ROCKETS

The Rockets have played professional basketball in the city of Houston for more than 30 years and have won two championships in that time while making 21 playoff appearances. The two championships came in back to back seasons in 1994 and 1995 and the teams were led by soon-to-be hall of fame center Hakeem Olajuwon. Olajuwon recently retired from the league as the career leader in blocks and among the leaders in points and rebounds. The 1995 playoff run might have solidified Olajuwon as the best player in the game at the time when he watched Spurs center accept his MVP award and then went on to torch the Admiral and the Spurs as they advanced to the NBA Finals against the Orlando Magic, led by a young and hungry Shaquille O’Neal. Many expected O’Neal to overpower Olajuwon but Olajuwon was easily the best player on the court and the Rockets swept the Magic to complete their back to back run. Those two teams were coached by Rudy Tomjanovich, now the coach in Los Angeles. Jeff Van Gundy, who coached the New York Knicks to the 1999 NBA Finals, is the coach of the present group of Rockets players.

The Rockets finished the 2004 season with a 45-37 record and the #7 seed in the playoffs. They were matched up against the Los Angeles Lakers and had a chance to win three of the first four games in the series but only walked away with one win before eventually losing the series in five games. The team made one of the biggest trades of the off-season when they acquired Tracy McGrady, Juwan Howard, and Tyronn Lue from the Orlando Magic for Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley, and Kelvin Cato. Mcgrady has arguably been a top three player in the league the last few seasons but the Orlando teams have done absolutely nothing to garner any kind of media attention. McGrady’s back became an issue for parts of last season but when he’s healthy, he’s definitely a top player in the league. The team also signed free agents Bob Sura and Charlie Ward to fill a void at the point guard position with the loss of their two guards in the Magic trade. The Rockets traded away their first round pick in the 2004 draft when they acquired Glen Rice from the Utah Jazz and so they were left with a late second round pick which they used to draft Luis Flores, a guard from Manhattan. Flores was one of the leading scorers in college basketball last year and has a great offensive game but his size (6’2”) could be a problem.

The combination of Tracy McGrady on the wings and Yao Ming in the middle will be awfully comparable to the Kobe Bryant-Shaquille O’Neal match up that was so successful over the years. Yao is only in his third year and is likely to be a force in the league for many years to come. The two of them will likely team up with Bob Sura at point guard, Jim Jackson at small forward, and Juwan Howard at the power forward to form one of the top starting lineups in the West. The Rockets will also have plenty of depth off the bench in the form of Tyronn Lue, Charlie Ward, Maurice Taylor, and Bostjan Nachbar. The Rockets will also be playing in what can easily be considered the toughest division in the new realignment of the NBA, the Southwest division. The division rivals will be two teams from the state of Texas, the San Antonio Spurs and the Dallas Mavericks, along with the Memphis Grizzlies and the New Orleans Hornets. Each of the four teams the Rockets meet up with in the division made the playoffs last year (New Orleans out of the East) and they had an average of an even 50 wins last season. Everyone knows how tough it is to play in the Western Conference but the Rockets have to feel like if they can succeed in the division, the rest of the conference should be okay. Of course, each of the four teams in the division have a player who could be considered one of the best in the league (Duncan, Nowitski, Davis, and Gasol) so the Rockets will have to play very well to get out of the division and into the playoffs.

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