Houston Rockets Honor Kenny Smith!

tinman · Feb 15, 2018

mdrowe00 said: ↑

Yeah...Kenny Smith evolved right in front of our eyes as Rockets fans.

First, it's easy to forget that Kenny Smith was a lottery pick...of the Sacramento Kings. He had more than enough accolades coming out of North Carolina and playing there four years (alongside Michael Jordan and James Worthy as a freshman).

Kenny was a great athlete (competed in a slam dunk contest one season, I think)...great speed and quickness with the basketball, especially (hence, the nickname "The Jet"). Hard for most of us to remember that about Kenny because we didn't see as much of that from him (mostly because of Hakeem...no need to crowd the paint with a generational player like Olajuwon in the pivot)...especially towards the tail end of his career, where chronic tendonitis and knee problems virtually robbed him of his ability to move around a basketball court prematurely.

Kenny only had a ten-year NBA career. The last two or three were more-or-less fillers for trade considerations.

But what I most remember about Kenny Smith was when the Rockets acquired him from the Atlanta Hawks (...someone help me...was that through trade or free agency?), was how well he played when Hakeem went down in 1991.

The Rockets were still trying to sort themselves out and figure out what kind of team they were and what kind of team they were going to be...and Hakeem getting injured by Bill Cartwright in a game in the Summit might have been a blessing in disguise...especially with the benefit of hindsight.

Forced to play without Hakeem for an extended period, the Rockets (under Don Chaney then) were able to run a lot of pick-and-roll sets in the half court with Kenny and Otis Thorpe (another highly underrated player for the Rockets, especially nationally) to great success. They kept their playoff hopes alive that year, just missing the post-season.

But the team's performance during that stretch, I believe, did as much as anything else to help convince the Rockets and Hakeem (who was in the middle of some nastiness with Steve Patterson that's well-documented) that the Rockets were closer than anybody outside of Houston knew to competing for a title...

...much is made of how well the Rockets fared against the reigning champion Chicago Bulls of that time in regular season matchups, for instance...

...and also, Kenny and Hakeem developed a rapport and chemistry together that Kenny rarely ever fails to mention. It's pretty easy to say that Kenny wouldn't have been as revered a player (and certainly not a champion) if not for Hakeem Olajuwon.

...except that that's not entirely true. The only reason why most of the nation believes that Hakeem Olajuwon was a two-time NBA champion virtually unassisted was because people tend to look for pedigrees for validation, instead of performance.

Kenny Smith got the job done here for the Rockets. In more ways than one.
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This was a beautiful post. Thank you.

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Houston Rockets Honor Kenny Smith!

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Houston Rockets Honor Kenny Smith!

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