What event occurred around the time you joined Clutchfans?

We had just traded Rafer for Lowry.

 

Wikipedia describes when I joined (the 2001-2002 season) as "unremarkable" and "disappointing." Francis was around, doing... well, whatever the hell it was he did. Moochie was probably overdribbling.

The board at the time however was on an older server that was going over capacity. Clutch was locking out lurkers/guests at times to save on bandwidth. If that hadn't been the case, I might still be lurking.

 

The end of an era was happening. Dream was winding down and the Francis highlight reels began. Shandon Anderson was supposed to be awesome.... Bleh...The bro-mance started to blossom between Cat and Steve.

 

i assume most 99ers are in their mid to late 30's. i say this because i used to visit clutchcity back then but you couldnt even lurk the boards without registering first and registration required a donation. i was 13 back then and didnt have access to a credit card or paypal. cant remember if paypal was used back then.. im just saying, if you signed up for clutchcity in 99 you had access to a cc so you were likely 18 or older..

 

ClutchCity was becoming Clutchfans.

Yao Ming had just completed his rookie season.

Maurice Taylor was a "go-to" isolation guy at the end of close games.

We had just signed JVG, ushering in the Rocknicks era with acquisitions like Mark Jackson, Clarence Weatherspoon, and Charles Oakley following shortly after.

The Rockets selected Malick Badiane with their lone draft pick.

Lance Armstrong had just won another Tour de France.

The U.S. space shuttle, Columbia, had recently crashed.

I had recently completed my freshman year of high school.

Google did help me to rekindle some of these memories.

 

Nothing in particular. I was in college at the time in Oklahoma so I had to get away from beginning of the OKC circle jerk. Nothing too Rockets related as to why I joined besides being a fan. Was never much of a message board person. The Fort Hood shooting was the day that I joined, but had no impact on me being here, obviously.

 

Just got Ron Ron from Sactown and the start of training camp. So much hype that season .

 

I joined in February 2006, when pretty much the only topics of interest (for me) was the emergence of Yao Ming as a dominant force in the post, JVG's insistence on playing Juwan Howard so many minutes over a clearly more effective Chuck Hayes, and how good our draft position might be at the end of the season.

 

Tear drops fall on the floor from Carl Herrara's face.

 

This event was important, this was the last time the Rockets have reached the Western Conference Finals.

Those days are when expectations and reality were high
unlike years later where the reality was that some of the posters must have been high to think we were even that close to the conference finals

you were there for project genesis, the needs of the many did outweigh the needs of the few

 

I joined when lurking stopped working for me: members only I presume due to heavy traffic.

 

I don't remember a specific team event that happened, I had monitored the site for about a year, was sitting in the most boring class of my life, Human Action and Rational Behavior (game theory), and decided to devote the 50 minutes every MWF on talking Rockets.

 

Minute Maid Park (formerly Enron Field) opened.

Federal agents seized six-year-old Elián González from his relatives' home in Miami, Florida.

 

Haha. Yeah anyone who says any event before the Barkley rumors and subsequent trade is lying, because that's the timeframe when the original Clutch City '97 website was created.

I didn't actually register for the BBS for a long time, though, mostly because I was on a Mormon mission from September '97-'99, but I was a regular visitor back in '96 when the site was first created and still on Clutch's wife's student server or whatever it was. Fun times.

 

P.S. - I know the site is a much more legitimate these days, but I do miss Super Mario's World and element of fun that the original site had. I also wish there were more "fan columns" like we used to get more often from the Deuce and Almu, etc. But the fact that ClutchFans is basically a legitimate media outlet in the city of Houston is really pretty amazing considering it's roots.