“When we made the trade for Clyde, I …

“When we made the trade for Clyde, I heard a lot of negative responses. I had heard and saw publicly where people said, ‘What a dumb move by the Rockets. You never trade a big for a small,’ ” he said. “And that sort of really bothered me. I just didn’t see a lot of people doing that. Criticizing before it was even proven, it will work or not. If somebody said it years after and we had a big flop, I could understand it. I heard things like, ‘You’re going to be the first team to win a championship and then not even make the playoffs the next year.’ That’s when I said we had doubters all along the way. So, a lot of people say that quote, ‘Don’t ever underestimate the heart of a champion.’ But that’s not how I said it. It was more of a scold. Like, ‘Hey, you’ve got to watch how you project about a team and we did have that special quality.’ That’s basically what that was.”