The Houston Rockets are an American professional basketball team based in Houston, Texas. The team plays in the Southwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The team was established in 1967, and played in San Diego, California, for four years, before moving to Houston.
In the Rockets' debut season, they won 15 games. After drafting Elvin Hayes first overall in the 1968 NBA draft, they made their first appearance in the playoffs in 1969. After Hayes was traded, Moses Malone replaced him. Malone won two Most Valuable Player (MVP) awards during his time in Houston, and he led the Rockets to the 1978 conference finals in his first year with the Rockets. He also took the Rockets to the NBA Finals in 1981, but they were defeated in six games by the Boston Celtics.
Two years after advancing to the finals, the Rockets traded Malone and had two losing seasons, with the first having a franchise-low 14 victories. This gave Houston two straight first overall picks, used to bring future Hall of Famers Ralph Sampson and Hakeem Olajuwon, who eventually got the Rockets all the way to the 1986 Finals, where they lost again to Boston. In the next seven seasons, they lost in the first round of the playoffs five times. They did not win their first championship until 1994, when Olajuwon led them to a franchise-best 58 wins, and the championship. The Rockets repeated the feat in 1995, but have not appeared again in the NBA Finals since. They missed the playoffs from 1999 to 2003, and did not reach the playoffs again until they drafted Yao Ming in 2003. However, they would not advance past the first round of the playoffs for 13 years. In the 2007–08 NBA season, the Rockets had their most successful campaign in the 2000s, winning 55 games, with 22 of those victories in a row, but still lost in the first round. The following season, the team managed to win a playoff series for the first time since 1997, defeating the Portland Trail Blazers in the first round of the 2009 NBA Playoffs and pushed the eventual champion Los Angeles Lakers to seven games in the 2009 Western Conference Semifinals.
During the next decade, the Rockets rehauled their roster and were again contenders for the NBA title. In the 2014–15 NBA season, led by head coach Kevin McHale and guard James Harden, the Rockets won their first division title in 21 years, and reached the Western Conference Finals for the first time since 1997.
1967–1971: San Diego Rockets
Once National Basketball Association commissioner J. Walter Kennedy visited San Diego in 1966 and saw the support for the Western Hockey League's San Diego Gulls, he invited Robert Breitbard, owner of the Gulls and their arena, the San Diego International Sports Center, to the next NBA owners' meeting. The league wanted to add other franchises in the Western United States, by then only represented through the Los Angeles Lakers and the San Francisco Warriors, and the owners liked Breitbard's input during the meeting. Combining the city economic and population growths with the Gulls' success, San Diego was chosen to receive an expansion team in 1967. Breitbard paid a $1.75 million entry fee to join the NBA as an expansion team for the 1967–68 NBA season, along with the Seattle SuperSonics. The resulting contest to name the franchise chose the name "Rockets", homaging San Diego's theme of "a city in motion" and the local arm of General Dynamics developing the Atlas missile and booster rocket program. Breitbard brought in Jack McMahon, then coach of the Cincinnati Royals, to serve as the Rockets' coach and general manager. The team then built its roster with both veteran players at an expansion draft, and college players in the 1967 NBA draft, where San Diego's first ever draft pick was Pat Riley. The Rockets' inaugural game was held on October 14, 1967, at the International Sports Center, with 8000 fans seeing the Rockets lose closely to the St. Louis Hawks by 99–98. The Rockets lost 67 games in their inaugural season, which was then an NBA record for losses in a season. Attendance ranked as eighth among the league's twelve teams, leading to financial losses. The sole bright spot of the inaugural season was forward Don Kojis, whose good numbers earned him a spot at the 1968 NBA All-Star Game.
In 1968, after the Rockets won a coin toss against the Baltimore Bullets to determine who would have the first overall pick in the 1968 NBA draft, they selected Elvin Hayes from the University of Houston. Hayes led the team to the franchise's first ever playoff appearance in 1969, but the Rockets lost in the semi-finals of the Western Division to the Atlanta Hawks, four games to two. In 1970 NBA draft, the Rockets drafted Calvin Murphy and Rudy Tomjanovich, who would both spend their whole careers with the Rockets.
Despite being coached by Hall of Fame coach Alex Hannum, the Rockets only tallied a 67–97 record and did not make the playoffs in the next two seasons. Because of poor performance and attendance, Breitbard sold the team in 1971 to Texas Sports Investments, which was led by real estate broker Wayne Duddleston and banker Billy Goldberg. The group bought the franchise for $5.6 million, and immediately moved the team to Houston. The franchise became the first NBA team in Texas, and the team's nickname of "Rockets" took on even greater relevance after the move since Houston is home to NASA's Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center. Houston previously was awarded an NBA expansion franchise along with Buffalo, Cleveland and Portland on February 6, 1970,"N.B.A. Adds Cleveland, Houston, Buffalo, Portland, Ore.," The New York Times, Saturday, February 7, 1970. Retrieved March 10, 2023. but the new entry folded six weeks later on March 20 when its investment group led by Alan Rothenberg failed to make the $750,000 down payment on the $3.7 million entrance fee required before the league's college player draft."Houston, New Team in N.B.A., Folds While It's Still on Paper," The New York Times, Saturday, March 21, 1970. Retrieved March 10, 2023. The NBA would return to San Diego in 1978, when the Buffalo Braves moved to the city to become the Clippers; they, too would leave the city for Los Angeles in 1984. Forty years after the Clippers left San Diego, the team moved their NBA G League affiliate from Ontario to Oceanside and adopted the San Diego Clippers name.
