The Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame announced its 2012 class today. Inducted alongside Reggie Miller, Don Nelson, and a host of other players from the college, women's, and international games will be Houston's 1983 draft pick -- Ralph Sampson.

A lesson in history for those of you (like me) who weren't around for Sampson's career: Ralph Sampson was the star of a Virginia Cavaliers squad that twice made it deep into the NCAA tournament, and once won the NIT. He won the Naismith Award three times: one of only two men to ever win the award multiple times.

He entered the 1983 draft as one of the most athletic big men to play the game, many regarding him as possessing the agility and control of a guard. A 7'4" center with those types of skills is certainly a worthy pick at number one overall. And in his first season in the NBA, his 21 points and 11 rebounds per game were more than enough to earn him the 1984 Rookie of the Year award, but the Rockets continued to flounder (or shamelessly tank for the second year in a row, depending on whose story you believe), and Sampson was soon joined by the second half of the "Twin Towers," the legendary Hakeem Olajuwon.

The Rockets took those two number-one-overall draft selections all the way to the NBA Finals, when they challenged the 1986 Boston Celtics (one of the greatest teams in history) for the NBA crown. Ralph Sampson is mostly remembered by the public at large for that series, but not for his play (which included a 24 point, 22 rebound performance in Game 3, giving Houston its first win of the series). Instead, most remember the punch he threw at Jerry Sichting and his subsequent ejection in Game 5.

Rockets fans, however, probably remember him for his last-second tip-in that same year. In Game 5 of the Western Conference Finals, the Rockets shocked both the NBA-watching public (the niche audience that it was) and the Showtime Lakers with this "miracle shot" off of Sampson's hands:

The Rockets lost the '86 Finals, of course, but it looked at the time like they were a new powerhouse in the West: Young (Olajuwon was 23, Sampson just 25), powerful, and possessing one of the most fearsome frontcourts in the NBA.

Unfortunately, Sampson was injured partway through the '87 season, and the Rockets limped to the finish line with just a 42-40 record (the departure of John Lucas and injuries to Lewis Lloyd didn't help, either). Sampson continued to have injury problems in the 1988 season, and the Rockets parted ways with him soon after -- he was sent to Golden State for center Joe Barry Carroll and Sleepy Floyd.

Neither the Rockets nor Sampson prospered much after that: The Rockets floundered some more (this time with no shameless tanking involved), while Sampson struggled with his knees. He only played more than 26 games once in the four seasons after his trade, and he never played like he once did.

Sampson's professional career didn't live up to the hope that the Rockets or basketball fans once had for it. But, nonetheless, he was a great college player and, for a time, one of the most exciting young players in the NBA. Sampson's career was, perhaps, most similar to one of the men he faced on that '86 Celtics squad: Bill Walton. Walton, like Sampson, won the Naismith Award three times in college. Like Sampson, he had a tragically-brief-but-memorable career. And, like Sampson, he was more than deserving of being immortalized as such in the Hall of Fame.

Sampson will be formally inducted into the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame in September.

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If, for whatever reason, you want to watch and discuss the Friday night All-Star Game festivities with your fellow Dream Shakers, here you go. I'm pretty sure everything will be on TNT.

Timetable:

6:00 PM CST -- Celebrity All Star Game

8:00 PM CST -- Rising Stars Game

Here is the Saturday schedule:

1:00 PM CST -- D-League All-Star Game

7:00 PM CST -- All-Star Saturday Night (Skills Competition, 3-Point Competition, Slam Dunk Competition)

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Liberty Ballers

A lot has been written about the effects of the shortened season: Player fatigue, worse offense, the reenforced home-court advantage, etc. One thing I haven't read about is a loss of perspective. I don't know, maybe I'm imagining it, but it seems like the basketball sporting media has decided to latch onto maybe two or three dominate "storylines" and run with them at the expense of everything else happening. I think that's because there are often ten or eleven games being played on any one night, and then the next night will be the same thing. There's no time to notice that the Spurs are destroying teams on their road trip, or that the Magic are actually playing well after all that noise a few weeks ago, or that Boston is collapsing again. It's just Linsanity and maybe the Heat.

Well, the Rockets are halfway through the season's schedule (33 games played out of 66), they've got a .576 winning percentage (note -- this was also their Pythagorean Record last year, which would have been good enough to win them the 7th seed last season if they had been just a bit less unlucky), and they're very firmly in the playoff mix. Maybe I only think that's a big deal because I'm a Rockets fan, but I think it's kind of a big deal. Two years after the beginning of the end for Yao Ming's NBA career, when the question surrounding the Rockets was "can they win without a 'star?'" we are seeing them do so. Maybe that should make some people rethink their definition of "star," or maybe it should make them think about what is actually necessary to win at NBA basketball, but I doubt that even if the Rockets do make the playoffs that there will be much reevaluation done. Yes, the Rockets have a whole half-season to fail, but this is a far better position to be in than one from the outside looking in.

Oh, right, the game. The Rockets came into this game having lost their previous two matchups against the Grizzlies, both in Memphis and both by double-digits. But it was eery how closely the script from last night mirrored tonight's performance: a very close game through three quarters, followed by a final Rockets surge and ultimate victory.

