Re: Texas Two Step: An Alternate NBA History (NBA2K20)
Epilogue
It was the end of the Runnin’ Rockets and everyone on the team — from the players to the coaches — knew it. After the Rockets were unceremoniously dumped in Round 1 by the Suns, 3-2, the players met with their head coach one last time before everyone packed up their things for the summer. It was the first time their season had ended without a championship and that was largely due to the many injuries, distractions, and drama of the season.
“Gentlemen, it’s been a hell of a ride and an honor to be your coach,” Randy Kern told his players. “Each of you has given your best during this run and there’s no point in pretending we’re all going to be back next season … we all know the score here, so I’m not going to blow smoke up your *ss and make you feel warm inside. This game is a brutal business sometimes but that doesn’t change what we did … we got those *ucking championships and it’s because we were the *ucking best.”
The players and coaches spent their final day together at the arena, reminiscing over old times and passing around the bottles of champagne the Rockets food staff had bought ahead of the playoffs — it was presumptuous, but beneficial to a team full of players who were certain their days in Houston were numbered.
The playoffs ended with the Bulls sweeping the Spurs and an all-time great matchup — the Pippen-led Rockets battling the Jordan-led Bulls — being denied to the players and fans alike thanks to Pippen’s injury. “I knew that if I was healthy we’d have gotten a chance to defend our title,” Pippen said years later in an interview. “Everything that season just got away from us … one domino set off a million changes.”
The end of season was bitter for the players and coaches; it was bitter for the Hale family, especially Nate Hale, as they watched powerless to do anything. “It was gut-wrenching to see that happen to the team I helped build … I knew I was partly to blame, that my family was partly to blame. If we hadn’t been forced to sell, we might have had a chance at title number four.”
The offseason for the Rockets new front office, led by Solomon Grady’s handpicked GM Edgar Blank, began almost immediately. Blank was tasked with stripping away the things about the team Grady disliked — much like Nate Hale, Blank had no experience being a basketball executive. Unlike Hale, Blank didn’t have a natural aptitude for the job — if anything Blank’s name became a bit of a joke.
“They called him, ‘Fill in the Blank’ because he was so easy to manipulate. You could just offer him almost anything that looked valuable and if it fit the parameters Grady gave him, he’d pull the trigger,” said NBA columnist Sam Gray. “The league’s other front offices didn’t respect him at all.”
Blank’s first decision was to fire Randy Kern and Kern welcomed the end of his time in Houston. “Grady’s ownership had been a disaster from the start and I was ready to go,” recalled Kern. “As soon as I got word I told my agent to start calling NBC or ESPN or whoever … I had done everything I wanted in the NBA. I won three titles straight, had one early playoff exit, and I was fired — I was burned out on the pro game.”
Kern’s agent did exactly as requested and the coach found himself a new job as a broadcast analyst for ESPN — a much less stressful job than being a head coach. “I knew I would miss the pro game, but staying close to it as a broadcaster was a good way to allow me some time to decompress and find a life outside of basketball,” said Kern. “I hadn’t been on a date in six years.”
While Kern took a much-deserved break, the former GM of the Rockets had been out of the job for two months — in that time, he had discovered just how much working as an NBA executive meant to him. “I thought I could back to the non-NBA world with ease,” recalled Nate Hale. “I thought I could help my father fix the family business and be happy with what I accomplished. We had a great run in Houston.”
But as the weeks dragged on and the playoffs started — and ended — for the Rockets, Hale found himself increasingly angry. “Grady had taken away something special from myself, the players, the NBA, the fans,” said Hale.
****
Despite his wants, Nate Hale had to focus on the family business — the NBA had to become an afterthought. The Hale Family Ranches — a longtime staple of Texas — was facing its darkest hour. Despite selling the Rockets, despite paying the fines levied against them by the IRS, the ranches finances were a mess.
Nate and his father, Sam Hale, had a tangled ball of yarn to straighten out. Though the ranches weren’t Nate’s favorite investment, he knew he couldn’t leave his father to manage things himself — the elder Hale was just north of 70. Sam Hale’s firstborn son, Trent Lewis, wasn’t on speaking terms with his father — Nate knew that the only one left to help was him.
