The 90s in the NBA belonged to one team, the Chicago Bulls, and more specifically, one man, Michael Jordan. What MJ did with the Bulls in less than a decade might never be replicated by another franchise in the league. But during that stretch, after MJ temporarily retired from the league, the Houston Rockets managed to get their hands on a couple of NBA titles.
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The common consensus is that the Hakeem Olajuwon-led Rockets wouldn’t have won the titles had Jordan played for the Bulls in the 1994 and the 1995 NBA Finals. However, former Rockets star Sam Cassell disagrees.
During a recent conversation on the Knuckleheads Podcast, Cassell said that his team’s success in the mid-90s wasn’t a result of MJ going away for almost two years.
Cassell joined the league in 1993 when the Bulls were humiliating every team on their way. Fortunately for him, MJ retired after winning the title that year, which brought the Bulls’ unstoppable run to an abrupt end.
Cassell is confident that they’d have won regardless of the retirement. He said, “They had Michael Jordan that no one could stop, right? But we had that African [Olajuwon] that no one could stop. But that African was a great defender too.”
When asked why Olajuwon’s presence didn’t work from 1991-1993, Cassell said that in those years, they couldn’t get past Magic and the Lakers to beat Jordan in the Finals. Although there wasn’t much scope for him to make a case for the Rockets as title contenders against the Bulls, Cassell said that Olajuwon would’ve made it happen even in MJ’s presence.
As per Cassell, Hakeem was the best inside player in the league. Since the game was more half-court basketball back then, Olajuwon would have bothered MJ if they had met, Cassell believes.
Of course, the 54-year-old’s remarks should be taken with a grain of salt. If the Rockets were really that dangerous, they wouldn’t have to wait for that brief two-year window to win titles.
When MJ went into his first retirement, the Bulls were the undisputed champions who had just three peated the league. At the time, they seemed unbeatable, no matter who the opponent was. Suddenly, the entire momentum in the league shifted when MJ announced his retirement and stayed outside till 1995, allowing other teams to take over the game.
