{"id":24472,"date":"2025-05-11T02:10:23","date_gmt":"2025-05-11T02:10:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/24472\/"},"modified":"2025-05-11T02:10:23","modified_gmt":"2025-05-11T02:10:23","slug":"houston-rockets-nba-basketball-history-notable-players","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/24472\/","title":{"rendered":"Houston Rockets | NBA, Basketball, History, & Notable Players"},"content":{"rendered":"

Houston Rockets, American professional basketball<\/a> team based in Houston<\/a>. The Rockets have won two National Basketball Association<\/a> (NBA) championships (1994 and 1995) and four Western Conference<\/a> titles.<\/p>\n

The team was founded as the San Diego Rockets in 1967 and moved to Houston in 1971 after four losing seasons. The early Rockets teams were led by a pair of future Hall of Famers\u2014Elvin Hayes<\/a>, who had starred for the University of Houston<\/a>, and diminutive Calvin Murphy\u2014as well as by Rudy Tomjanovich, who would later coach the Rockets for 12 seasons. Houston traded for elite center Moses Malone<\/a> two games into the 1976\u201377 season, and that year the Rockets posted the first winning season in franchise history and advanced to the conference finals. The Rockets surpassed<\/a> this feat during the 1980\u201381 season when\u2014after finishing the regular season with an unimpressive record of 40 wins and 42 losses\u2014Houston amassed three consecutive playoff series upsets en route to a berth in the NBA Finals, where they lost to the Boston Celtics<\/a>. Malone left the team in 1982, and the Rockets fell to the lower echelon of the NBA in his absence.<\/p>\n

In 1984 the Rockets drafted Hakeem Olajuwon<\/a>, another future Hall of Fame center (and another University of Houston alumnus), who quickly became the face of the franchise. Olajuwon teamed with another towering post player, Ralph Sampson (both were over 7 feet [2.13 meters] tall), to lead the Rockets to another NBA Finals appearance in 1986, in which they were again defeated by the Celtics. The Rockets continued to qualify for the postseason throughout the 1980s, but they failed to advance past the second round of the playoffs for the rest of the decade. Tomjanovich took over head coaching duties midway through the 1991\u201392 season, ushering<\/a> in the most successful period in franchise history. Houston won back-to-back NBA titles in the 1993\u201394 and 1994\u201395 seasons behind inspired play from Olajuwon and key contributions from guard Sam Cassell, forward Robert Horry, and (for the 1994\u201395 season) forward Clyde Drexler<\/a> (yet another former University of Houston star).<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"Serena<\/p>\n

Britannica Quiz<\/p>\n

Great Moments in Sports Quiz<\/p>\n

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The team added Charles Barkley<\/a> in 1996, but the presence of three of the NBA\u2019s 50 greatest players of all time (Olajuwon, Drexler, and Barkley) was not enough to propel Houston past the Western Conference finals. Each one of the aging trio had left the team by 2001, and the Rockets of the early 21st century, led by superstars Tracy McGrady and 7-foot 6-inch (2.29-meter) Yao Ming<\/a> from China<\/a>, followed the trend of consistent regular-season respectability followed by playoff underachievement. McGrady was traded away in 2010; Yao retired in 2011, after having missed much of the previous two seasons with injuries; and the Rockets began a rebuilding process.<\/p>\n

During its rebuilding, the team was notable for its reliance on advanced statistical analyses (similar to sabermetrics<\/a> in baseball) in its player acquisitions. One result of the team\u2019s idiosyncratic<\/a> approach to development was the Rockets\u2019 earning a playoff berth in 2012\u201313 with the youngest roster in the NBA, including the outstanding shooting guard James Harden<\/a>. The team signed star center Dwight Howard<\/a> in the following offseason, and the Rockets bettered the previous season\u2019s record and again advanced to the playoffs.<\/p>\n

Houston Rockets Results by Season: 2019\u201320 to 2023\u201324 season record playoffs 2019\u201320 44\u201328 lost in conference semifinals 2020\u201321 17\u201355 missed playoffs 2021\u201322 20\u201362 missed playoffs 2022\u201323 22\u201360 missed playoffs 2023\u201324 41\u201341 missed playoffs <\/p>\n

In 2014\u201315 the team posted its best record (56\u201326) since the Olajuwon era and advanced to the Western Conference finals, where Houston lost to the Golden State Warriors<\/a>. The team got off to a slow start the following season\u2014which led to an early-season coaching change\u2014but the new coaching regime<\/a> could not fix the chemistry and effort issues that plagued the Rockets. Houston qualified for the playoffs as the eighth seed that year with a 41\u201341 record and was quickly knocked out in the first round in five games. That led to another offseason coaching change, and new headman Mike D\u2019Antoni installed his high-efficiency and fast-paced offense with Harden as point guard. As a result, the Rockets set an NBA record with 1,181 three-point shots made in the 2016\u201317 season en route to a 55-win campaign and a second-round playoff loss.<\/p>\n

Chris Paul<\/a>Houston Rockets point guard Chris Paul, 2018.(more)<\/p>\n

The team added star point guard Chris Paul<\/a> in the offseason, and he helped propel<\/a> the Rockets to new heights in 2017\u201318, as the team set a new franchise record for regular-season victories (65) and broke its own league record for three-point shots made (1,256). Houston advanced to the conference finals, but an ill-timed injury to Paul in game five of that series opened the door for a seven-game series victory for the Warriors. Although the Rockets struggled early in 2018\u201319, they entered the playoffs as one of the hottest teams in the NBA. Despite this momentum, Houston was once again eliminated from the postseason by the Warriors, this time in the conference semifinals.<\/p>\n

In the following offseason Houston traded Paul for point guard Russell Westbrook<\/a>. The Rockets returned to the playoffs but were again eliminated in the conference semifinals. Following that disappointment, during the summer of 2020 both Harden and Westbrook asked to be traded from the team. Houston acquiesced<\/a> to Westbrook\u2019s request, sending him to the Washington Wizards<\/a> prior to the 2020\u201321 season, but initially resisted moving Harden, the franchise\u2019s cornerstone. However, after a fraught few months, in January 2021 Harden too was moved, to the Brooklyn Nets<\/a>. Houston subsequently entered a period of rebuilding around younger players and did not make the playoffs for four straight seasons.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Houston Rockets, American professional basketball team based in Houston. The Rockets have won two National Basketball Association (NBA)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24473,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[1297,7,4922,4921,4920,292,194,4066,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-24472","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-britannica","11":"tag-encyclopeadia","12":"tag-encyclopedia","13":"tag-houston","14":"tag-houston-rockets","15":"tag-houstonrockets","16":"tag-nba","17":"tag-rockets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/114486773526536447","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24472","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24472"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24472\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24473"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24472"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24472"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24472"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}