The Houston Rockets are an American professional basketball team located in Houston, Texas. The Rockets compete at the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of this league’s Western Conference Southwest Division. The team plays its home games at the Toyota Center, located in downtown Houston. The Rockets have won two NBA championships and four Western Conference titles. The group was established in 1967 as the San Diego Rockets, a growth team originally based in San Diego. In 1971, the Rockets transferred to Houston.
The Rockets won only 15 matches in their debut season for a franchise in 1967. In the 1968 NBA draft, the Rockets were given the first overall choice and chosen power forward Elvin Hayes, who would direct the team to its first playoff appearance in his rookie season. The Rockets didn’t complete a season with a winning record for almost a decade until the 1976–77 season, when they traded for All-Star center Moses Malone. Malone went on to win the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award twice while playing the Rockets and headed Houston into the Eastern Conference Finals in his first year with the group. During the 1980–81 season, the Rockets ended the regular season with a 40–42 record. Regardless of their losing record, they qualified for the playoffs. Led by Malone, the Rockets stunned the whole league by making their first NBA Finals appearance in 1981, becoming only the second team in NBA history to make the NBA Finals with a missing record. They would lose in six matches into the 62–20 Boston Celtics, led by Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and potential Rockets’ head coach Kevin McHale. As of 2019, the 1980–81 Rockets are the last team as the 1954–55 Minneapolis Lakers to make it all the way to the NBA Finals with a missing record.
In the 1984 NBA draft, once more with the first overall pick, the Rockets drafted center Hakeem Olajuwon, who’d become the cornerstone of the most prosperous period in franchise history. Paired with 7 ft 4 inches (2.24 m) Ralph Sampson, they formed among the tallest leading courts in the NBA. Nicknamed the”Twin Towers”, they led the group into the 1986 NBA Finals–the second NBA Finals appearance in franchise history–where Houston was again defeated by Larry Bird and the 67-win Boston Celtics. The Rockets continued to reach the playoffs during the 1980s, but failed to progress beyond the first round for many years following a second round defeat to the Seattle SuperSonics at 1987. Rudy Tomjanovich took over as head coach midway through the 1991–92 season, ushering in the most successful period in franchise history. Directed by Olajuwon, the Rockets dominated the 1993–94 season, setting a franchise record 58 wins and moved into the 1994 NBA Finals–the next NBA Finals appearance in franchise history–and won the franchise’s first championship against Patrick Ewing and the New York Knicks. During the next season, bolstered by yet another All-Star, Clyde Drexler, the Rockets–in their fourth NBA Finals appearance in franchise history–repeated as champions with a four-game sweep of the Orlando Magic, who had been led by a youthful Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway. Houston, which finished the season with a 47–35 record and was sixth in the Western Conference during the 1995 playoffs, became the lowest-seeded team in NBA history to win the title.
The Rockets acquired all-star forward Charles Barkley in 1996, but the presence of all of the NBA’s 50 greatest players of all time (Olajuwon, Drexler, and Barkley) wasn’t enough to propel Houston beyond the Western Conference Finals. Every of the aging trio had abandoned the group by 2001. The Rockets of the early 2000s, headed by superstars Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming, followed the trend of constant regular season respectability followed by playoff underachievement as both players struggled with injuries. Following Yao’s early retirement in 2011, the Rockets entered a period of rebuilding, completely dismantling and retooling their roster. The acquisition of franchise player James Harden in 2012 has established the Rockets back into championship contention from the mid-2010s.
Moses Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, and James Harden happen to be named the NBA’s Most Valuable Player while playing for the Rockets, for a total of four MVP awards. The Rockets, under general manager Daryl Morey, are notable for popularizing the use of advanced statistical analytics (like sabermetrics in baseball) in player acquisitions and style of play.
Read more here: http://www.olcayreklam.com//?p=26122