That list is not a knock on the Rockets if you really read it correctly. All it is saying about the Rockets and the other teams on there is that that particular team was pretty bad throughout the season or had the worst seeding and still managed to win a championship. I think that is a great accomplishment.
Why risk further injuring your star player in an international tournament when he's still fighting Meniere's Disease and rehabbing a shoulder injury? If anything, people should be GLAD he wasn't selected, considering the quotes from the Rockets' trainers about him trying to rush back in his rehab from that shoulder injury. For all we know, he may not have wanted to play on the team, even if healthy. Francis' time will come in due time. He's only been in the league three years! It's not like not being selected is the end of the world; if he were healthy, it'd only give him motivation to prove the coaches and players who were on the team wrong for not selecting him. It's not a bias against Houston like some would like to believe, it's simply about taking the best healthy player who wanted to play. Sometimes you just read too much into something and it skews the judgement of the situation.
That's exactly right j-bone. The same news organization ranked the Rockets '95 run second in "most astounding championship run of all time" or something to that end. But Stylez said it perfectly when he put it this way...I wasn't just talking about recent snubs, but a sense of some kind of curse on the Rockets regarding the spotlight.
Lets get something straight. Had steve been elected instead of baron, then he still would NOT be able to play. The guy is injured. Why would the league pick steve to play in the games?
