Young guy looking for some Rockets history context

He dribbled out the 24 second clock during playoffs vs the lakers.

 

Not sure how you can say that personally. He was a pretty crappy shooter, never had close to the court vision that Harden does, or the motivation to develop his game like Harden has. He relied solely on his athleticism until Bowen injured him.

 

The difference between Harden and Franchise was Harden looks to get his team involved and his skills distributing the ball were leaps and bounds better than Francis.

I liked him at the time, but looking back its obvious he was nowhere near as skilled as he was made out to be.

 

Not even close to the player Harden is. But Francis was a tremendous athlete and did lots of fancy dribbling. A poorman's Westbrook

 

Francis was basically a child of the ISO age. Problem was, he didn't make good decisions a lot of the time. That said, his high flying athleticism was great to watch if winning wasn't a priority.

 

The 51/KNWS (and later UPN) days were painful. Bill and Calvin made it bearable. Watching ~80 games/year of Franchise playing 1 on 5 makes the current team and success that much sweeter.

Drafting Yao offered hope, but he was still a huge question mark. Nobody knew what would happen.

I, for one, was hyped when the trade went down for T-Mac. It was the first time I felt like there was a core that could compete for a championship since Barkley hit the floor grabbing his knee (the delusion lingered with me until that point). T-Mac was here to bring us another chip. Finally.

Failing to get out of the first round until '09 was a different type of disappointment than in the Stevie/Cat days. With those guys, even MAKING the playoffs was a victory.

But with T-Mac and Yao, it usually felt like we had the talent to compete (at least to the second round) but underachieved in the playoffs.

 

Steve Francis/Cattino Mobley today would be like Kemba Walker and Aaron Afflolo in the same back court. Decent, but not gonna win anything.

 

As said above, he was okay when ISO ball was still allowed but the rules changes killed him; he lacked the playmaking ability to adjust. As ugly as the Rockets offense can look these days, it's poetry compared to the Francis era.

I liked Mobley. Always struck me as a hard worker and who was willing to make sacrifices. I wish he could have stuck with the team longer but they had to evolve and develop all new problems.

 

I grew up in this era too. When we traded for T-mac I was doing a summer basketball camp and Mobley happened to be there playing on a separate court. He was pissed about getting traded to Orlando and wouldn't even answer questions about the topic. Still wish I could have gotten a picture or autograph but that's beside the point. To sum up we weren't going to win anything with that core. At the time rolling with a T-mac/Yao foundation was our best bet.

 

For sure. The game has evolved a lot since then. Teams are smarter and Harden's style is perfectly suited to today's style.

Stevie was heart, fire, handles and hops. He was a fighter. One could have a worse consolation prize to winning basketball.

 

I loved Steve. He was fun to watch. He was never the same when we got JVG, who wanted a controlled, half-court offense. He had a lot of heart and he put in a lot of effort (on the court at least). I was mad when we traded him but could not argue with getting Tmac. Tmac was fools gold for us unfortunately though.

 

There was a regular season home game against the Spurs where the Rockets were down I think maybe 3 points at the end and we had the ball. Francis got the ball at the top of the key with close to a full shotclock left and proceeded to dribble around the perimeter until the clock hit zero. He literally couldn't get a shot off to at least attempt to tie the game.

That pretty much summed up the Steve Francis era for me.

 

Francis's rookie year, the sky was the limit. He had an unarguably better rookie year than Harden primarily due to volume. I would say the only year Francis had the perceived potential of what Harden currently is was during his rookie year.

 

Headaches, migraines, and Steve's day off to go watch Janet slip her nip - that's how I remember the "franchise" era.

 

Steve Francis was talented. He wasn't on Harden's level certainly at distributing the ball.

Steve played with a ton of heart and sought out advice on how to get better from the likes of Oscar Robertson, and Michael Jordan.

But he did over dribble, and it just took him longer to set up his iso than was advisable. He played with heart as did Mobley. They were a great pair. But his style of play wasn't going to take the team all the way to a championship because of the limitations mentioned.

Some people hated him and his style of basketball. Others appreciated the excitement and hoped that things would gel in a way that would work out.

He was an all-star and had immense talent, but the fact that his talent wasn't used more effectively was frustrating indeed.

 

Never start off a thread with the words "young guy looking for..."

Anyway...no, Steve Francis (wrongly labeled "Stevey Franchise") was not nearly at Harden's level. He didn't pass and couldn't score with the same ease as Harden. He was a good defender, got steals, not a very good shooter though. When he was traded along with Cuttino Mobley et. al. for TMac is was considered an incredible steal.

 

I think it was Bill Simmons, or maybe a different espn writer who basically called Derrick Rose the smart version of Francis, except maybe Francis was a little bit more athletic.

Ironically I think Francis would be a much better player in the current era of pace and space. If he was well coached I could see him driving and dishing like Harden, with the tradeoff being he'd be less effective due to his poor outside shooting, but you would hope he made up for it by using his athleticism to cause problems on the defensive end.

 

This sums up my view perfectly...one of the most over rated Rockets ever.

 

If you can remember Stephon Marbury that was Steve Francis without the longevity. I remember when they teamed up in New York. You had Steve Urkel and Stephon Urquelle.

 

The excitement of francis was his development and the unknown of his talent potential. He was great in the dunk contest, except that was the vince carter year