Game attendee since '76. Around here since "clutchcity.com" and "Super Mario's World." I guess It all started as loyalty to the team closest to home growing up (Lake Jackson -south on 288 now... used to have to go up the old 288 -now 521, or over through Pearland up HWY 35)... Rockets on the radio in my room... Gene is THE best radio man in the league! We went every year on or around my birthday to the Summit... then the Compaq Center... been twice to the Toyota Center (harder now since I'm up in Plano.) Now I only get to see them when on national TV, or playing the Mavs (puke )... My last game to attend was game 5 in that ill-fated series up here a couple years back... Had a blast (after we lost that one) screaming to the Mavs fans "anything the Mavs win, the Rockets will have always won it first!!" The allegiance to "hometown" team was definitely solidified for life in the Dream years... but I remember Calvin, Big E, Sleepy, Allen Leavell, World B. Free, Bobby Jo Reid, Mitchell Wiggins, Lewis Lloyd, Ralph Sampson... and more, like Moses Malone... mixed in memories throughout the years. Remember the Cheivous hype?!? Good times. If you were to cut me (please don't), I would bleed Rockets Red.
I became a fan around 1991 - I was in middle school in New Jersey and fell in love with basketball...Somehow (I don't remember exactly) I became intrigued w/ Olajuwon -- I thought, how come this guy is so good and nobody seems to realize ...Olajuwon was never discussed on the AM sports stations up here and the kids who followed the NBA only vaguely knew of him...So for the next 4 years, I would buy the Star-Ledger (the newspaper here) the day after a Rockets game, just to read the box-score...If I was lucky, there would be a brief write-up of the game...The 93 playoffs were great - oh so close - and the next couple years were amazing...The 95 playoffs were just incredible, better than 94...Even when they lost early in 96, I remember Robert Horry was being clutch and managed to send that last game into OT - After the last two championship years, I truly believed that it was not in the Rockets destiny to lose, it was so surreal to see the Rockets lose in an elimination game Anyway, I remember the evolution of the web and the Houston Rockets..In 95 and early 96, there was a small handful of message boards but the best site for Rockets stuff was definitely Marvin's...Eventually ClutchCity came along and the rest is history - I still remember signing the guestbook (remember those!) and watching the traffic counter (remember those!) climb to a million...I'm still waiting for the next KegNotes, seriously. I also had a couple webpages way back when which are still up and stored on tripod and geocities servers somewhere, collecting dust: STEP BACK INTO THE 90s! Rockfan's Homepage - started in 1996, stopped in 1997 Rockfan's Blackhole of Houston Rocket Links started in 1997, stopped in 1999 Anyway, Clutch City will never die, go Rockets
I like basketball and the nba but I LOVE the rockets. I watch them in the hard times and the good times, every last excruciating moment of the dallas game 7 blowout, i was there, it was painful. I was not a fan during the championships years as i was a chicago fan, but as i grew and matured i dream of seeing another championship here in houston and i would enjoy it so much more after all of those years without playoffs. Go rockets, I watch the rockets to watch the rockets.
