Houston Rockets
The Houston Rockets are an American professional basketball team based in Houston. The Rockets compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member team of the league’s Western Conference Southwest Division. The team was established in 1967 as the San Diego Rockets, an expansion team originally based in San Diego. In 1971, the Rockets relocated to Houston. Throughout its history, Houston has won two NBA championships and four Western Conference titles. Hakeem Olajuwon, Moses Malone, and James Harden have been the NBA’s Most Valuable Player while playing for the Rockets.
About Houston Rockets in brief
The Houston Rockets are an American professional basketball team based in Houston. The Rockets compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member team of the league’s Western Conference Southwest Division. The team was established in 1967 as the San Diego Rockets, an expansion team originally based in San Diego. In 1971, the Rockets relocated to Houston. Throughout its history, Houston has won two NBA championships and four Western Conference titles. The acquisition of franchise player James Harden in 2012 has launched the Rockets back into championship contention in the mid-2010s. Hakeem Olajuwon, Moses Malone, and James Harden have been the NBA’s Most Valuable Player while playing for the Rockets, for a total of four MVP awards. Rockets are notable for popularizing the use of advanced statistical analytics in player acquisitions and player style of play. The franchise won the NBA championship in 1995, becoming the lowest-seeded team in NBA history to win the title. The Houston Rockets were founded in 1967 by Robert Breitbard, who paid an entry fee of US$1.1million to join the NBA for the 1967–68 season. The NBA wanted to add more teams in the Western States and chose San Diego based on the city’s strong economic and population growth, along with the success of an ice hockey team in the United States. Rockets won only 15 games in their debut season as a franchise in 1967. In the 1968 NBA draft, the team was awarded the first overall pick and selected power forward Elvin Hayes, who would lead the team to its first playoff appearance in his rookie season.
Led by Malone, the Houston Rockets stunned the entire league by making their first NBA Finals appearance in 1981, becoming only the second team inNBA history to make the NBA Finals with a losing record. The 1980–81 Rockets are the last team since the 1954–55 Minneapolis Lakers to make it all the way to the NBA finals with a lost record. In 1984 the Rockets drafted center Hakeam OlajUwon, who became the cornerstone of the most successful period in franchise history. Paired with 7 feet 4 inches Ralph Sampson, they formed one of the tallest front courts in the NBA. In 1993 the Rockets dominated the 1993–94 season, setting a franchise record 58 wins and went to the 1994 NBA Finals and won the franchise’s first championship against Patrick Ewing and the New York Knicks. During the following season, reinforced by another All-Star, Clyde Drexler, they repeated as champions with a four-game sweep of the Orlando Magic, who were led by a young Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway. After Yao Ming’s early retirement in 2011 the Rockets entered a period of rebuilding, completely dismantling and retooling their roster. In 2012 the Rockets acquired all-star power forward Charles Barkley in 1996, but the presence of three of theNBA’s 50 greatest players of all-time was not enough to propel Houston past the Western Conference Finals.
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This page is based on the article Houston Rockets published in Wikipedia (as of Dec. 24, 2020) and was automatically summarized using artificial intelligence.