“It was me or trusting someone else,” recalled Nate Hale. “After what had been done to the family finances, I couldn’t risk trusting someone else. I had to put aside my wants.”
Nate Hale stood by and watched as the Runnin’ Rockets were dismantled, one trade after another.
First went Shaquille O’Neal. The big man, along with Chris Mills, was sent packing to Denver — a place neither player wanted to be and the Rockets front office knew it. “I didn’t want to play there,” recalled O’Neal. “I told J-Dog to tell Grady to *uck himself when the trade news hit … there wasn’t much me or Chris could do. We were under contract. We would have to do our best to beat the *hit out of Houston every time we saw them.”
Shipped out along with O’Neal was Gary Payton, who was sent off to New Jersey in a sign-and-trade deal for Mookie Blaylock, rookie PF Eric Mobley, and the Nets barely protected 1995 1st rounder. Payton, unlike O’Neal, had been consulted on where he would go and had accepted New Jersey as his destination. “I wanted the big money, I had three rings already and I wanted to prove I could be the guy for a team,” said Payton. “I signed the deal, I got the trade, and I ended up in a place desperate to win and not far from New York … I wasn’t that mad about it. I was mad at how Houston was doing everyone else, though — I thought they were going to do that for everyone but they *ucked everyone else.”
Sasa Drobnjak and Terry Moncrief were also sent to New Jersey with Payton, and neither were particularly happy about it. “Houston was a place I wanted to stay forever,” said Drobnjak. “Being moved liked that was not how things should have gone.”
Houston got back a major haul for O’Neal — Chris Morris (who agreed to a four-year extension), Sam Bowie, Latrell Spreewell, and Jalen Rose all became Rockets overnight. Grady had wiped away a third of the roster in one trade and had brought back players that weren’t exactly model citizens.
“Grady traded for Spreewell, who had a temper, and Rose, who had attitude problems in college,” said Gray. “People asked him why were these players better than the ones you shipped out and he answered, ‘They don’t get in brawls on the court.’”
The arrival of veteran Mookie Blaylock, as well as young PF Eric Mobley, further cemented the team was going to be very different next season. But Houston’s front office wasn’t done yet, as they sent Scottie Pippen away, too.
Pippen’s value was harder to judge — he had missed almost the entire season with a knee injury and people weren’t sure if he would ever come back as good as he used to be. Houston sold Pippen off to the Bucks, who wanted to accelerate their rebuild and decided to ship off Alonzo Mourning and a completely unprotected 1995 first (along with another 1995 first from Atlanta) for Pippen’s services. Locked in on a three-year deal, Pippen would now be playing in the same division as Michael Jordan.
“I knew they were going to strip it down, but not like that,” recalled Pippen. “To send Shaq, Gary, Chris, and Sasa off like that … it was gross. I was disgusted for them.”
Pippen’s knee had, according to doctors, healed up well and he was looking forward to proving everyone wrong — but he knew his odds of team success like he had with Houston were small. “What we did there, that was special and that wasn’t something I ever expected to be a part of again,” said Pippen.
While the NBA offseason was in full swing, Nate Hale could only watch. Initially, he believed it a year would be required to clean the finances up for the ranches, but that timeline was thrown into the shredder within months. On November 7th, 1994, Sam Hale suffered a heart-attack while driving his truck into town — he would die in a one-car accident, his truck colliding with a telephone pole at over 90 miles an hour.
Suddenly, Nate Hale was in charge of the entire operation.
The funeral for his father was fraught. For the first time in years, Nate and his brother Trent shared a room — the emotions soon overtook both men. Accusations flew between them, the words as devastating as bullets, all while their father lied in rest in a coffin not far from them.
“It was an unpleasant experience,” recalled Trent Lewis. “I won’t say more than that.”
Reports of the blow up made the rounds through the state of Texas, but the damage was done — a moment of potential reconciliation had been turned into a declaration of war. Trent Lewis wouldn’t allow his brother to run the family ranches into the ground; Lewis would sue in late 1994, claiming his father had been incompetent when he wrote his will.
