Tag: Vernon Maxwell

Rockets react to passing of legendary Utah coach Jerry Sloan

Several Houston legends had kind words Friday for the late Jerry Sloan, who coached against the Rockets in several classic playoff series.

Legendary Utah Jazz head coach Jerry Sloan, who led the team from 1988 until 2011, passed away Friday due to complications from Parkinson’s disease and Lewy body dementia. He was 78 years old.

Sloan ranks fourth on the NBA’s all-time coaching list with 1,221 regular-season wins, and sixth in the playoff history with 98 wins. He’s one of only two coaches in league history to record 1,000 wins with one club.

Sloan coached for one team longer than anyone in NBA history, and he led the Jazz to 15 straight playoff appearances from 1989 through 2003 (including two Western Conference titles in 1997 and 1998). He’s one of only four coaches in history with 15-plus consecutive seasons with a winning record, joining Gregg Popovich, Pat Riley, and Phil Jackson.

The Jazz and Rockets have long been rivals, and six of Sloan’s postseason trips (1994, 1995, 1997, 1998, 2007, and 2008) featured playoff series between Utah and Houston. None ended in sweeps, and in five of the six series, the losing team still won at least two games.

Houston defeated Utah on its way to a pair of NBA championships in 1994 and 1995, and the Jazz returned the favor on their way to the first NBA Finals trips in franchise history in 1997 and 1998.

Though the playoff battles were intense, Sloan clearly earned the respect of Houston’s players, as he did throughout the NBA. Here’s a sampling of Friday’s reactions from the Rockets organization, both past and present.

Rockets lament what could have been vs. Bulls in 1993 NBA Finals

The matchups and numbers back up why 1992-93 was Houston’s best opportunity at defeating Michael Jordan’s Bulls in the NBA Finals.

Though Michael Jordan‘s Chicago Bulls and Hakeem Olajuwon‘s Houston Rockets combined to win eight straight NBA titles from 1991 through 1998, they somehow never faced one another in the final round.

The 1996-97 season was technically the closest the two Hall of Famers came to an NBA Finals showdown, since Houston was two wins away from defeating Utah in the Western Conference Finals. In every other season of those eight years, the losing team didn’t make the conference finals.

But as the Rockets see it, 1992-93 was probably the season that got away. “Had Seattle not beaten us in the playoffs in 1993, we probably would have three-peated in 1993, 1994, and 1995,” reserve forward Matt Bullard said last week. “We would’ve beaten the Bulls in 1993.”

Generally speaking, Houston’s confidence was based on two matchups: Olajuwon against whatever nondescript center the Bulls utilized, and Vernon Maxwell’s ability to defend Jordan. By 1997, Maxwell had left the Rockets, and a 34-year-old Olajuwon was slightly past his prime.

So even if the Rockets had beaten the Jazz in the latter season, it’s unclear how they might have fared against that version of the Bulls.

By contrast, they remain confident in their matchups earlier in the decade. Houston went 5-1 versus Chicago from 1991 through 1993, including 2-0 in the 1992-93 season — with both wins by double digits.

Jordan scored 29.2 points per game on 48.0% shooting against the Rockets in those six games from 1990-91 through 1992-93. That was down slightly from his usual averages of 31.4 points per game on 51.7% shooting in those years. Meanwhile, the fiery Maxwell averaged 18.3 points on 51.3% FG versus the Bulls — far superior to his 40.8% overall shooting clip and 16.1 points per game average for those seasons.

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The Rockets didn’t crack the top five of the West in either 1990-91 or 1991-92, so an NBA Finals matchup in those years wasn’t realistic. But they very nearly had an opportunity in 1992-93.

The Rockets went 55-27 and were tied for the West’s No. 2 seed in the regular season, including a 41-11 finish to the year. (That would represent a 65-win pace over a full season.) They took Seattle to seven games in the second round and lost by just two points in Game 7, and the Rockets had shots at both the end of regulation and overtime to win it.

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The 1992-93 season was also the best of Olajuwon’s entire career by Win Shares, with the big man averaging 26.1 points (52.9% FG), 13.0 rebounds, and a league-leading 4.2 blocks per game.

