For many NBA fans, the most popular hypothetical from the 1990s era involves Michael Jordan‘s temporary mid-career retirement in October 1993. With the Chicago Bulls coming off three straight titles, many wonder if they’d have kept winning, had Jordan continued to play.
The Houston Rockets, of course, won the next two NBA championships in 1994 and 1995 following Jordan’s decision to walk away.
From Houston’s perspective, there’s a different hypothetical. What if one of two relatively open shots had gone down at the end of Game 7 of their second-round series at Seattle in the 1993 playoffs? Matt Bullard, who played nine seasons with the Rockets between 1990 and 2001 and now works as a broadcaster for the team, thinks he knows the answer.
“Had Seattle not beaten us in the playoffs in 1993, we probably would have three-peated in 1993, 1994, and 1995,” Bullard said Tuesday in an appearance on flagship radio station SportsTalk 790 in Houston. “We would’ve beaten the Bulls in 1993.”
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Looking back, there are legitimate reasons for that confidence. By Win Shares, the 1992-93 season was the best of Hall of Fame center Hakeem Olajuwon‘s entire career. “The Dream” played all 82 games and averaged 26.1 points (52.9% FG), 13.0 rebounds, and a league-high 4.2 blocks per game, which led to him finishing second in MVP voting.
The Rockets went 55-27 that season, which was tied for the second-best record in the Western Conference. They also got much better as the year moved along, with two winning streaks of 15 games and 11 games in the regular season’s final two months. After starting the year 14-16, they finished 41-11 (.788) — good for a 65-win pace over a full season.
Though the Shawn Kemp and Gary Payton-led SuperSonics were a juggernaut in their own right, Houston had two golden opportunities late in Game 7 of a tight second-round series. With the game tied in the closing seconds of regulation, sharpshooting guard Kenny Smith missed a clean look from the corner that would’ve won the game at the buzzer.
Then, trailing by only one point in the closing seconds of overtime, Vernon Maxwell missed a go-ahead shot on the left baseline from about 18 feet away. Seattle then made two free throws in the final second to escape with the 103-100 victory (box score).
There were also a series of questionable officiating calls late in Game 7, each working to the benefit of the home team.
It was only a second-round series, of course. Even had Houston won, they would’ve had to then defeat both of that year’s NBA Finals participants (Phoenix and Chicago) in back-to-back rounds, in order to win the title.
But there’s certainly reason to wonder. The Rockets beat Charles Barkley’s Suns in a playoff series in each of the next two years, and they also won their final two regular-season games versus Phoenix in 1992-93.
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While Houston never faced the Bulls in the playoffs, they did go 5-1 versus Chicago in the regular season from 1990-91 through 1992-93 — including 2-0 in that final season, with both wins by double digits. Olajuwon was a tough matchup for the Bulls and the likes of Bill Cartwright, while Maxwell embraced the challenge of covering Jordan.
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As it was, the Suns defeated Seattle in a seven-game Western Conference Finals before losing to Chicago in the NBA Finals in six games. But just as the Bulls wonder what might have been had Jordan not stepped away later that year, the Rockets have a fascinating 1993 hypothetical of their own about what might have happened with just one more shot.
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