Trent Lewis' claim drove a wedge into the Hale family and certain members of the Lewis family — namely, Trent’s oldest son, David Lewis. Born in 1973, David and Trent spent much of their time butting heads — like Trent had with his father. But the way Trent was treating his own brother was the final straw for David. Now a college graduate, armed with a degree and a future unwritten, David declared his father was wrong.
He not only made this declaration, he took action: he legally changed his name from David Lewis to David Hale. Trent Lewis was infuriated and disowned his son. Nate Hale wouldn’t allow his brother to banish his nephew like that. “I had a duty to David,” said Nate Hale. “We hadn’t talked for a few years, but he was probably more like my father than any of us … I wasn’t about to let him float through life.”
Nate Hale made an offer to his nephew: he would make some calls and get David a low-level front office job for an NBA team. But it wouldn’t be in Texas and it wouldn’t be close — Nate knew the coming court case was going to be vicious. He wanted to keep David out of it and, if possible, give his younger siblings a port in the storm away from the forthcoming drama.
David, barely 21, accepted the offer. “I was through with my father,” recalled David Hale. “I was so angry then I could barely see straight … the further away I was, the better.”
David Hale took a job with the Clippers and escaped the state just in time. The court case Trent Lewis brought dragged out for over two years and the extended Hale family split into multiple factions as the brothers threw an army of lawyers at one another. Dirty laundry was aired out in and out of court — while it made for engaging gossip, the family bonds became more and more frayed. Eventually, the Texas Supreme Court intervened and shut down the proceedings, ruling in favor of Nate Hale and the will of his late father.
The battle in court had been damaging for both sides. Though Lewis lost the court battle, his franchise was thriving — Dallas had won the 1995 and 1996 NBA Finals. “That took the sting out of things,” said Lewis. “Was I still upset? Absolutely. I didn’t believe Nate could run the ranches … he wasn’t a cattleman. He didn’t know the industry.”
Indeed, Nate Hale wasn’t a cattleman — he was a financial wizard, but the stock market was a different beast compared to the cattle industry. The ranches struggled from 1996 onward as Nate attempted to learn the industry and put people around him who could help him. It was a long process. “Building a team in the cattle industry is harder than in the NBA,” Nate joked at a beef conference in 1998.
But there was truth in that humor, a truth that Nate was afraid to confront: he might never be able to run anything other than the Hale Family Ranches. “It kept me up at night,” said Hale.
In February 1999, Nate Hale had finally gotten the ranches finances in decent shape — it wasn’t perfect and it was far from foolproof, but the itch to get back into the NBA was becoming too much to bear. During the All-Star break, Hale was approached to take over the Detroit Pistons. It was a good offer. It was a good opportunity.
But it felt … wrong. “The idea of leaving the ranch in someone else’s hands, of risking my father’s legacy … I couldn’t commit. I couldn’t do it.” Hale turned the offer down and returned to life on the ranch — but the All-Star break hadn’t been a complete wash. While fielding offers during All-Star weekend, Hale met a lovely PR specialist from California, Jackie Porter. The two hit it off and began to date.
The would be married a little over a year later. Porter overhauled the ranches marketing and communications, the two hatching a plan to rebuild the wealth of the family — enough wealth to buy an NBA team again. “It was going to be a long endeavor,” said Nate Hale. “But I was committed to it and so was Jackie. She wanted the ranches to change the state of Texas.”
Nate Hale put aside his dreams of an NBA front office job and soon found a new purpose — that of a father, in addition to being a husband. His wife gave birth to their first child, Theodore Samuel Hale, in early 2003. “I was, for the first time in a long time, happy with where my life was,” said Nate Hale. “There was still an itch, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t overwhelming. Just a curiosity at that point.”
The arc of Nate Hale’s life had led him away from the NBA — the rivalry with his brother was effectively in deep-freeze. The two had no relationship. The Lewis and Hale families were now more divided than ever. Trent Lewis still owned the Dallas Mavericks, though the team was far from the success they had achieved in 1995 and 1996.
But the NBA was on the verge of a massive change — a generation of new superstars was about to grace the league in the 2003 Draft. With them, a new generation of GMs and coaches … one, in particular, with a familiar name that would reignite a dormant rivalry that would once more dictate the course of the league.