Had the Rockets beaten Seattle, they would still have needed to defeat top-seeded Phoenix in the 1993 Western Conference Finals in order to get their shot at Jordan’s Bulls in the championship round.

But Houston defeated the Suns in the playoffs in each of the next two years on their way to NBA titles, and they also beat Phoenix in their final two head-to-head matchups of the 1992-93 season. So, especially in hindsight, it’s understandable why they feel they’d have won that series.

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Olajuwon clearly earned Jordan’s respect over those years, as evidenced by Jordan selecting him for his all-time NBA team. Recently, former Rockets head coach Rudy Tomjanovich shared a story in which Jordan told him that Houston was the team to gave the Bulls the most trouble.

“He gave our team great respect,” Tomjanovich told The Athletic about his meeting with Jordan. “He didn’t feel that they could contain Hakeem [Olajuwon]. They just didn’t have the personnel to do it. And he said he thought we were the team that gave them the most trouble.”

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In the end, both sides are left with the hypothetical. But from Houston’s perspective, 1992-93 feels like the one that got away.

ESPN’s “The Last Dance” documentary, which chronicles the journey of Jordan and the 1990s-era Bulls, concludes on Sunday night.

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Matt Bullard: 1990s Rockets were close to their own three-peat

How close were the Houston Rockets to winning a third championship in the early 1990s? Closer than you might think. Here’s why.

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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‘The Jordan Rules’ author: Rockets had great matchups vs. ’90s Bulls

“Houston just had great matchups all over the floor,” the Chicago Tribune’s Sam Smith says of how the Rockets and Bulls may have fared.

Count former Chicago Tribune reporter and “The Jordan Rules” author Sam Smith as among those skeptical of how the Bulls might have fared in a hypothetical playoff matchup versus the Houston Rockets.

The Bulls won three consecutive NBA titles from 1991 through 1993, while the Rockets won the next two championships in 1994 and 1995. Though Hall of Fame guard Michael Jordan was temporarily retired in 1994, he returned in 1995, only to have his Bulls lose in the playoffs to the Orlando Magic — who were later swept by the Rockets.

Hypothetically, had the sides met in the NBA Finals in any of those years, there were signals that Houston may have had the upper hand. In the 1991 through 1993 regular seasons, with Jordan playing in all six games, Hakeem Olajuwon‘s Rockets went 5-1 against those Bulls.

In a new Q&A with the Tribune, Smith said he doesn’t believe Chicago left any titles “on the table” during the 1990s. Here’s what he said:

Houston used to beat them quite a bit. They had a losing record against the Rockets during the championship years. Vernon Maxwell would play Michael, and Michael was better but Maxwell was nuts. He used to attack Jordan and curse at him and run him all over the court. Michael could still get his 35 points, but now he’s really working for it as this guy is harassing him endlessly, like nobody else did. And then the frontcourt, the Bulls were just so overmatched. Otis Thorpe dominated and Hakeem Olajuwon, none of the centers they had could do anything with Hakeem. Houston just had great matchups all over the floor.

In those regular-season meetings when Jordan played, Chicago’s nondescript centers such as Bill Cartwright and Luc Longley offered little resistance to Olajuwon. By contrast, many of the teams the Bulls defeated in the NBA Finals — such as Charles Barkley’s Phoenix Suns, Karl Malone’s Utah Jazz, and Shawn Kemp’s Seattle Sonics — lacked the offensive production at center to challenge the Bulls at their weakest position.

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Olajuwon clearly earned Jordan’s respect, as evidenced by Jordan selecting the Houston legend for his all-time NBA team. Recently, former Rockets head coach Rudy Tomjanovich shared a story in which Jordan told him that Houston was the team that gave the Bulls the most trouble.

“He gave our team great respect,” Tomjanovich told The Athletic last month. “He didn’t feel that they could contain Hakeem [Olajuwon]. They just didn’t have the personnel to do it. And he said he thought we were the team that gave them the most trouble.”

