The Matt Thomas Show with Ross - Matt Bullard joins Ross for Flashback Friday

Episode Date: November 22, 2019

Former Houston Rocket and current Rockets Broadcaster, Matt Bullard, joins Ross for this week's Flashback Friday

Heart and open for three and he hits it. This is James Hard. Wowing the crowd here at Toyota Center. Sports song, 790 is your home for Rockets Basketball. The best TV sports theme song ever, in my opinion, NBA on NBC, round ball rock by John Tash. And why are we playing this? Because it's time for a little bit of flashback Friday. We've been doing this so far on the Matt Thomas show in partnership with the Rockets.

Vernon Maxwell on last week. Now pleased to be joined by Matt Bullard, NBA champion, of course, current broadcaster for the Houston Rockets as well. Bull, it's Ross. How are you? Hey, guys, how's going? I'm out here in L.A. with the Rockets. The Rockets get ready to play the Clippers tonight. And, you know, I was all excited to be on Matt Thomas's show and talk to Matt.

And then I hear he takes the day off, and he's in the hotel. I'm sitting in right now. Yeah, you know what it is. What we call him a bull is Fancy Matt. He likes to go on these trips, and he's jet-setting around town, and he's getting pampered, and he's taking his spa days. So he's much too busy to talk about you. He's got to get his toenails filed down.

Yeah, no question. But it is a beautiful day out here in L.A. As the Rockets look to face one of their main rivals right in the Western Conference, Rockets lost to the Denver Nuggets last game in Denver, and then they play the clippers here tonight, and all three of those teams are right packed up in the Western Conference standing. So it will be a good game tonight. But, you know, as we think about Flashback Friday,

I get to think back about some good memories back in the day as well. Yeah, all right. I definitely want to talk to you about that. And let's make a little bit of a parallel, of course, 25 years since that first championship team that you were a part of. And one of the things that 93-94 season was the retirement of Michael Jordan, And so it kind of felt like it was a little bit wide open. And you have some of the same feelings this year because the Golden State Warriors dynasty has broken up.

So you feel like there are so many more teams that feel like they have a chance. Do you see some parallels there, Bull? Oh, absolutely. Yeah. You know, going back to 93, 94, you know, when Michael Jordan retired, that sort of opened the door in the Eastern Conference. But the Rockets back then, we still struggled to get past the Seattle Superstaffirms. in the Western Conference. Back in the 93 playoffs, we lost in the second round to the Seattle Supersonics in game

seven, in double overtime. And that loss right there was devastating for us. That plane ride back from Seattle after that 93 playoff loss was, you know, I still remember it. It was one of the quietest plane rides I've ever been on. I still have that hurt in my heart from that loss. And then the following season in October of 93, We came back to training camp.

We were all very upset that we didn't win at the previous season, and we ripped off 15 straight wins to start the 93-94 season, ended up winning the championship in 94. Another thing that another parallel there is in the 94 playoffs, the Denver Nuggets with DeKimbe Metumbo knocked the Seattle Supersonics out of the playoffs in the first round. So that opened up the door for us to get out of the Western Conference, and then we end up beating the New York Knicks in seven games in the 94-4. finals because Michael Jordan was playing baseball. But a lot of people say, hey, if Michael Jordan

hadn't retired, then the Bulls would have won eight straight. But I think we need to look at the fact that in the early 90s, the Houston Rockets were nine and one against the Chicago Bulls in the five years leading up to the Rocket Championship. And that was directly related to having Vernon Maxwell on the team to guard Michael Jordan and having Akeem Elijah won on the team where Will Purdue and Bill Winnington and Bill Cartwright, we're not going to be able to guard the dream. And so, you know, looking back on how all the doors opened up for us, we really took advantage of it.

Yeah, you know, you mentioned that series with the Supersonics, and that's the thing a lot of people don't remember. A lot of Houston fans you end up talking about were like, yeah, the Sonics just had the Rockets number. There's no way they were going to get past it. But, I mean, you go to the overtime of a game seven of a series. Yeah, they won the series. but I mean, what was you guys' feelings just going into the playoffs?

Of course, you were the two-seat, the Seattle Supersonics, the one-seat. There probably wasn't much of a feeling, and, of course, Hakeem never felt, probably felt like this about anybody, that we couldn't get past them. Did you think they just would have had your number if you went up against them in those 94 playoffs, or do you think the Rockets could have prevailed? Well, I think we are all looking forward to giving it another shot, you know, for sure. And then when the Nuggets knocked them out, then we're like, okay, well, no, don't have to worry about that. Not going to cry, not going to shed a tear, were you?

