Houston Rockets

I have to admit, I like this team. However, I do not like their d-bag fans. I realize every team has these fans. It’s the guy that goes to the game more to make your experience miserable than to watch the game. It’s the guy that sits one row in front of 10-year-old kids and still drops the f-bomb over and over. It’s the guy that stands up and claps after every point his team scores. It’s the guy dressed like a gay rainbow wearing shades inside the arena. These fans are almost always brand new NBA fans. If you quiz one of them to name their starting five, they will be stumped. I promise. Regardless, I hate the d-bag fans.

As far as d-bag fans go though, the Lakers definitely have the most, followed by Dallas and then the Rockets. So, from the perspective of a Spurs fan, the Rockets fans are by no means the worst. Once the Spurs are out of the playoffs, you need to root for an underdog to keep things interesting. This is especially true if they lose in the first round. If they lost in the conference finals, you are not allowed to root for another team, unless it is out of spite. For example, in 2006 I was rooting for the Heat because Dallas somehow beat us in the Conference Finals. When picking a substitute team, you cannot root for a favorite, cause then you are no better than a d-bag fan. So, I have decided the Rockets are my substitute team. The following explains why Houston makes a good substitute for me, as a diehard Spurs fan, and would make a good substitute for you.

First, let’s bring it back to the ‘93-’94 season for one of my earliest NBA basketball memories. This was one of the two years that Michael Jordan decided to take off so that he could pursue his baseball career, as least that was what we were led to believe. Michael Jordan’s exit suddenly made the championship a possibility for all playoff contenders. The Spurs lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Utah Jazz. This was before the David Robinson era when our starting lineup consisted of Terry Cummings, Antoine Carr, Willie Anderson, Lloyd Daniels, and Vinny Del Negro. We were decent, but no where close to thinking we had a chance to win it all. At that time, making the playoffs was a big deal, forget about winning a championship. It’s funny how today, making the playoffs is an afterthought for Spurs fans. But regardless, with the Spurs out early, I began rooting for my substitute team, the Houston Rockets. At this time, Spurs fans were jealous of the Rockets. Check out this lineup: Hakeem “The Dream” Olajuwon, Vernon “Mad Max” Maxwell, Kenny “The Jet” Smith, Robert “Big Shot Rob” Horry, Mario “Junkyard Dog” Ellie and Sam “Sam I Am” / “The Alien” Cassell. When you have six players that all have well-known nicknames, things are going well. I remember this series specifically because I was on a family vacation in Aspen, Colorado when the finals took place. I remember being dragged to a dinner function and escaping with my dad to catch the Rockets, Knicks game. I was 12, but had a decent understanding of the game and loved the team chemistry that the Rockets possessed. They seemed to all be friends and loved playing with each other, and at the age of 12 that meant something to me. Today, I can see those same traits in this Rockets team. By trading away Rafer Alston and losing Tracy McGrady for the season, suddenly this Rockets team seems like a group of friends. It’s refreshing.

Second, I really hate the Lakers. No, really. Kobe Bryant is a horrible person. No one on his team likes him, they tolerate him. He was accused of raping a girl, which was admittedly dropped, but regardless he still committed adultery. And to make it up to his wife, he bought her a huge diamond ring the day after the story broke. How classy is that? Quick tangent, if Kobe was in Iran, he would have been stoned to death. Seriously, they still stone people. How backwards is that country? A man was recently convicted of adultery and sentenced to stoning. To stone a person, the victim is buried waste deep, and then pelted with rocks, not big enough to kill him immediately, until he is dead. Can someone drop a bomb on that country already? But back to the Lakers, I cannot stand Dereck Fisher, especially after the .4 second shot he made that destroyed one of the Spurs’ championship runs. That shot still bothers me. There is no way that he caught the ball fading away, squared up, jumped, hesitated, and released the ball in .4 seconds. It’s simply impossible. The referees were spineless and gave that game to the Lakers. During the subsequent offseason, the League created the rule that you can catch a shoot the ball in .4 seconds, but could only tap the ball in .3 seconds. What? So .1 seconds is the difference between a catch and shoot and a tap? The League created that rule in order to justify the absurd ruling of that game. Lamar Odom is just weak. He has the talent and the body to be a number one option for a good team, but lacks the heart and mental toughness. This is why he consistently disappears in big games. Pau Gasol was stolen from the Grizzlies. The League should have never approved that “trade.” The Lakers traded Kwame Brown, Javaris Crittenon, and Aaron Mckie’s corpse for Pau Gasol. People wonder why the Lakers have more talent than every other team in the West. Here is your answer; they acquired a seven foot allstar and gave up nothing. If Luke Walton, Jordan Farmar and Sasha Vujacic were not basketball players, they would definitely be the d-bag fans I described earlier. So, reason number two for rooting for the Rockets is that they are playing the Lakers.