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One popular theory is that Jordan was “rusty” in the 1995 playoffs after only playing in 17 regular-season games. But that’s not shown in the data. Jordan averaged more points, rebounds, assists, steals, and blocks per game in the 1995 playoffs than he did in the 1996 playoffs (when Chicago won its next title), all on superior shooting from the field.

Ultimately, the Rockets and Bulls peaked at different times, and NBA fans never saw the matchup in the playoffs. Fortunately for Houston’s legacy, it appears even Jordan himself — now back in the spotlight, given “The Last Dance” documentary — acknowledges those teams as legit.

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Vernon Maxwell on facing Jordan: ‘Unlike most, I wasn’t intimidated’

“He might’ve been the best, but he was going to have to prove it each and every time we faced off,” Maxwell said of Jordan.

Former Houston Rockets guard Vernon Maxwell attributes much of his 1990s success versus Michael Jordan and Chicago to his mindset.

Jordan’s Bulls are back in the spotlight given ESPN’s “The Last Dance” documentary, and Maxwell is one of the few opposing guards to have had relative success against the Hall of Famer at the peak of his powers.

With Maxwell playing a key role as Houston’s starting shooting guard, the Rockets went 5-1 against the Bulls in Chicago’s first three championship seasons of 1990-91, 1991-92, and 1992-93. Generally, Maxwell was the Rocket tasked with guarding Jordan, and he fared reasonably well.

On Twitter, Maxwell wrote that he didn’t allow himself to become intimidated by the task at hand. He said:

I loved going up against Mike. He was the best. There is no disputing that. But unlike most people who went up against him, I wasn’t going to allow myself to be intimidated. He might’ve been the best, but he was going to have to prove it each and every time we faced off.

On offense, the fiery Maxwell averaged 18.3 points on 51.3% shooting versus the Bulls — far superior to his 40.8% overall shooting clip and 16.1 points per game average for those seasons as a whole.

Meanwhile, Jordan averaged 29.2 points per game on 48.0% shooting against the Rockets — down slightly from his usual averages of 31.4 points per game on 51.7% shooting in those years.

Maxwell then played a central role in Houston’s first championship run in the 1993-94 campaign. While Jordan was temporarily retired during that season and playing Minor League Baseball, Maxwell and other members of the 1990s Rockets frequently point to their success against Jordan’s Bulls in the three previous seasons as a reason not to assume that Houston’s 1994 title was largely due to his absence.

By the time Jordan next faced the Rockets in the 1995-96 NBA season, Maxwell had moved on from Houston to Philadelphia. Thus, those battles from 1991 through 1993 are the last evidence we have of what a potential playoff showdown between the two guards might have looked like.

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Vernon Maxwell to Michael Jordan: ‘Don’t put your hands on me!’

Former Rockets guard Vernon Maxwell tells the story of when he and Bulls star Michael Jordan went “cheek to cheek” in the early 1990s.

Nicknamed “Mad Max,” former Houston Rockets guard Vernon Maxwell was best known on the basketball court for his fiery demeanor.

As one might expect, that intensity was especially noticeable when matched up with arguably the NBA’s greatest player ever.

With Michael Jordan and the 1990s Chicago Bulls back in the spotlight courtesy of ESPN’s new “The Last Dance” documentary, Maxwell shared a story with Fox 26 Houston’s Mark Berman about when he and Jordan came “cheek to cheek” in an altercation in the early 1990s. It didn’t lead to blows, but Maxwell clearly let Jordan know how he felt.

With a smile, here’s how Maxwell recalls it in 2020:

We were in Houston, and he spun on me and went baseline. All I saw was that Jumpman logo on the bottom of his shoes when he was dunking.

I just took off running back down the floor. And he ran up behind me and hit me on my butt. That’s when I was like ‘Man, don’t put your damn hands on me!’

You’re going to embarrass me like that? Don’t come up and touch me. That’s when we got to cheek to cheek. I was just telling him, ‘Don’t disrespect me. You already dunked on me and disrespected me enough. Don’t come and hit me on my ass.’

With Maxwell playing a key role as Houston’s starting shooting guard, the Rockets went 5-1 against the Bulls in Chicago’s first three championship seasons of 1990-91, 1991-92, and 1992-93. Generally, Maxwell was the Rocket tasked with guarding Jordan, and he fared reasonably well.

