2016/17 Panini Houston Rockets

I really hadn't followed the NBA for a long time. 'Time' as measured in decades certainly. Oh, I'd been to a few games here and there as I picked up tickets from friends or some coaches I knew. When the Rockets moved to Houston from San Diego and played on the U of Houston campus we were regulars at the games. After all, they were free for me.

But the last time I considered myself a fan was back when Houston alum Otis Birdsong was playing for the Kansas City Kings.

But last year a friend of my sons took a job with the Rockets media department and we started getting free tickets regularly. It's been a fun experience. I quit griping about the relentless in-game promotions and hype and decided to just enjoy it. And the fact that the Rockets are winning this year helps. So does having seats down low or in a suite. 

James Harden is an obvious MVP candidate and puts up triple doubles regularly but he is surrounded with a lot of offensive firepower.

Defense? The Rockets don't need no stinkin' defense. They rarely play it.

These next two cards are of the two players I've 'adopted' as my favorites. Sam Dekker runs hot and cold from the floor but he's fun to watch.

Eric 'Flash' Gordon is gonna be Sixth Man of the Year' if there is any justice. He made the All Star squad without really being a starter for Houston.

Trevor Ariza is in his second go-round in Houston. He played back in the Yao Ming era I believe. I thought he was a young guy until I looked him up and found that he's been with like six different teams.

I still find it weird that some players are known by one name. It's seems common in soccer but having a hoops guy that goes by Nene is odd. Heck I still blink at the mention of Ichiro.

This is a Rockets team set that they had laying around in the concession area behind the suites one night. It may have been a give-away item at one point. I went ahead and grabbed one because, well, I am a card collector, right?

This is the back of one of the cards. Panini doesn't appear to have put a lot of effort into this set. About as much effort as the Rockets put into defense.

Michael Beasley moved on to Minnesota this season. I enjoyed watching him last year. He hustled his ass off. He's one of the more tattoo'd guys I've seen.

I'm still don't consider myself a full NBA fan. The fact that the last two minutes of game clock time take a half hour to play still makes me nuts. And I can't be bothered to watch any games on TV. I'm not all that aware of where the Rockets are in the standing except that I know they are a lot better off than they were last year.

But if the tickets remain there for the taking and I continue to have fun with my sons going out there than I'll keep going.

Close Encounters of the Basketball Kind (Part 2)

Neal Walk played collegiately for the University of Florida and when he finished he held about every hoops  record they had. He has the most 30+ point games in the schools history and has the two highest season rebound totals. In 1967-68 he averaged nearly 20 boards a game. His uniform number is still the only one the Gators have retired.  He was drafted by the Phoenix Suns in 1969. The Suns lost a coin flip with the Bucks who then picked first and chose Kareem Abdul-Jabbar. Yikes. THAT was certainly a history shaping flip!

Anyway, Walk played seven full and a partial season for three different NBA clubs and them continued his career in Europe. And, as the cardback says, he worked out with weights!! That wasn't as common as it is today apparently.

Later Walk suffered a tumor on his spine which eventually led to his being wheelchair bound but it didn't cool his competitive fires as he played wheelchair basketball in the National Wheelchair Basketball Association. He was honored by President Bush (the first one) as 1991's Wheelchair Athlete of the Year.

Which brings me to my story. As I talked about in my last post my college friends and I enjoyed Rockets' games in Hofheinz Pavilion in the early 70s. One night with Phoenix in town we noted with some humor that Suns' center Neal Walk had a particularly heavy dose of body hair. Being the knucklehead that I was I waited until a quiet moment in the game, a timeout as I recall, and I stood up and yelled "Hey Walk, take off your sweater!!" 

Now I may have actually heard or read about a similar comment hurled his way in other arenas but I can't recall. I may have just made it up on the spot. But either way it certainly brought great amusement to everybody in the place and to many of the Sun's bench players as well. I don't recall Walk's reaction but I was told by my friends later and down through the years that he was grinning. 

I'm sure my Mom would have been proud of me.

Close Encounters of the Basketball Kind

I haven't followed the NBA in about thirty five years. My friends and I took in Rockets games pretty regularly in the short time they played at Hofheinz Pavillion on the University of Houston campus. Tickets were a buck for UH students so it was a very cheap night of entertainment. But generally the Rockets sucked and we had to get our jollies by riding them, or even better, the opposing team. 

There was never any doubt that the players heard us. We'd sit behind the visitors' bench or in the front row across the floor. Hell, the place was so laid back and empty we could have probably sat at the end of either teams' bench without much fuss. And since I worked in the building at times I'd sometimes come down the ramp and watch from behind the goal standards.

It was about 1972 when Dale Schlueter played in Hofheinz as a member of the 76ers. He was a big center with zero 'hops'. I mean zero. I doubt his shoes ever got more that two inches off the floor. And we flat wore him out over it. Add to our drunken voices the fact that there were maybe 1000 people in the place and you had a case of six or so college fools pretty much acting as the life of the party.

And so at one point Schlueter comes behind the empty press row right in front of us to retrieve a loose ball, looks straight at poor innocent me and says 'Up Yours!!' I kid you not. And shockingly he's giving me the finger while hiding it from the court with the ball. Sweet Mother of God. I've been flipped of by an NBA player during a game!!

That moment has been a recurring source of hilarity among my buddies at get-togethers and golf rounds ever since. I found this card (and a couple of others) for about a buck on eBay. Brought me a laugh for sure. 

Here's to you, Dale Schlueter. Long may you wave!!

Next time: Furry Players and another Close Encounter