Houston Rockets - Almost a Dynasty in the 1980's

This is a trip down memory lane and a rant at the same time. How cool!?!

How many of you know that the Houston Rockets were once almost a dynasty? It's true. The 1981 and 1986 teams made it to the NBA finals. They were the only team in the 1980's to come out of the Western Conference that wasn't the Los Angeles Lakers. Yes that makes the Lakers the true dynasty. But they had a lot of help from the league office. The Lakers were the glamorous team with Jabbar, Worthy, Nixon, Magic Johnson, etc. But Houston had the lunch pail team. In 1981 it was Moses Malone and Billy Paultz jamming up the middle and Mitch Wiggins, Lew Lloyd driving the basket for dunks or drawing fouls. They had the makings of a great team for long into the future. All those guys, except Paultz were young, in the prime of their careers.

But the powers that be did not like this. They wanted the star studded LA - Boston finals each year. Houston in the finals cut down on the TV ratings. Big time. No one had heard of these guys. Paultz was fun to watch if you were a Rocket fan but he did it ugly. That was the appeal. The underdog beats the giant, in this case skyhooking Kareem Jabbar.

So during the off season after 1981 Lloyd and Wiggins were throw out of the league for drug use. You cannot tell me they were the only two players in the league using drugs. We were singled out. No one else got this stiff treatment. And there was really no explanation. I think they followed them and found a reason to break up the team.

In addition the Rockets signed John Lucas to be our new point guard. He was a good player and would compliment the other returning players. The team needed a ball handling distributor. In those days the league gave the team losing a player some compensation. But this was usually a draft pick, something nothing like the player obtained. But for this situation the president of the league gave as compensation two of our regular starters. In short the players lost were worth more than the player signed. It was again the second strike in an obvious attempt to make sure the Houston Rockets could never again break into the league's glamorous finals of Boston - L.A.

Sad but true. That 1981 team, as it would have been constituted, would have been a formidable threat to the Lakers' domination of the west. And they were a fun team to watch. All the players were quick and athletic. They played great team defense. They passed the ball. They were unselfish. Well maybe not Malone but we can forgive him, he was the star. He did play defense, blocked shots, and could run the break. He was a lot like Hakeem Olajuwon.

But the brain trust in NYC did not like it. And they took steps to quash it. It's really a story that should be told.

The Rockets would come back on 1986 with an entirely new team. That too was pretty exciting. Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson played almost a double post. Lucas may have still been on that team. If you were watching you cannot forget the shot with .5 second left that beat the Lakers in the finals. But in both years the Rockets lost to the Celtics in six games. Those Celtic teams were loaded with hall of famers and the Rockets who were expected to lose in four straight managed to win two games each time. They hung in there pretty well and with some breaks might have won more. Sampson got injured though and it wouldn't be until 1994 and 1995 that the Rockets won through and became champions led by an older and wiser Olajuwon.

It is this as much as anything that soured me to watching pro sports, especially pro basketball.