On offense, Maxwell averaged 18.3 points on 51.3% shooting versus the Bulls — far superior to his 40.8% overall shooting clip and 16.1 points per game average for those seasons as a whole.

Meanwhile, Jordan averaged 29.2 points per game on 48.0% shooting against the Rockets — down slightly from his usual averages of 31.4 points per game on 51.7% shooting in those years.

Maxwell then played a central role in Houston’s first championship run in the 1993-94 campaign. While Jordan was temporarily retired during that season and playing Minor League Baseball, Maxwell and other members of the 1990s Rockets frequently point to their success against Jordan’s Bulls in the three previous seasons as a reason not to assume that Houston’s 1994 title was largely due to his absence.

By the time Jordan next faced the Rockets in the 1995-96 NBA season, Maxwell had moved on from Houston to Philadelphia. Thus, those battles from 1991 through 1993 are the last evidence we have of what a potential playoff showdown between the two guards might have looked like.

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Robert Horry remembers when Michael Jordan called out his travel

“Young fella, if they call traveling on me, they definitely going to call travel on you,” Horry recalls being told by Jordan in 1993.

Former Houston Rockets forward and seven-time NBA champion Robert Horry recalls the first thing Hall of Famer Michael Jordan said to him on the basketball court, and it accurately portrays Jordan’s competitive fire.

Ahead of ESPN’s “The Last Dance” documentary, which premieres Sunday and chronicles Jordan’s final 1997-98 season in Chicago, The Athletic‘s Joe Vardon spoke to a wide range of NBA players from that era about what it was like to meet Jordan for the first time.

Here’s how Horry, who was drafted by the Rockets in the first round of the 1992 NBA Draft, recalls his experience:

I just remember him and Vernon Maxwell before the game started, Vernon talking trash to Michael and Scottie, and it was just so fun to watch the competitive nature they had going against each other. I remember the first thing Michael Jordan ever said to me. It was my second [calendar] year in the league. They were really trying to put an emphasis on traveling, which they don’t do now.

But I remember Mike made a move and they called traveling. I came down and did the same move and they called traveling. He looked at me and says, ‘Young fella, if they call traveling on me, they definitely going to call travel on you.’ And I looked at him. It was during the game, so you don’t want to smile or laugh about it, so I just shook my head and said, ‘You’re right.’ He was just a competitor. Really nice guy though, really nice guy.

Horry played against Jordan twice prior to his mid-career retirement in October 1993, once in December 1992 and again in January 1993. Houston’s rookie fared quite well against Jordan’s Bulls in those outings, averaging 17 points (51.7% FG) and four rebounds in 33 minutes. He did have two turnovers in the 1993 game, which likely reflects the travel.

Most impressively, the Rockets won both matchups against the eventual 1993 NBA champions by an average of 12.5 points per game.

Ultimately, Horry got the best of both worlds in his introductory experience. He had a friendly encounter with perhaps the sport’s greatest player of all-time, and his team won both games by double digits, too.

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Vernon Maxwell escalated his feud with Utah in an absolutely hilarious tweet

Oh my …

Former NBA guard Vernon Maxwell won two NBA titles with the Rockets during his playing career, and the road to those championships went through Utah in the West.

The Rockets knocked off the Jazz in both 1994 and 1995. And 25 years later, Maxwell is still taking a victory lap.

If you’ve followed the 54-year-old former NBA journeyman on Twitter over the years, odds are you’ve seen the occasional shot taken at the state of Utah. He’ll mock Utah for not having the internet (Note: Utah does have the internet). He claimed that he banned Utah from buying his jerseys. Again, the dude just hates Utah.

But on Monday, Maxwell put together his best work yet. In a tweet, he said he wanted to make amends with Utah by holding a free clinic for the state’s best young shooters. He included a video of those young shooters …

OH MAN.

The video opened with four straight airballs and not a single bucket. I’m not entirely sure where that video came from, but Maxwell managed to top this tweet in savage fashion:

Let’s hope he never stops roasting Utah because his material really is excellent.

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