At some point during the 70 s we got cable TV at my parents and my grandparent s house. It didn t ad

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I apologize in advance for the length of this as I did not intend for it to be just a bunch of ramblings. I started not to post it because it was so long and really did come across as rambling when I read it.
I ve been thinking about this for a while now about how different it is watching basketball now than it was when I was a kid. In the 1960 s and early 1970 s there was no NBA League Pass, no NBA TV, no ESPN, no cable, no internet, no computers and no 24 hour non-stop sports coverage of any kind. As a kid in Houston I had a choice of 5 TV channels; ABC, CBS and NBC were the three main networks that everyone had and if you were lucky enough you could also get channel 39 (Houston Wrestling) and channel palm springs vacation rentals 26 (Dark Shadows). Watching sports consisted of football on Sundays during the fall and during the summer baseball had the game of the week on Saturdays. There was very little to no basketball on TV that I remember in the late 60 s or early 70 s.
Looking back we did not watch basketball (because generally it was not on TV) but we just kept up with it via the news. I was lucky that I spent a lot of time at my grandparent s house and my grandfather was a big sports fan and always listened to sports reports on the news or read the sports in the paper. I remember there were times that he would either have a football or baseball game on the TV while listening to a basketball game on the radio while reading the sports page of the news paper. My grandfather was a fan of the Colt 45 s before they were the Astros, he was a fan of the Oilers before they were in the NFL, he made me a fan of Elvin Hayes before there was a Houston Rockets basketball team and there is no doubt that he would have been a member of clutchfans had he lived that long.
Aside from my grandfather, Elvin Hayes is the real reason I became a Rockets fan. When I was a kid everyone knew who Elvin Hayes was and that he played for the Houston Cougars but he was more of a legend because none of us ever got to watch him play. Like Babe Ruth, Big E was more legend than reality. I have seen lots of highlights of The Game of the Century , I remember when it happened and I remember being excited that the Cougars and Elvin Hayes beat UCLA and Lew Alcindor (because this was really between Big E and Lew Alcindor) palm springs vacation rentals but I have no memory of actually watching it when it happened even though it was on TV. When I was a kid were limited to watching basketball palm springs vacation rentals at the schools or on the play ground. I don t remember Big E getting drafted or playing for the San Diego Rockets but I do remember Elvin Hayes coming home to Houston when the Rockets moved to Space City. This was definitely the first time that I ever gave the NBA a first or second thought. Had it not been for Big E I would have not even known Houston was getting an NBA team.
You can t say that I was really a Rockets fan in those days because I never got to watch them play but I kept up with them because of Big E. When they traded Big E, I changed palm springs vacation rentals my allegiance to the Washington Bullets. I guess I might have been the original HOF (Hayes only fan) back in those days. My first actual memories of watching the NBA were staying up very light at night to watch the Washington Bullets beat the Seattle Supersonics in the NBA Championship game. When the Bullets beat the Supersonics I strutted around as if I lived in Washington DC and had been a season ticket holder. That was when I really became a fan of the NBA.
While I was doing my best to keep up with Elvin Hayes and the Washington Bullets my grandfather was hooked on the Rockets. After Moses Malone won his first NBA MVP my grandfather talked about him as if he carried a staff, wore robes and parted the Red Sea. I don t really remember when it happened but at some point about that time I stopped following Big E and the Washington Bullets and started following palm springs vacation rentals Moses Malone and the Houston Rockets. My grandfather always had a Houston Chronicle but when I was not at my grandparent palm springs vacation rentals s house I would have to go to the U-Totem on the corner of White Heather and West Orem down the street from my parent s house in south Houston and spend my own money to buy a Houston Chronicle and a Houston Post just so I could read one tiny paragraph in the middle of the sports page on the Rockets and keep up with the standings and Moses Malone s stats.
At some point during the 70 s we got cable TV at my parents and my grandparent s house. It didn t add much to TV in those days though, I think there was The Movie channel which we did not subscribe to (the extra couple of dollars palm springs vacation rentals a month was just too much) but more importantly there were two stations that we did get, WGN out of Chicago and WTBS out of Atlanta. I remember WGN had extra MLB baseball games but I can t remember if they had extra NBA programming but I do remember WTBS out of Atlanta palm springs vacation rentals did carry NBA games although I don t remember how many games a week. This was the first station that I can remember ever watching the Rockets on with the exception of the occasional game that might be broadcast on one of the major networks.