Yeah, right. But the reason why the Seattle Supersonics back in the 90s were so good against us is because they had a great defensive team. They had Gary Payton. They had Sean Kemp. They had Detleff Shrempe. They had Sam Perkins. They had Nate McMillan.

They were really, really good. And George Carl was their coach. And, you know, back then we were throwing the ball into the post to dream. And then teams would have to double him because he would score on anybody trying to get. And he would even score on a double team easily as well. But when the Seattle Super Sonny, Doubled Akeem, and he threw it out. The Supersonics had the personnel where they could rotate around the perimeter to pick up all of our shooters.

So even when they doubled Dream, we still couldn't get open threes. And that was the reason why we struggled against them so much was just their personnel, and the way they played defense was perfectly set up to try to stop us. Talking with Matt Bullard Rockets Broadcaster, and of course part of the 1994 championship team on a flashback Friday here on the Matt Thomas show. And you know what? it is flashback Friday, and we're dealing with hypothetical. So we had to talk about that potential series with the Chicago Bulls,

because as you know, Bull, any playoff series is about matchups. And like you said, there's just nobody in the world could match up against Akeem O'Igian, and it's certainly not on the Chicago Bulls team as they struggled with him as well. Just, I mean, what are some of the things that you think would have been key in that series and then it would have maybe given the Rockets a little bit of an edge? Of course, it would have been much of a toss-up series as well, though. Yeah, I mean, if you think about the big man matchup, just Akeem in the post, I think their starter was Bill Cartwright. And Bill Cartwright was, you know, he was a decent center.

He was tall, didn't, it wasn't very mobile, sort of like the Kimbe and Matumbo was a little bit later on. Those two guys played very similarly. And the Bulls would have had to double on Akeem. And there's no doubt about that. Akeem would have just destroyed Bill Cartwright one-on-one. So when they doubled, they didn't have the kind of personnel that the Seattle Super Sonics had. would have had a bunch of wide open shots on the offensive end. The way we were set up, you know, we look at the rockets today, and the rockets take over

half of their shots from three. You know, they're averaging. Let's see. I'm going to look at it right now. Three-point attempts. 46 three-point attempts per game for the rockets currently. Back in the 90s, the rockets led the league in three-point attempts, and I think we took like 17 or 18 a game, but we would have had a whole bunch of wide-open threes against

the Bulls, and we had the shooters to knock it down. We had, you know, we had Kenny Smith and San Cassell and Vernon Maxwell and Mary O'Elli and Robert Ory and myself. And so we had the offense to be able to take down the Chicago Bulls. But then on the defensive end, they had Michael Jordan. You know, so hypothetically, if Michael Jordan would have stayed and not played baseball those two years, he would have had to go against Vernon Maxwell. And Jordan has said after his career was over that the one player he hated playing against the most was Vernon Maxwell. And it wasn't because Mad Max could shut him down.

It was just that Mad Max would never quit. And he would make Jordan work for the full 48 minutes. And Jordan, you know, Jordan's one of the most competitive guys on the planet. So is Vernon Maxwell. So those two guys competing against each other would have made it very difficult for Jordan. He still would have scored a bunch of points. But that matchup would have been much more even than the Dream versus Bill Cartwright matchup. Yeah.

And, you know, another one I think about when you talk about these flashback matchups, What do you think about like the 1997 era as well? Because, I mean, you had the rockets in the Western Conference finals, the shot, of course, with John Stockton. I mean, in these series, in history, we'll just remember the Bulls as this unstoppable force. But they got pushed to six games, I think, in every one of their championships, except the first one against the Lakers. So, I mean, and you're talking about there were clutch shots by Jordan in 98,

and then John Paxson hit a big one, and then I think Steve Kerr against the Suns. So, I mean, it's not like the Bulls were just this unbeaten. force that never, ever, ever would have lost a game. And I think as history goes on, and the years of years go on, we just think of them as this, like they were just sweeping

and winning every playoff series four or nothing. Yeah, that's a good point. And then, you know, when you talked about 97, the Rockets, we had a team to win it again. We had Akeem and Clyde and Charles Barkley and Kevin Willis and Eddie Johnson. So we had reloaded our roster with some serious veteran,

you know, superstars. And we were a very veteran team, and we felt like we were going to win it again. And in 97, John Stockton hit a three in the summit, and I can still remember the pain of that shot, too. Thanks for bringing it up, Ross. Sorry. It hurt me too, by the way. Had John Stockton missed that shot or had Charles Barkley switched out on him like he was supposed to and got a hand up on it and made it more difficult? If the Rockets would have gone to the finals in 97, I believe we would have had that chance to go at the Chicago Bulls, and I think we would have won. I think with the roster that we had, there was no way that the Chicago Bulls would have been able to beat us in 97. If you think about we didn't have Vernon Maxwell anymore, but we still had Clyde Drexler.

