Phoenix, Utah and San Antonio on their way to sweeping Orlando in the Championship. It was great but it would have been so much sweeter if I could have enjoyed the victory with my fellow Houston Rockets fans in my hometown of Houston. But as I said earlier, you will not find many Rockets fans in Dallas. I had to endure Chuck Cooperstein on the local sports radio station 1310 the Ticket talk about how the Rockets were not the best team that season but Seattle was. Chuck is now on ESPN radio and is the Dallas Mavericks radio play by play announcer so feel free to spam his email with hate.

My time as a Dallas Maverick

In 1994 I was laid off from the airline that I was working for. But sometimes when one door closes another truly does open. The Dallas Mavericks hired me to take care of the DC-9 that the team flew in and out of Addison Airport at the time. Don Carter still owned the team and I worked directly for his son in law. Great job really except that it was the Mavericks and not the Rockets.

I only had one request of my boss (who was great by the way) and that was that I wanted courtside seats when Hakeem Olajuwan when he came to town. He did better than that, he got me courtside seats during the 95 / 96 season for the Rockets and then again for the Sonics. I sat just a few seats down from Don Carter with my feet in the court. Unfortunately, Hakeem and Clyde were absent from the game and the Mav’s won. I had to sit there and bite my lip the whole game. Since it was one of the few Mav’s wins all year they seemed to think I was some sort of good luck charm for the team. That made the loss just that much worse.

Later that season my wife had purchased me a new Houston Rockets cap with the flying Dildo. So what do I do? I wore the cap to work. That’s right, I sat at my desk for most of the day wearing my Houston Rockets flying dildo cap before my boss recognized it and asked what the hell I was wearing. My response was that he never gave me a Mavericks cap so I wore what I had available. He left and a few minutes later he returned with…. a damn Dallas Mavericks cap that I had to wear the rest of the day. To this day that is the only Mavericks paraphernalia that I have ever owned. BTW, there was a rumored feud between Jason Kidd and Jimmy Jackson over Toni Braxton at the time. For those that are curious, there were many people high up in the Mavericks organization that absolutely believed that Kidd and Jackson (who had been best friends) were at odds over Braxton and they were pissed about it. A lot of people on the Mav’s absolutely pointed to this event as the first problem that led to the breakup of the Three J’s in Dallas.

It was during my time as a Maverick that I had a chance to meet future Rockets head coach Jeff Van Gundy. He was the head coach of the Knicks at the time and their team plane was having some sort of maintenance done to it so they used the Mav’s DC-9 for a three game road trip through TX while the Mav’s were on a home stand. When the Knicks played the Mav’s they landed at Addison Airport and parked at the Mav’s hanger. That is when I got to meet JVG in person. My impression of him was that he was a total prick. I remember JVG, Ewing, Sprewell all getting off of the plane and not talking or making eye contact with anyone. I particularly thought JVG was being rude to the flight crew. I remember when the Rockets hired JVG it pissed me off a bit because I thought the guy was a douche bag.

I have since changed my opinion of JVG and actually like him quite a bit. I came to the conclusion a long time ago that he just had his game face on when he got off of the plane at Addison Airport and was in the middle of enemy territory. I love him as a commentator and love that he always has really good things to say about Houston but I still would not want him as a coach. JVG coaches great defense but his offenses are almost impossible for me to watch.

Shortly after that Don Carter sold the Mavericks to Ross Perot and David McDavid and I got recalled back to the airline that had laid me off. Just like that my career in sports was mercifully over.

Clutchcity.net

I don’t really remember how I found Clutchcity but oddly enough I remember my first post and the exact poster that responded to me. When the Rockets were getting ready to sign Scottie Pippen or trade for him there was a discussion going on about the salary cap implications. I chimed in that it should be easy for the Rockets to sign Pippen since Charles Barkley had not signed his new contract yet. I thought that by waiting on signing Barkley, the Rockets would have plenty of cap room to sign Scottie Pippen out right. It was Heypartner that responded to me, he greeted me and then explained that the salary cap did not work that way and that the Rockets actually needed to sign Barkley first. That was my first lesson in the NBA salary cap and my first introduction to a sports fan board. It seemed back in those days that Clutchcity was on delphi message boards but I really don't remember.

