TMac and Barkley Years

I think it'll end up the same way... both without any championships, I'm pretty sure of that

 

sadly, it's looking like it's going down that path. but as a rocket fan, i refused to give up hope. the stars will align one year, we stay healthy, and bam, cha-ching.

 

Again, good comparison. I think their careers are really pretty much similar.

Barkley at least got past the 1st round, Tracy has to finally do that.

I think they were/are on the right teams, good teams. Just lack of happiness is/was their problem. Barkley can only dream what would have happend if, but McGrady can still do something big, he just needs to be 100% and he needs to have Yao

 

all barkley had to do was park his butt in the paint and rebound. I wanted him to average 16 boards a game and about ten shots. stay out hakeem's way who was still very good offensively, get his when hakeem went to the bench. instead we got this offense where they came down, dumped to hakeem one play, came down, dumped to chuck the next, very inefficient, however the first year it almost worked out and looking back I was probably just a little bitter that they made that trade so I was probably hard on barkley.

age caught up to all of them before they could develop any real chemistry.

 

the difference was Charles didn't have to do it all, he still had the dream and Drex on his team.

 

T-Mac's only 29. Yao's still young too. Granted T-Mac has got alot of miles, but there is still plenty of time.

 

I really like Charles Barkley, but I felt that was a very bad trade for us.

Not only did we get rid of Horry and Cassell, but without a good point guard, we could have gotten Antonio McDeyss the following year, but said he didn't because of our lack of PG. Barkley drove Clyde to quit early, and without him, we'd never have picked up Quitten, and never taken on all those bad contracts.

Imagine instead Dream/McDeyss/Horry/Glyde/Cassell, and Lewis would have been there when Glyde retired.

The big trades sound good at the time, but in this case, it set us back a number of years.

Even having taken Barkley, if we DIDN'T take Quitten, but got a good PG instead, we would have drafted Lewis, and been a contender. The only reason we didn't draft Lewis, was because of Quitten.

Actually, I think this one will turn out better, since we have some youth. I'm glad we're finally getting talent and developing it. Brooks, Landry, Scola, and perhaps Novak will make a big difference next year, IMHO.

 

ehh in my opinion Clyde showed his age in the last Jazz series. He was making bad decisions and shooting horrible shots. He was pissing me off with his decision making. Plus the Jazz series the previous year, it was his fault for shooting the potential game winner too early, leaving the jazz 3 seconds to get that Stockton shot off. He should have waited 'til the last second.

 

i foresee him playing until he's 34-35 actually. he'll only retire if his back is a problem and it's been managed. but he'll prollie be a 2nd/3rd option in his last few yrs trying to chase a ring, and hopefully that remains with us.

that's why i think the organization is trying to ride out tmac's contract. if his health still sucks, tmac knows he'll still have a place here but at a lesser price. we can use the money to get another big guy and possibly can still keep tmac.

 

How in the world was Barkley only "often injured", yet McGrady is "always injured"??? McGrady so far has played a higher percentage of his games than Barkley did in his four years with us.

 

Great post, sums up my feelings about the Barkley trade perfectly. It was the beginning of the end for the Rox.

 

The Barkley Era was much more disappointing in that it had much higher expectations placed upon it given that the regime predating it had won consecutive championships. It could even be argued that the Rockets would have been more competitive maintaining the 93-96 core rather than breaking the bank for two years and then ruining this franchise for the next five at least (a downfall we could all see coming on the day Barkley was acquired, just like Phoenix did with Shaq and Dallas with Kidd).

The T-Mac era soundly whupped the behinds of the Franchise era, and although the sky was thought to be the limit at the time, none of us were ready to say that this team was supposed to win a championship. We were all in wait-and-see mode. It has been disappointing thus far, but it's not over by a longshot.

 

That's true. But considering that Barkley was at the tail end of his career and not eating up close to $20 million a year of salary, I can understand why people wouldn't be as bitter about his injuries.

 

We got swept by the Sonics and there was rumbling from Sam's agent that he wouldn't resign the year after.

So in the offseason, we traded him and Horry for Barkley, picked up Kevin Willis, and an injured Brent Price. When we beat the Sonics that year, it vindicated the trade somewhat, but we couldn't close them out with a 3-1 lead and had to play a game 7. I think that made all the difference in the next series against the Jazz.

Everything else became unglued after that.

 

he only defended him during the playoffs b/c he saw how much heart tmac played with.

he trashed him and the rockets like crazy during the reg. season.

 

I actually think that Rockets are going to pass the first round next year and McGrady isn't going to give up salary neither throw someone under the bus.