No Bull? Rockets say they still would have won like Mike

[JeeberD]

Nice article from the Houston Chronicle. I always hear people talk about how the Rockets repeat was tainted because MJ was off playing baseball, and it irks me to no end...

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/...n/3221857.html

No Bull? Rockets say they still would have won like Mike
By FRAN BLINEBURY
Copyright 2005 Houston Chronicle

Ten years later and it's still there, hanging over their legacy.

In the two years when the Rockets won their back-to-back championships, Michael Jordan was off pursuing a baseball career and then making his first NBA comeback.

The critics contend that those championship banners would not be flying in Houston and the Chicago Bulls might have won eight titles in a row.

The Rockets themselves would have loved to have proven everybody wrong.

"There should be no doubt or label of fluke on our championships," said Hakeem Olajuwon. "As for Michael Jordan, a lot of people don't know and never looked up our matchups with Chicago during that time. If you check the records, you'll see that we beat them on a consistent basis when Michael was playing and winning his first three championships.

"(Vernon) Maxwell guarded Michael and gave him problems. In '95, we would have had Mario Elie on him. They didn't have anyone who could contain me. Chicago was never a problem for us. We always looked forward to playing them. A lot of people don't realize that."

The Rockets, in fact, had a 5-1 record vs. Jordan and the Bulls from 1991 through 1993, the span of Chicago's first "three-peat."

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."

Head coach Rudy Tomjanovich is philosophical.

"It's one of those things, a good sports debate," he said. "But we don't have to apologize to anybody. I've actually talked to Michael about that topic several times. He's always told me he thought those would have been some helluva playoff series."

Elie is defiant.

"That's the one thing that still sticks with me and bothers me, not getting to play Chicago in the Finals," he said. "Hey, it's not our fault that Jordan wasn't there. We're not the ones who told him to go try baseball.

"We had a team that lined up against anybody and could beat anybody out there. I always wanted the challenge of going against 'the greatest' in the Finals. If there's a gap, that's it. That we didn't get to play them. But there's nobody that can tell me we couldn't play with them.

"Hey, that's my biggest regret about that John Stockton shot that went in for Utah in '97. I was ready to play Chicago that year. With Dream, Clyde (Drexler) and Charles (Barkley), we'd have beaten them then, too."

[JeeberD]

[Anthony]

i agree, Hakeem was unstoppable in the mid-90s. completely unstoppable.

[Ramzavail]

great follow up picture

[MalcPow]

They would've been great games I'm sure, but I agree with the tainted argument. Regular season stats and emphatic assertions from Mario Elie don't do too much for me.

[JeeberD]

David Robinson, Ewing, and Shaq couldn't slow down Hakeem...do you actually think that Bill Cartwright, Will Purdue and/or Bill Winnington could have?

[MalcPow]

I really think Vernon Maxwell was not going to stop Michael in the finals. What stopped Hakeem during the rest of the decade? (Honestly, I know he had some injury problems but why didn't they make it before or after?)

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by MalcPow

I really think Vernon Maxwell was not going to stop Michael in the finals. What stopped Hakeem during the rest of the decade? (Honestly, I know he had some injury problems but why didn't they make it before or after?)

Father Time.

[stevew]

The Rockets were paper champions. They couldnt make it to the finals in any of the 6 seasons Jordan made it. And while the Bulls center rotation was a collection of big white stiffs, I think the 24 fouls they brought could have at least contained Hakeem. Plus Jackson is just an amazing coach.

[JeeberD]

Injuries caught up with Hakeem, plus I really think the trade for Barkley was awful. We would have been better off keeping Cassell and Horry.

[JeeberD]

Originally Posted by stevew

They couldnt make it to the finals in any of the 6 seasons Jordan made it.

That's beside the point. The two seasons that we did win it Hakeems was at the top of his game and had the perfect complement of players around him...

Originally Posted by stevew

And while the Bulls center rotation was a collection of big white stiffs, I think the 24 fouls they brought could have at least contained Hakeem.

Hakeem was a decent free throw shooter, the Hack-A-Shaq wouldn't have worked nearly as well on him...

Originally Posted by stevew

Plus Jackson is just an amazing coach.

Not amazing enought to get the Bulls to the finals when MJ wasn't there. And actually, MJ WAS there for the playoffs when the Rockets won the championship in '95. They just couldn't get past the magic team that the Rockets swept...

[LastWhiteSoxFanStanding]

I don't see any reason to argue.

You rocket fans can be happy with your two well earned championships and we will be happy with our 6

[Franklinnoble]

So, if they were so great, why didn't they make it to the finals while Jordan was with the Bulls? Were the 92 Suns just lucky?

[JeeberD]

Where did anyone bring up the '92 Rockets?

[Huckleberry]

Originally Posted by Franklinnoble

So, if they were so great, why didn't they make it to the finals while Jordan was with the Bulls? Were the 92 Suns just lucky?

So, if they were so great, why didn't they make it to the finals while Jordan was with the Bulls? Were the 95 Magic just lucky?

