• Follow us on Twitter @buckeyeplanet and @bp_recruiting, like us on Facebook! Enjoy a post or article, recommend it to others! BP is only as strong as its community, and we only promote by word of mouth, so share away!
  • Consider registering! Fewer and higher quality ads, no emails you don't want, access to all the forums, download game torrents, private messages, polls, Sportsbook, etc. Even if you just want to lurk, there are a lot of good reasons to register!

Houston Rockets (2x NBA Champions)

Jump to latest Follow Reply
Sort by date Sort by votes
HabaneroBuck

HabaneroBuck

Non-Nike Design
AKAK suggested that no one cared about the Houston Rockets' championships of 1994 and 1995. Obviously, the Knicks series in 1994 is a cultural icon for its double-panel shot of the basketball game being played simultaneously with Al Cowlings' demonstration of how to safely execute a highway trooper evasion, but many believe them to be "illegitimate" championships for the sake of MJ being gone.

I disagree. I think those teams would have beaten the Bulls at least one of the two years in which they won championships. The reason being, of course, Hakeem. For those two seasons, I wouldn't take any center in the history of the League over him. He was putting up 30 points, 14 rebounds, and 3 blocks a game during the playoffs those years. Most of all, he was the thing that MJ never had to beat in the Finals...a dominant center. MJ beat Ewing in the playoffs during his run, but it is clear that Ewing was not Hakeem. As for the finals, the centers that MJ beat were Vlade/Kareem the aged, Duckworth, whoever on the Suns, whoever on the Sonics, and Ostertag or somebody on the Jazz...in other words, I can't even remember half of them. All of the teams that MJ beat were small-ball like the Bulls! They might have been more PG-oriented than Chicago (Magic, KJ, GP, and Stockton), but they did not have a go-to guy in the 5-spot.

He never faced a challenge like those Rockets teams, and I find it hard to believe that he would have overcome both years. In particular 1995, when a 6-seeded Rockets team overcame every obstacle in their path en route to dominating a talented but young Magic in four games flat.
 
BuckeyeNation27 said:
sorry....the 94 and 95 nba championships didn't happen....just like rocky 4, 5, and caddyshack 2.
Click to expand...
To compare the 1994 championship to caddyshack 2 is like comparing our 2003 season to Notre Dame under Gerry Faust (or Davie, or Willingham, etc...) Sure, it wasn't Grade A, top of the line excellence...but come on, it wasn't deli chunks.

BTW, anyone who doesn't like Tommy (HIV) Gunn is taking themselves WAYYY too seriously. Clubber Lang is ok, but Tommy Gunn wasn't? Now, Superman IV....Quest for Peace....THAT never happened....
 
Upvote 0
i just watched game one of the 97 finals on classic this afternoon....and jordan's last game as a bull (and last game ever, see rocky4,5, and caddyshack 2 reference) is on tonight at 6. i don't think there was a bigger jordan fan than i. in fact, im wearing a jordan tshirt right now.

so take my EXTREMELY biased opinion with a grain of salt.........MJ wouldve kicked the shit out of the rockets both years. look what he did after taking 2 years off. 72 wins.....amazing.
 
Upvote 0
A lot of points to touch on here. First off, its debatable whether or not the Bulls would've won both years in '94 and '95. All of the Bulls role players were turned over from the first three-peat team to the next, so you don't know how it would've played out. Other than Jordan, Pippen, & Jackson, the entire roster was changed, so you don't know if the Bulls would've been a transitioning team vs. a hungry Rockets team or not. They had no one at PF in '95 .. you're telling me they could've won with no legitimate Rebounder?

Secondly, (coming from a Yankee fan) saying (or imagining) a team will win 5 straight, or 8 straight, or whatever is a huge difference from ACTUALLY winning the 8 in a row. Players get hurt, egos get big, sometimes the hunger wanes, and things don't play out. In baseball terms, the Yankees were one Rivera pitch (to Sandy Alomar), and one botched double play (Arizona, 9th Inning, Game 7) from winning six in a row. The line is that thin. You don't know what would've happened.

And thirdly, the '94 & '95 Rockets were not as good as any of the Bulls teams in '91, '92, '93, (especially) '96, '97, or '98. But to diminish what they did is stupid. They still had the greatest Center of this generation, and they still won back to back titles (no small feat). Had they only won only one of the Championships in those two years, your argument might hold more water, but they won both.

And fourth, look at what Hakeem did in those two years against his contemporaries: Ewing was afraid to play him in '94 (Mason did), he annihilated & demoralized David Robinson in '95, and outplayed Shaq in the Finals. No center has ever made more of a mockery of all the other great centers in less than a calendar year like that. To diminish anything he did is foolish.
 
Upvote 0
Sloopy45 said:
"Michael Jordan. Case closed."

How come that simple formula didn't work so well in '95 then? Jordan, his cases, & his clothes were beaten that year.
Click to expand...
Maybe that whole being a baseball player and having retired forever from bball... something along those lines...

Come on, there's no way you didn't remember that.
 
Upvote 0
JWins, I'm sure that Sloopy does remember that. MJ missed 93/94 entirely, then missed most of 94/95, but came back a couple of months before the playoffs, as indicated by Tibs' post. But Orlando took the Bulls out of the playoffs that year before getting swept by Houston in the Finals.

I'm sure that Sloops also remembers the double-nickel that MJ put up in MSG against the Knicks to get the comeback going in 1995.
 
Upvote 0
Being a houstonian living in dallas i get in this arguement all the damn time but the simple fact is they DID win two in a row. Also there is no evidence to suggest that the rockets would have lost. Vernon Maxwell was a thorn in MJ's side. This is a very good article about this topic(it is from a biased source but uses legit stats)

This is my favorite quote from the article

After a loss on his home floor at Chicago Stadium in 1993, Jordan said, "We have no answer for the big guy. It's a good thing they won't ever make it to the (NBA) Finals, because I don't think we could beat them."

http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/sports/bk/bkn/3221857
 
Upvote 0
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top