Give me a break. Not even Kobe himself could do any better with the teams that Francis and Cat were on. What exactly did you expect Steve and Cuttino to do with the talent that surrounded them(Post-Dream, when it was their team)? Do you even remember those rosters? Blame the Rockets management for setting them back 10 years. Oh yeah, Rudy T favored the ISO. To be fair, they did what coach wanted them to do. Break down their man, attack the basket, if its not there, kick it out. Considering who we had, that was our best option.
Wrong, The Scottie Pippen trade was the one that set us back. We got crap for him. Scottie Pippen traded to Portland for Kelvin Cato, Stacey Augmon, Walt Williams, Ed Gray, Brian Shaw and Carlos Rogers
to the op.. I'm gonna remember Cat's 3 ptr in Golden State as a rookie (pass out from Barkley, I think?)
your memory is better than mine. I think his rookie year, my memorable moment was when he and dickerson hit all those 3 pointers in that one victory.
I'm a bigger fan of Cat than of SF3 but I cheered for them hard when they were here and I wish them all the best. I did grow tired of the Francis' antics near the end with the dribble dribble dribble of the foot turn over or dribble dribble off balance 3 or the dribble dribble shot clock violation, so I wasn't sad to see him go. I did bust on SF3 that second time around because he was just milking us for money keeping us from signing other people. That was Les' fault though not his.
Hakeem had a 20.7 PER that year. Was in lesser minutes, but thats still top 25 ranking. Its what Shaq is still doing, and Cato and Mo Taylor never did. Good thing the Rockets imploded the following year and got Yao to make up for it. The Francis to Yao alley-oop in the All Star game is another fond memory. After all the minor rumblings that they wouldn't co-exist too well, it was nice to see they got to respecting each other. It's one of the last moments where I was into players enough to look up them, grow with them and idolize. Before it became all about crap like PER and rebound rates usage percentages and trade machines and bottom lines.
I think the era-killing situation was Eddie Griffin, that was awful. Worse than Pippen and everything else. Those glimpses of his talent were really something. For him to be driven to an early death by mental health stuff is terribly sad, and (for me) overshadows the basketball stuff. But if you can put the humane part aside, purely from a basketball perspective - that really hurt us. You had that weird Kenny Thomas / Mo Taylor / Eddie Griffin power forward rotation thing, not to mention the lost high draft pick. They needed another permieter and/or post player with Steve and Cuttino, and Griffin really could have been both. Now you add Yao to a team with a functional Eddie Griffin, Francis, Mobley, James Posey, Cato coming off the bench - that would have been much less awful than we recall it. Not championship, but you'd remember less "Terrence Morris Moochie Norris Bostjan Nachbar" if that unit had a chance to germinate. Really really unfortunate, draft-wise, timing-wise, and of course, human wise.
Excellent points all around. Eddie was such a tragedy in more ways than one. Imagine if we had kept Richard Jefferson or somehow drafted Joe Johnson. I know hindsight is 20-20 but damn they could've helped us a lot. But I think if we had to do it all over again and you didn't know what the future held we'd all have taken Eddie Griffin again. I remember I was stoked cause I thought we were getting the second coming of KG.
Steve and Cat deserve more credit that they ever got. Those guys went out there every night and gave it all they had despite having a terrible supporting cast. Those guys did not give up.
Eddie symbolized the frustrations of that era even in the most literal sense in his absence personifying "the lost draft" of 2001. he was the three first round draft picks that the club played without and didn't recover from for what was essentially almost a decade [up until last year]. he was the guy of that era - forget about the fact that he in theory would have saved steve francis' career in houston, tracy mcgrady's rockets were playing without 3 rotation players because of how eddie griffin's career transpired. he was the athletic big that has revolutionized the game but that we have been left in wont of. he was literally the decision that changed everything... ...and still i would make that trade again every day of the week. i can criticize carrol dawson for his undisciplined handling of contracts or his bungled draft picks, but the man dared to be great, and trading for eddie griffin was absolutely the right move to make at that time, even in hindsight, even knowing what transpired in the decade since the the deal. he was the big that we needed to pair with francis to take the next step and his trade was our only avenue of obtaining the player we hoped he would one day become. i don't have fond memories of the dawson era, but trading for eddie griffin is one of the few moves i will never criticize... ...and the great irony in that is that it was unarguably his costliest of moves.
Rudy took that team as far as it was going to go. I mean you had sf3, cat and a bunch of scrubs. Rudy T the coach is a great coach, but Rudy T the GM sucked. He gave so many bad contract and blew so many draft picks. That 98 and 2003 drafts probably set this franchise back more than anything. Let us not forget that pipen fiasco.
i think the most i remember was when the time we won one game in the playoff series against the laker, everyone though we were going to be a sweep but we prove them wrong, although we lost the series, we play our hearts out.
We lost one or two of those simply because of inexperience which is why i thought we were on the upswing Rocket River
I felt we were on the upswing too, after the Laker series, I thought next year we'd knock down the door.
dang. i can't believe i got caught up in this and watched the whole thing. it really made me miss steve...the old steve. i kinda would have liked to see what would have happened to his career if he and cat had stayed together with yao. we almost beat the lakers that year!
Yes I loved the both of them, hard working and they never seemed to slack in game time even if they didn't have the best talent/IQ. Mobley will be missed but Francis is surely not done. This season, hee was all healed up and really the recovery process along with playing into game readiness is all Francis needed but the Rockets didn't seem to have the patience to wait for that along with factoring in the need for Dikembe Mutombo and the play of Alston/Brooks this year was the axe for Steve and I felt bad for him. If they were going to let someone go so they could get Deke, I would've chose Brent Barry over Stevie since Barry didn't seem to do a damn thing for us, at least having Francis on the pine with Barry's mins or lack thereof would have bought him time to get into a rhythm and be a eventual contributor come playoff time. Francis got shipped to the Grizzlies and I heard him say that he was going to "get buckets" but nothing materialized and he was bought out since he would've rather been on a contending team. I'm certain he'll get signed to a team this offseason or by training camp. I would hope that the Rockets would take a look at him and invite him to training camp to see the progress that they couldn't wait for. If he impresses, sign him. Even if they don't, somebody will. He's far from done. And all the people that do think he's done and doesn't have a chance to get on a team take note. So many other useless scrubs have a job in this league, so if they have a jobs and are collecting paychecks, why not have a warrior like Francis out there? Here's to the Francis 09-10 comeback.