[Neuqua]

Originally Posted by Huckleberry

So, if they were so great, why didn't they make it to the finals while Jordan was with the Bulls? Were the 95 Magic just lucky?

Jordan had played only 17 regular season games that year and the Bulls were one of the lower seeds in the playoffs because of their struggles Pre-Mike. It's a tough task to ask anybody to take off for two+ seasons, come back and take on one of the best teams in the league that year.

[JeeberD]

MJ scored 31.5 PPG on 48% shooting plus 6.5 RPG and 4.5 APG in that year's playoffs.

Just sayin'...

[Neuqua]

I don't understand that logic so much. My friend (who obviously wasn't a big Bulls fan) always tended to bring up Jordan's 55 points in his 5th game back against the Knicks. I think those performances are just a testament to just how dominant MJ was in his day and age.

Most of the players he was now playing with were guys he had not played with before. Teams get in sync with eachother with their 3-4 practices every week during the season, this new Bulls team was still getting accustomed to Michael. MJ may have been at about 85%-90% of his usual self that year but he could never win it alone back in the 80s without a strong team around him and I think that was the case in '95 as well. The talent was there but the team did not have nearly enough time to change its ways to accomodate the greatest player in the history of the game in just a quarter of the season's time.

[stevew]

Jebber, you're starting to head into MrBug homer territory.

[Neuqua]

Originally Posted by stevew

Jebber, you're starting to head into MrBug homer territory.

I don't think that's possible. Bug is on his own level and the rest of us will never, ever even come close.

[JeeberD]

Please. I'm not trying to say that they were the greatest team of all time or anything, I just really think they would have beaten the Bulls if Jordan had never left for baseball...

[stevew]

Originally Posted by Neuqua

I don't think that's possible. Bug is on his own level and the rest of us will never, ever even come close.

Good point.

[Neuqua]

Originally Posted by JeeberD

Please. I'm not trying to say that they were the greatest team of all time or anything, I just really think they would have beaten the Bulls if Jordan had never left for baseball...

I respect your opinion. Of course I disagree, but I respect it.

I think our allegiances may have something to do with what our views are, ya think?

[JeeberD]

Quite possibly.

[Huckleberry]

How many months does it take to get it together? Jordan was fine in the playoffs that year. The Bulls got beat because they weren't good enough to beat the Magic.

Obviously I knew there would be an excuse and I knew what the excuse would be. But I'm sure Rockets fans could come up with an excuse for every year they didn't make the Finals.

I honestly didn't follow the Bulls. Were they running a completely different offense while Jordan was out?

They took out the Hornets 3 games to 1. The Hornets finished 3 games ahead in the regular season. They were, what, 13-4 with Jordan in the regular season? But they weren't adjusted. Interesting. They won at a .765 clip with Jordan versus the .523 clip before he came back. Yet they hadn't adjusted.

[PunkyQB]

A few things strike me as getting mixed up in this thread. The fate of the 94-95 Bulls, who weren't much better than mediocre with or without Jordan, is not particularly related to the would-have-been fate of the 93-94 Bulls if Jordan were on the team. Nor is it related to what 94-95 would have been 'if Jordan had never retired.' The 94-95 team was significantly different from 93-94 and different from the title teams in many ways, and I think they are somewhat misleadingly getting lumped into the idea of "The Bulls" in some posts.

I have every playoff game the Bulls have ever played on DVD and many of the Rockets title-years games as well ... I watch a bunch of them every now and then.

Disclosure: I'm a Bulls fan at heart I also very much enjoyed the Rockets’ run ... fantastic to watch and Hakeem was unspeakably amazing to watch, but my biases are clearly with the Bulls.

I've seen all the relevant games and here's my two-cents or so….

First, it seems to me that much is made of the 94-95 Bulls and whether their performance with Jordan would have been better if Jordan were in better basketball shape. I believe the 94-95 Bulls would have been beaten by the Rockets in a playoff series for
precisely the same reason the 94-95 Bulls were beaten by the Magic and were vulnerable to being beaten by a handful of other teams that year. With or without Michael Jordan ... they had NO power forward. Michael Jordan was plenty effective by playoff time and, no matter how much more in sync or in shape he possibly could have been ... that team had nothing operating in the paint ... absolutely nothing. No version of Michael Jordan would have been able to win a championship with Toni Kukoc and Bill Wennington among the best options at trying to fill-in at power forward … the defense at that position at that time was, for the Bulls, simply not up to NBA standards … much less championship standards.

The 94-95 Bulls, even with Jordan ... were no standard to measure greatness against. The Rockets would have beaten them, but the implications of this observation are pretty limited.

If Jordan had never left, would the 94-95 season have belonged to a healthy Bulls squad? I think the answer depends almost exclusive on the answer to this question: would Horace Grant still have left to play in Orlando?

In a strange way, Grant was more irreplaceable than Jordan. I’m not saying Grant was ‘better’ or ‘more valuable’ than Jordan … but the Bulls were able to compensate for the loss of Jordan whereas they had absolutely nothing to offer in the post to replace the inside production (particularly in post defense and hitting the boards) that Grant gave them.