So Drexler against Michael Jordan would have been a real good matchup to watch as well. Right. And let's just go ahead and make the parallel to today, of course, James Hardin and what he's doing. You talked about how there was really no defense for Hakeem Olajuwon. and then Mike Malone, even though the Nuggets did get that win last night, he talked about how he's been in basketball for 19 years. And he can't remember anybody else. He said, no disrespect to anybody else,

but I don't remember having to prepare so much. So, I mean, just obviously different styles of play, but the counter for everything, no matter what you do, you couldn't stop Achimelago one, and you can't stop James Hardin. Yeah, that's exactly right. And now we have advanced stats to look at statistics a little bit more in depth than we did back in the 90s. And so I'm going to just use the points per 100 possessions stat.

And the reason why that stat is so good is because it's per 100 possessions. Like back in Will Chamberlain's Day, the NBA was playing 120 possessions per game. Back in the 90s when I was playing, the NBA was playing about 95 possessions per game. Currently in the NBA, the Rockets, let me look at it. I'll give you the exact number. The Rockets in pace 105 possessions per game right now. So the different speeds of play throughout the eras, it's hard to, it's hard to, you know, compare errors because the game is so different now than it was back in the day. But if you use possessions, then you can get a little bit more accurate.

So James Harden last season was the – he scored 48.2 points per 100 possessions, which was the best number all time. Better than Will Chamberlain, better than Michael Jordan, better than Kobe Bryant. last year James Hardin had the highest points per 100 positions in NBA history. This season, it's 48.5 points per 100 positions. So it's even more this year than what it was last year. So what Michael Malone is talking about is we're talking about the most efficient score in NBA history in James Harden. And Mike Dan Tony knows that he's got this once-in-a-generation talent. He set up his offense for James to be able to maximize what he does,

and the rockets have shooters around him so that they can create space for James to operate. And so what we're watching on a nightly basis, don't get numb to it, because we're watching Wil Chamberlain caliber scoring on a nightly basis. We're watching Michael Jordan caliber scoring on a nightly basis. And what's amazing to me is when we're watching this greatness, there's so much hard and hate out there. And it just blows my mind because if you really think about it, we're watching greatness every single night and you should be appreciating it.

All right, and let's go ahead. Thanks, Bull, for all that perspective. Historically, what we're seeing, United and Nine out from Hardin. So tonight, of course, big game against Clippers, as you mentioned. Talking about defense, well, the Clippers kind of got a couple of good ones in Paul George and Kauai Leonard. I'm interested to see how this one is going to play out. Sometimes, of course, you don't want to get Kauai Leonard tired, so we haven't seen when he's with the spurs and with the Raptors that he doesn't necessarily cover him for the entire game. So the Clippers, though, they got some bodies they can throw out them. So it'll be interesting for a big one tonight.

How do you see this one playing out? Yeah, and the Clippers, I'm looking at the defensive rating, which is points you give up per 100 possession. So that's a more accurate step than just points per game. The Clippers are number nine in the NBA in defensive rating. The Rockets are number 15. So the Clippers do have a top 10 defense, and it will get better as they integrate Kauilinard and Paul George together.

The Rockets have been quite a bit better over the last five games defensively than they did to start the season. So I think both teams are still, still have potential that's untapped. Both teams still have a chance to be better this season than what they've shown so far as they get into the season. So I'm expecting a huge game here tonight in L.A. I'm expecting two teams that know that they have a chance to be championship caliber

that know that they're not currently. And so I'm really looking forward to seeing which team comes out and really puts it together tonight. All right. Matt Bullard, Flashback Friday. here on the Matt Thomas show. Big game tonight starting at 830 here on the radio with the Rockets Launchpad. 9.30 tip against the clippers. Bull, thanks as always. Good stuff for the conversation. We'll talk to you down the road. Sounds good. I'm going to go knock on Matt Thomas's door right now and wake him up. Oh, no. Don't do that. He needs his pampering. He needs his beauty sleep. You know that.

Okay. We'll talk to you, Ross. All right, Bull. Matt Bullard. You can find him on Twitter at Bull 50. part of a flashback Friday series here on Sports Talk 790 and the Matt Thomas show will continue to bring you. Rockets, Grates of Years Past.