1971–1976: Improving in Houston with Murphy & Rudy-T Upon their arrival, many were in disbelief that the Rockets could thrive in Houston. They were coming to a city that, at the time, had not shown much interest in professional basketball. Houston was previously home to the Houston Mavericks of the American Basketball Association for only two seasons between 1967 and 1969, where the average attendance was only 200, and even that figure may have been inflated.Remember the ABA page on the Houston Mavericks Despite its large size, Houston also lacked a suitable arena. The city's largest indoor arena was 34-year-old Sam Houston Coliseum, but it had not aged well. The Rockets quickly ruled out playing there even on a temporary basis. As Texas Sports Investments drew up plans for a proper arena, the Rockets were forced to play most of their games at the University of Houston's Hofheinz Pavilion, while playing occasional games at the Astrodome and San Antonio's HemisFair Arena.
Before the start of the 1971–72 NBA season, Hannum left for the Denver Rockets (later renamed Denver Nuggets) of the American Basketball Association, and University of Washington coach Tex Winter was hired in his place. However, Winter, who said that Hayes had "the worst fundamentals of any player" he had ever coached, applied a system that contrasted with the offensive style to which Hayes was accustomed. Because of the differences between Winter and Hayes, Houston traded Hayes, who had led the Rockets in scoring for four straight years, to the Baltimore Bullets for Jack Marin at the end of the 1971–72 season. Winter left soon after, being fired in January 1973 following a ten-game losing streak and with the Rockets as the second worst team of the league (ahead of only the infamous 76ers team which would finish 9-73), and was replaced by Johnny Egan.
With a 41–41 record, the Rockets would earn their first NBA Playoff berth in the 1975 NBA Playoffs since moving from San Diego as well as winning their first playoff series in franchise history by defeating the New York Knicks led by Walt Frazier and Earl Monroe in a 3-game mini series, but would ultimately bow to the upcoming champions Boston Celtics in 5 games in the semi-finals. The Rockets would move into their own arena, The Summit, the following season. The arena was located near Greenway Plaza, whose developer Kenneth Schnitzer became the Rockets' primary owner.
1976–1982: The Moses Malone era Due to Egan's failure to qualify for the playoffs, as soon as the season ended he was replaced by coach Tom Nissalke. Nissalke knew the Rockets had firepower but needed a rebounding center and a play-making guard, and he pressed the Rockets management to acquire college standout John Lucas – drafted first overall in the 1976 NBA draft, a pick Houston acquired by sending Gus Bailey, Joe Meriweather and the ninth pick to the Atlanta Hawks – and his former player at the ABA's Utah Stars Moses Malone – while Malone started the 1976–77 season with the Buffalo Braves, Houston acquired him by sending Buffalo first-round picks in the next two drafts. After Malone led the Rockets in rebounding for the first of six straight times, and established a then-NBA record for offensive rebounds in a season, the Rockets posted a franchise-best 49-wins and won the franchise's first Division Title finishing on top of the Central Division. After a first round bye in the playoffs, Houston defeated the Washington Bullets led by former Rocket Elvin Hayes as well as Wes Unseld in seven games in the Eastern Conference semi-finals, and advanced to the conference finals for the first time in their history, but they lost to the top-seeded Philadelphia 76ers led by former ABA superstar Julius Erving 4–2.
Early into 1977–78 season, at a game on December 9, 1977, Kevin Kunnert got into a fight with Kermit Washington of the Los Angeles Lakers. As Tomjanovich approached the altercation, Washington turned and punched Tomjanovich squarely in the face, causing numerous fractures in his face. Tomjanovich spent the next five months in rehabilitation and returned to appear in the 1978 All-Star Game, but his averages significantly declined after the injury, and Houston finished with just 28 wins in the season.
In the following season, Malone, Murphy, and Tomjanovich all played in the 1979 NBA All-Star Game, and Malone received the 1979 MVP Award. The Rockets also sent John Lucas II to the Golden State Warriors in exchange for Rick Barry, who went on to set the NBA record at the time for free throw percentage in a season by shooting 94.7%. The Rockets went 47–35 in Nissalke's last season as coach, and finished second in the Central Division, but they lost to Atlanta in a best-of-three first round series.