Epilogue
It was the end of the Runnin’ Rockets and everyone on the team — from the players to the coaches — knew it. After the Rockets were unceremoniously dumped in Round 1 by the Suns, 3-2, the players met with their head coach one last time before everyone packed up their things for the summer. It was the first time their season had ended without a championship and that was largely due to the many injuries, distractions, and drama of the season.
“Gentlemen, it’s been a hell of a ride and an honor to be your coach,” Randy Kern told his players. “Each of you has given your best during this run and there’s no point in pretending we’re all going to be back next season … we all know the score here, so I’m not going to blow smoke up your *ss and make you feel warm inside. This game is a brutal business sometimes but that doesn’t change what we did … we got those *ucking championships and it’s because we were the *ucking best.”
The players and coaches spent their final day together at the arena, reminiscing over old times and passing around the bottles of champagne the Rockets food staff had bought ahead of the playoffs — it was presumptuous, but beneficial to a team full of players who were certain their days in Houston were numbered.
The playoffs ended with the Bulls sweeping the Spurs and an all-time great matchup — the Pippen-led Rockets battling the Jordan-led Bulls — being denied to the players and fans alike thanks to Pippen’s injury. “I knew that if I was healthy we’d have gotten a chance to defend our title,” Pippen said years later in an interview. “Everything that season just got away from us … one domino set off a million changes.”
The end of season was bitter for the players and coaches; it was bitter for the Hale family, especially Nate Hale, as they watched powerless to do anything. “It was gut-wrenching to see that happen to the team I helped build … I knew I was partly to blame, that my family was partly to blame. If we hadn’t been forced to sell, we might have had a chance at title number four.”
The offseason for the Rockets new front office, led by Solomon Grady’s handpicked GM Edgar Blank, began almost immediately. Blank was tasked with stripping away the things about the team Grady disliked — much like Nate Hale, Blank had no experience being a basketball executive. Unlike Hale, Blank didn’t have a natural aptitude for the job — if anything Blank’s name became a bit of a joke.
“They called him, ‘Fill in the Blank’ because he was so easy to manipulate. You could just offer him almost anything that looked valuable and if it fit the parameters Grady gave him, he’d pull the trigger,” said NBA columnist Sam Gray. “The league’s other front offices didn’t respect him at all.”
Blank’s first decision was to fire Randy Kern and Kern welcomed the end of his time in Houston. “Grady’s ownership had been a disaster from the start and I was ready to go,” recalled Kern. “As soon as I got word I told my agent to start calling NBC or ESPN or whoever … I had done everything I wanted in the NBA. I won three titles straight, had one early playoff exit, and I was fired — I was burned out on the pro game.”
Kern’s agent did exactly as requested and the coach found himself a new job as a broadcast analyst for ESPN — a much less stressful job than being a head coach. “I knew I would miss the pro game, but staying close to it as a broadcaster was a good way to allow me some time to decompress and find a life outside of basketball,” said Kern. “I hadn’t been on a date in six years.”
While Kern took a much-deserved break, the former GM of the Rockets had been out of the job for two months — in that time, he had discovered just how much working as an NBA executive meant to him. “I thought I could back to the non-NBA world with ease,” recalled Nate Hale. “I thought I could help my father fix the family business and be happy with what I accomplished. We had a great run in Houston.”
But as the weeks dragged on and the playoffs started — and ended — for the Rockets, Hale found himself increasingly angry. “Grady had taken away something special from myself, the players, the NBA, the fans,” said Hale.
****
Despite his wants, Nate Hale had to focus on the family business — the NBA had to become an afterthought. The Hale Family Ranches — a longtime staple of Texas — was facing its darkest hour. Despite selling the Rockets, despite paying the fines levied against them by the IRS, the ranches finances were a mess.
Nate and his father, Sam Hale, had a tangled ball of yarn to straighten out. Though the ranches weren’t Nate’s favorite investment, he knew he couldn’t leave his father to manage things himself — the elder Hale was just north of 70. Sam Hale’s firstborn son, Trent Lewis, wasn’t on speaking terms with his father — Nate knew that the only one left to help was him.