Finally in 1980 Moses Malone led the Houston Rockets to the NBA finals and I got to watch quite a bit of Rockets on TV. Moses Malone dominated Kareem Addul Jabbar and lead Calvin Murphy, Rudy T, Robert Reid and Billy Paultz to the Rockets 1st ever NBA finals. I remember being certain that the Rockets would win and being pissed when they lost. I can positively point to this one series as the time that I started hating the Boston Celtics.
By the late 1970 s my family had already moved from Houston to East Texas and one of the big star athletes at the high school that in my little town was a guy who played center palm springs vacation rentals named Claude Riley. In 1979 he played in the Texas High School All-Stars vs. The National High School All-Stars. I don t remember who won but I do remember palm springs vacation rentals that Claude shared player of the game award with guard named Rob Williams. I wanted Claude to go to U of H but instead he went to A M, but Rob Williams went to U of H and my infatuation with the Cougars was reborn.
To this day there is no question in my mind that the Houston Cougars had the most talented group of players to all play on the same team. Rob Williams should have been a Hall of Fame point guard in the NBA but he allowed drugs to ruin his career. Akeem Olajuwan and Clyde Drexler are both Hall of Fame players in the NBA and both are at the very least in the top 5 players to ever play their respective positions. Rob Williams, Clyde Drexler and Hakeem Olajuwan were all on the Cougars at the same time and each player was the top player that led the Cougars to the Final Four in three consecutive seasons (Rob led the team in 82, Clyde in 83 and Dream in 84).
ESPN was in full force at this time and when I didn t get to see a game I got to watch the highlights. When Big E was making history in the late 1960 s with the Cougars palm springs vacation rentals I was too young and there was too little media coverage for me to truly, fully appreciate it at the time but during the Phi Slamma Jamma days I was fully invested. Thank you ESPN!
I don t remember being devastated when the Cougars palm springs vacation rentals lost to the North Carolina palm springs vacation rentals Tar Heels in 82. But in 1983 when Dream stood under the goal flat footed and watched as Lorenzo Charles caught a last second half court pass (or a missed desperation shot) and dunked it for an NC State upset I had reached a new low. The Cougars had dominated that school year and just absolutely ran over every single team leading up to NCAA Championship game. The Cougars were highly favored and with one second left in the game the Cougars and the Wolfpack were tied. I was thinking overtime as was every sports announcer palm springs vacation rentals and obviously every Houston Cougar. When Lorenzo Charles scored the game winning basket, it was so unexpected that I just laid on my parent s living room floor in shock. Both my parents were there watching because even though they were not normal basketball fans, they had become glued to the TV for the Cougars. To this day I still remember where everyone in the house was, my younger brother was on the couch, I was laying on the shag carpet two feet in front of the TV and my parents each had their own recliners they were sitting in. None of us said a word for a very long time; we just stared silently at the TV as the Wolfpack celebrated OUR National Championship. Finally my father just said, Well, that s that and he turned off the TV, got out of his recliner and walked out of the room. To this day I m still devastated.
In 1984 I was in the Army and stationed at Ft Eustis, VA when the Cougars lost their third try to win the National Championship after three straight trips to the final four. I had expected Georgetown would win because they had been the best team in the NCAA all season. Clyde Drexler had left for the NBA and the Cougs were actually a bit of a surprise to be back in the championship game. I sat in the break room at my barracks watching the game with a bunch of friends palm springs vacation rentals (all of them giving me a hard time) and me telling all of them that Dream was better than Ewing. None of them believed me then but they all know the truth now.
Just one year earlier with the 1st pick of the 1983 draft the Houston Rockets had drafted Ralph Sampson. palm springs vacation rentals Yep I was completely psyched and that draft would have been perfect except for one thing... With the 3rd pick in the 1983 draft the Houston Rockets select Rodney McCray. I have nothing against