When the Bulls lost Jordan, they were able to compensate, and still win a great deal, with other components on the perimeter built around the freelancing play of Pippen. The loss of Jordan, ironically, was not as crippling as the loss of Grant ... as the Bulls had absolutely no components to build a post game out of to compensate for that loss. Even the return of Jordan couldn’t magically restore that dimension of the team.

The 93-94 Bulls, with Grant and -without- Jordan, won 55 games and nearly (by the margin of a single controversial call) beat the New York Knicks – a team that also took the Rockets to 7 games. This is the real evidence of how good that cast around the first 3 Jordan championships really was. One would have to speculate that this team, with the addition of Michael Jordan, would have been more than a match for the Rockets who did not particularly distinguish themselves in their 4 to 3 series victory over the Knicks. This is taking nothing away from the Rockets championship and I'd never term them any kind of afterthought among championship teams ... but Hakeem’s greatness didn’t make them substantially more immune to the best the Bulls had to offer during title years than the other top-tier teams the Bulls beat.

Teams that have been outmatched at the center position have won playoff series before ... including the Bulls … and the Rockets lost playoff series even when Hakeem was the most dominant man on the floor. I'd expect an intact version of the Bulls’ championship casts (with Jordan –AND- Grant (or Rodman to substitute)) would likely win that matchup. Without a top-tier power forward, however, the Bulls would have had probably no chance with or without Jordan.

The historic 94-95 Bulls, as I mentioned, were no real match for the Rockets with or without Jordan. If Jordan doesn't retire, we can speculate that Horace Grant might not have left. Maybe he does, maybe he doesn't ... but HE is the key. At least … having a real defender at power forward is the key. The 95-96 Bulls winning 72 games and coasting to a title was not a product of Michael Jordan simply getting into better shape than the prior year … it was a matter of adding Dennis Rodman to defend and rebound at the power forward position to allow Jordan’s production to matter. If a top-tier defender at the power forward position had been on the 94-95 team (and maybe one would have been there if Jordan never left), that team could have been much more like the 95-96 team and very likely would have swept the Magic in 1995 (as they did in 96) just like the Rockets did in winning that year’s title.

The 95 Magic didn’t beat the Bulls because Jordan ‘wasn’t really that good’ … it was because Horace Grant was playing for the Magic and not the Bulls … and nobody could play power forward from the Bulls roster at that time.

Because Jordan was so talented and so important to basketball, sometimes I think people get blinded to how important the team around him was. It was simply never true that "Jordan and 4 other guys would win a title" ... without a competent defender at power forward, Jordan and Pippen were rather helpless no matter how much they dominated around the perimeter. Watch the 94-95 playoffs and you'll see that Jordan is pretty close to himself, but no matter how much he scored and how much he worked ... it would all be given back by someone torching Toni Kukoc or Bill Wennington or Larry Krystowiak and the quasi-power-forward du jour bunch. The Rockets would have been no exception no matter how in shape Jordan was.

But, if we do suppose that the Bulls wouldn't have begun a Michael Jordan season without the benefit of ANY defensive power forward on the roster ... then I have a difficult time imagining that the Rockets would have had much better luck dealing with the Bulls than any of the many other diversely talented teams that couldn't exploit the Bulls’ centers in the playoffs over the 6 title seasons.

[JeeberD]

Wow, great post. Thanks for your input!

[watravaler]

I think the Rockets may have been able to steal a series from Jordan and Pippen, but not both. IT would have been fun to watch, that is for sure. While HAkeem was at the top of his game at the time, so was Pippen and Jordan. IMO, I think the Bulls win 8 in a row, but Houston would have given the Bulls the best challenge.

[Neuqua]

I can't say I disagree with anything Punky wrote.

Well done.

[Pumpy Tudors]

I don't remember much about the years that the Rockets won championships (the only things I really recall are Nick Anderson and John Starks), but about Jordan and the Bulls...

BRYON RUSSELL GOT PUSHED

OK, you guys can go back to talking about the Rockets now.

[General Mike]

I think the second Rockets team with Drexler would have beaten the Bulls with Jordan. I don't think the 1st team would have tho. It's not like the Knicks team they beat in the finals had anyone besides Ewing.

[Poli]

Originally Posted by JeeberD

Where did anyone bring up the '92 Rockets?

The only notable thing the '92 Rockets did was not make the playoffs and draft Robert Horry.

Living in Houston at the time, a whole lot of people didn't know who that guy was. Many people in Houston wanted Harold Miner. I think that worked out well for Houston.

[larrymcg421]

I think the problem is that people want to consider teams over an extended period of time instead of within individual seasons. What the Rockets teams did during MJ's first three titles or his second three titles doesn't matter. We're talking about these two specific Rockets teams.

Calling them "paper" champions is pretty ridiculous. It's not their fault that MJ wanted to play baseball. The simple fact is that the Bulls #1 star was less committed to basketball than the Rockets #1 star. That made the Rockets a better team.