“It was me or trusting someone else,” recalled Nate Hale. “After what had been done to the family finances, I couldn’t risk trusting someone else. I had to put aside my wants.”
Nate Hale stood by and watched as the Runnin’ Rockets were dismantled, one trade after another.
First went Shaquille O’Neal. The big man, along with Chris Mills, was sent packing to Denver — a place neither player wanted to be and the Rockets front office knew it. “I didn’t want to play there,” recalled O’Neal. “I told J-Dog to tell Grady to *uck himself when the trade news hit … there wasn’t much me or Chris could do. We were under contract. We would have to do our best to beat the *hit out of Houston every time we saw them.”
Shipped out along with O’Neal was Gary Payton, who was sent off to New Jersey in a sign-and-trade deal for Mookie Blaylock, rookie PF Eric Mobley, and the Nets barely protected 1995 1st rounder. Payton, unlike O’Neal, had been consulted on where he would go and had accepted New Jersey as his destination. “I wanted the big money, I had three rings already and I wanted to prove I could be the guy for a team,” said Payton. “I signed the deal, I got the trade, and I ended up in a place desperate to win and not far from New York … I wasn’t that mad about it. I was mad at how Houston was doing everyone else, though — I thought they were going to do that for everyone but they *ucked everyone else.”
Sasa Drobnjak and Terry Moncrief were also sent to New Jersey with Payton, and neither were particularly happy about it. “Houston was a place I wanted to stay forever,” said Drobnjak. “Being moved liked that was not how things should have gone.”
Houston got back a major haul for O’Neal — Chris Morris (who agreed to a four-year extension), Sam Bowie, Latrell Spreewell, and Jalen Rose all became Rockets overnight. Grady had wiped away a third of the roster in one trade and had brought back players that weren’t exactly model citizens.
“Grady traded for Spreewell, who had a temper, and Rose, who had attitude problems in college,” said Gray. “People asked him why were these players better than the ones you shipped out and he answered, ‘They don’t get in brawls on the court.’”
The arrival of veteran Mookie Blaylock, as well as young PF Eric Mobley, further cemented the team was going to be very different next season. But Houston’s front office wasn’t done yet, as they sent Scottie Pippen away, too.
Pippen’s value was harder to judge — he had missed almost the entire season with a knee injury and people weren’t sure if he would ever come back as good as he used to be. Houston sold Pippen off to the Bucks, who wanted to accelerate their rebuild and decided to ship off Alonzo Mourning and a completely unprotected 1995 first (along with another 1995 first from Atlanta) for Pippen’s services. Locked in on a three-year deal, Pippen would now be playing in the same division as Michael Jordan.
“I knew they were going to strip it down, but not like that,” recalled Pippen. “To send Shaq, Gary, Chris, and Sasa off like that … it was gross. I was disgusted for them.”
Pippen’s knee had, according to doctors, healed up well and he was looking forward to proving everyone wrong — but he knew his odds of team success like he had with Houston were small. “What we did there, that was special and that wasn’t something I ever expected to be a part of again,” said Pippen.
While the NBA offseason was in full swing, Nate Hale could only watch. Initially, he believed it a year would be required to clean the finances up for the ranches, but that timeline was thrown into the shredder within months. On November 7th, 1994, Sam Hale suffered a heart-attack while driving his truck into town — he would die in a one-car accident, his truck colliding with a telephone pole at over 90 miles an hour.
Suddenly, Nate Hale was in charge of the entire operation.
The funeral for his father was fraught. For the first time in years, Nate and his brother Trent shared a room — the emotions soon overtook both men. Accusations flew between them, the words as devastating as bullets, all while their father lied in rest in a coffin not far from them.
“It was an unpleasant experience,” recalled Trent Lewis. “I won’t say more than that.”
Reports of the blow up made the rounds through the state of Texas, but the damage was done — a moment of potential reconciliation had been turned into a declaration of war. Trent Lewis wouldn’t allow his brother to run the family ranches into the ground; Lewis would sue in late 1994, claiming his father had been incompetent when he wrote his will.