I don’t know if David Hardisty (Clutch) really knows the effect Clutchcity (now Clutchfans) has on out of town Rockets fans? As an out of town fan you don’t have the luxury of other Rockets fans to talk. You didn’t have the benefit of sports talk radio because they always talked local sports. If your team was not the trendy team of the moment you did not get many minutes on ESPN and you got zero on the nightly television news. What Dave Hardisty did was turn a bunch of out of town fans into home town fans via the internet. Dave gave me the ability to have passionate daily sports conversations about the Rockets with other people that were just as passionate about the team and the game as I was. And there really was no other fan board like Clutchfans, I visited Dallas Mavericks fan boards and a few others as well. If you posted something on those fan boards you might get a reply a day later but on Clutchcity you might have 10 or more replies by the time you got yourself a glass of water and sat back down in front of the computer. Clutchfans was more like a real time conversation than a message board for basketball geeks.

I’m lucky that Dave is a forgiving man; if I were him I would have banned me years ago from the bbs. In 2001 the Rockets had three 1st round draft picks and either Clutch or Rockets2K opened up a chat for the draft. During that draft Carol Dawson traded all of Houston’s 1st round picks for Eddie Griffin. The chat room erupted with EDDIE! EDDIE! It was amazing to be able to share that moment with so many other Rockets fans and it would have been impossible without Clutchfans.

In my excitement I sent Dave a message that I would gladly send him a buddy pass to the Summer League games that summer to scout the Rockets and Eddie Griffin. Anyone that has ever flown on a buddy pass knows that they are typically space available, standby tickets. The seat is yours provided one is available. Dave accepted but as I remember it did not go so smooth. As I recall there was no space available on any flights in Austin and he had to rent a car and race up to DFW to try and catch a flight out of DFW Airport. I never bother Dave with any other details of the trip, probably because I felt so bad how helter skelter the start of his trip was.

Now as an out of town fan I have virtually 24 hour access to Houston Rockets coverage. I know it sounds a bit old fashioned when I say people that are young and love sports today have no clue how good they have it. I have always said that the 80’s were the golden era of the NBA and the 90’s was when the Rockets won their two NBA Championships but it was the turn of the millennium that really made basketball and more importantly the Rockets a great time to be a fan. When I was a kid we rarely watched an NBA game regardless how bad we might have wanted to and news was typically limited to a small paragraph in the middle of the sports page and that was always yesterday’s news. Now Clutchfans is my main source of Rockets and NBA news and its 24/7. On top of that there is Youtube, Podcasts, ESPN, NBA TV, NBA Game time, streaming internet games and so on and so on. For me at least, it really is a great time to be a Houston Rockets fan.

I know...Cool Story Bro

I hope this was not too damn boring or was not too big of a waste of band width.

 

Not a pilot. I am an A&P mechanic by trade. I was the Director of Maintenance when I worked for the Mavs. Don Carter's son in law was a pilot and he was in charge of all flight operations as well as my boss. He was a really cool dude. It was really one of the better jobs that I have had even though it was with the hated Mavs.

 

The old Mavs logo was a big white Cowboy Hat sitting on an M. The big white hat was supposed to be Don Carters since that was kind of his trademark. If you were ever at a Mavs game you could always see Don Carter courtside in his sports blazer and big white cowboy hat. His mother is the fonder of Home Interior & Gifts for those that remember that business.

 

I gotta warn you, the pay is not all that great.

 

Yeah I know. The cell phone, the Internet and clutchfans; if I go without any of those for a day now I feel completely disconnected. :grin:

 

This was my favorite part because I love the passion for the game! I didn't remover the Rockets not being on Sports Illustrated. Thanks for sharing!