Reason three, the Rockets have a chance at winning the championship. Yes, I said it. And do you know why they have a chance? It’s because they are freaking huge and built to get stops. Charles Barkley said something very insightful last night; he said, “The only thing consistent in basketball is defense.” What Charles meant was that a team can execute perfectly on the offensive end, but that is no guarantee that the ball is going in the basket. A team cannot control the way in which the ball decides to bounce. However, a team can consistently control their defensive intensity and make it extremely difficult for their opponents to score during the course of a game. While offense is variable, you can fix your defensive intensity. Defense was the key to the Spurs’ four championships and the Rockets are built to play defense. Check out the Rockets starters: they have a pesky, lightning-quick guard in Brooks, Shane Battier plays shooting guard and is 6’8”, 220, Ron Artest plays forward at 6’7”, 240, Luis Scola plays power forward at 6’9”, 245, and Yao Ming is the center at a listed 7’6”, 310, (more like 350.) The Rockets physically take up a ton of space and play rough. They do not back off of anyone. If a Laker has the ball, there will be a Rocket sweating on him. Driving into the Rockets defense turns the offensive player to a crash-test dummy. There is a reason that Kobe took so many jump shots in Game 1. He does not like getting hit, and who does?

The fourth reason to root for the Rockets, and quite possibly the best reason, is that they are playing their best basketball in ten years without Tracy McGrady. In case you missed it, here is a quick recap of McGrady and the Houston Rockets. Tracy McGrady basically represents everything wrong with the NBA. The guy has all the potential in the world, but at some point decided to quit on his team. He made $20 million this year and will make another $21 million next year. If a team wants to fire a player that has obviously quit on them, then they should have the power to do it. This is not France. We are not socialists, not yet anyway. This is capitalism. If an employee is not performing, then the employer should have every right to stop paying him. This season, McGrady showed up overweight and out of shape to the Rockets' preseason camp. Because he was overweight and out of shape, he quickly sustained an injury. When he was cleared by the team doctors, he refused to play claiming that he was still in pain. Most agree that he simply was disillusioned with the franchise and basically wanted to pout. Well, Houston had had enough of Tracy and decided to trade him. As soon as it got out that the Rockets were shopping McGrady, he announced that he was going to have micro-fracture knee surgery to eliminate any chance that the Rockets had of trading him. McGrady thought that the Rockets were going to trade him to a subpar team and obviously, did not want that to happen. Now, he did not discuss this knee surgery with his coach or anyone in the organization. He made the announcement without their knowledge on some radio station. Today, McGrady is watching the Rockets rally around him not being a part of the team. He still has not made it out of the first round, and if there is any justice in this world, he never will make it out of the first round.

[Correction: Roceketsfan pointed out that Tracy called ESPN’s Stephen A Smith to announce his knee surgery. I suppose Tracy thought IT WAS THE SENSIBLE THING TO DO. Stephen A. Smith is atrocious. So is Stuart Scott, but at least Stuart has calmed down his gimmicks in recent years. He used to throw a BOO-YAH out every other minute. And I feel bad for Stuart Scott because his eye is all messed up. If you are wondering how it happened, in his early years of sports reporting he was struck in the eye by a football. I am grateful that ESPN has not made Stephen A Smith an NBA commentator. That would be unbearable, like Bill Walton commentating to the infinity power.]

So, let’s root for the Rockets for the good old days, because they resemble the Spurs, because we hate the Lakers, because they are the underdog with a shot at winning it all, or because Tracy sucks at life. Any of these reasons will do, Go Rockets.