Trent Lewis' claim drove a wedge into the Hale family and certain members of the Lewis family — namely, Trent’s oldest son, David Lewis. Born in 1973, David and Trent spent much of their time butting heads — like Trent had with his father. But the way Trent was treating his own brother was the final straw for David. Now a college graduate, armed with a degree and a future unwritten, David declared his father was wrong.
He not only made this declaration, he took action: he legally changed his name from David Lewis to David Hale. Trent Lewis was infuriated and disowned his son. Nate Hale wouldn’t allow his brother to banish his nephew like that. “I had a duty to David,” said Nate Hale. “We hadn’t talked for a few years, but he was probably more like my father than any of us … I wasn’t about to let him float through life.”
Nate Hale made an offer to his nephew: he would make some calls and get David a low-level front office job for an NBA team. But it wouldn’t be in Texas and it wouldn’t be close — Nate knew the coming court case was going to be vicious. He wanted to keep David out of it and, if possible, give his younger siblings a port in the storm away from the forthcoming drama.
David, barely 21, accepted the offer. “I was through with my father,” recalled David Hale. “I was so angry then I could barely see straight … the further away I was, the better.”
David Hale took a job with the Clippers and escaped the state just in time. The court case Trent Lewis brought dragged out for over two years and the extended Hale family split into multiple factions as the brothers threw an army of lawyers at one another. Dirty laundry was aired out in and out of court — while it made for engaging gossip, the family bonds became more and more frayed. Eventually, the Texas Supreme Court intervened and shut down the proceedings, ruling in favor of Nate Hale and the will of his late father.
The battle in court had been damaging for both sides. Though Lewis lost the court battle, his franchise was thriving — Dallas had won the 1995 and 1996 NBA Finals. “That took the sting out of things,” said Lewis. “Was I still upset? Absolutely. I didn’t believe Nate could run the ranches … he wasn’t a cattleman. He didn’t know the industry.”
Indeed, Nate Hale wasn’t a cattleman — he was a financial wizard, but the stock market was a different beast compared to the cattle industry. The ranches struggled from 1996 onward as Nate attempted to learn the industry and put people around him who could help him. It was a long process. “Building a team in the cattle industry is harder than in the NBA,” Nate joked at a beef conference in 1998.
But there was truth in that humor, a truth that Nate was afraid to confront: he might never be able to run anything other than the Hale Family Ranches. “It kept me up at night,” said Hale.
In February 1999, Nate Hale had finally gotten the ranches finances in decent shape — it wasn’t perfect and it was far from foolproof, but the itch to get back into the NBA was becoming too much to bear. During the All-Star break, Hale was approached to take over the Detroit Pistons. It was a good offer. It was a good opportunity.
But it felt … wrong. “The idea of leaving the ranch in someone else’s hands, of risking my father’s legacy … I couldn’t commit. I couldn’t do it.” Hale turned the offer down and returned to life on the ranch — but the All-Star break hadn’t been a complete wash. While fielding offers during All-Star weekend, Hale met a lovely PR specialist from California, Jackie Porter. The two hit it off and began to date.
The would be married a little over a year later. Porter overhauled the ranches marketing and communications, the two hatching a plan to rebuild the wealth of the family — enough wealth to buy an NBA team again. “It was going to be a long endeavor,” said Nate Hale. “But I was committed to it and so was Jackie. She wanted the ranches to change the state of Texas.”
Nate Hale put aside his dreams of an NBA front office job and soon found a new purpose — that of a father, in addition to being a husband. His wife gave birth to their first child, Theodore Samuel Hale, in early 2003. “I was, for the first time in a long time, happy with where my life was,” said Nate Hale. “There was still an itch, don’t get me wrong, but it wasn’t overwhelming. Just a curiosity at that point.”
The arc of Nate Hale’s life had led him away from the NBA — the rivalry with his brother was effectively in deep-freeze. The two had no relationship. The Lewis and Hale families were now more divided than ever. Trent Lewis still owned the Dallas Mavericks, though the team was far from the success they had achieved in 1995 and 1996.
But the NBA was on the verge of a massive change — a generation of new superstars was about to grace the league in the 2003 Draft. With them, a new generation of GMs and coaches … one, in particular, with a familiar name that would reignite a dormant rivalry that would once more dictate the course of the league.
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