Just as in the last game, Kyle Lowry was the key to it all. This was a little more of a typical Kyle Lowry performance, though -- still great, but a little less efficient in shooting and passing, and a lot better on the boards. Kyle always seems to get psyched up for games against the club that ditched him for a low Orlando Magic draft pick in '09, and this game was no different: 24 points on 17 shots, 9 assists (4 turnovers), and 7 rebounds. Kyle Lowry outplayed the man whom the Grizzlies picked over Lowry -- Mike Conley -- in every way. No contest. Breaking down the defense, hitting several "in your face" threes, and leading his team to a much-needed win, this was all Kyle.

Kevin Martin rebounded from a mediocre game last night, shooting well and even getting a few good assists in there. The key was, again, good screens and better decision-making on Martin's part, frequently passing up semi-contested threes for unguarded midrange shots. On some nights those shots don't go in, but tonight they did, and the result was a great performance from Speed Racer. He had one crazy possession in which he, like Kobe, threw the ball off the backboard to himself and then banked the shot home. Pretty coool...

The other guy leading the Rockets tonight was Patrick Patterson. While Patterson's shooting numbers are down this year (something to be expected through a combination of regression -- he had a ridiculous shooting percentage from midrange last season; probably unsustainable -- injury, lack of training camp, and the overall scoring environment this season), more troubling has been his worse rebounding numbers (again, likely a combination of most of the above), but tonight he fought for everything and destroyed the Grizzlies bigs on the boards as the Center in the Rockets' small lineup. That made it possible for the Rockets' other bigs -- Samuel Dalembert and Luis Scola -- to get some rest (though both played well in limited minutes). Patterson may very well be the best defender amongst the Rockets' big men, even if Dalembert gets the blocks.

Greg Smith complemented Patterson for much of the night, though this was very much a comedown game for him: 11 minutes and just five fouls to show for it. He had the wherewithal to not take any shots or turn the ball over, however, and so I'm okay with that -- you know, he's learning.

The bench as a whole wasn't the best, I guess, but Goran Dragic and Courtney Lee both played hero as the game went on. Dragic took a Grizzly elbow to the face in the third quarter, making everyone wonder if it was now Johnny Flynn time, but instead he was back in the game at the next dead ball. Lee hit the game-icing three in the fourth quarter and hit the next four free throws for the Rockets as Lionel Hollins decided to try for his third comeback win in a row.

Chandler Parsons has this scary thing going right now where he'll hit one three and then start shooting more. It's cool the first time one goes in, but after that it gets annoying. The one "respect me!" three is good enough, Chandler. Still, he played great defense on one of the league's many false prophets. Rudy Gay's 23 points on 22 shots helped do the Grizzlies' offense in, though you wouldn't know that from the way Bill Worrell described it. He wasn't as bad as OJ Mayo, though, so there's that. Grizzlies fans should be happy that their team has neither the resources nor pig-headedness to offer Mayo a max-contract, too.

Kevin McHale decided on an eight-man rotation tonight, and it worked. I'm liking playing all these games at home. It's a nice change of pace from the start of the season. The Rockets will face the Sixers on Wednesday before they head into the All-Star Break.

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This was the first regular-season game I went to this year, and I was excited for it. The Jazz offer one of the more interesting matchups for the Rockets, seeing as their primary weapons (Paul Millsap and Al Jefferson) attack the Rockets' weakest position (Center, Power Forward), while the Rockets' primary weapons (Kyle Lowry, Kevin Martin) attack the Jazz's weakest position (guards). And, you know, the Jazz totally suck and represent everything wrong in the world and should shrivel and die, so there was that. Fortunately, the game lived up to my expectations.

When I arrived at the game, I didn't know that Samuel Dalembert had been benched for whatever reason, so the announcement that Patrick Patterson is, in fact, a starting NBA center came as something as a shock, particularly when Hasheem Thabeet was very visibly dressed in a suit while Dalembert was dressed for the game. Shock continued when Greg Smith took the court in the first quarter (I tried to get a "Greg Smith" chant going in my section, but the fans would have none of it). It didn't help that Dalembert didn't look very good for most of the game (he got his first rebound early in the fourth quarter, for instance -- the dunks probably overshadow that in fans' minds, though).

But, even with the Rockets' big-men reeling from injury and disciplinary action, I never felt that the Jazz threatened the Rockets. They made some decent shots, but for the most part the Rockets seemed to keep them away from the basket while they broke down the Jazz defense pretty well. The result of that was a great performance around the arc, as the Rockets' guards destroyed the Jazz perimeter defense -- the Rockets went 10-for-19 from three point range.

The Rockets' big men got in on this, too -- while both Millsap and Jefferson performed well (less so for Jefferson on shooting, but he rebounded well against Patterson), the Rockets largely contained them. Scola actually put together a pretty decent game, too, though he still coughed up the ball too often. Nevertheless, he was the Rockets' leading rebounder and played well, and we need more of that from him.

Greg Smith's debut performance was interesting, though it also showcased the qualities that made him a D-League all-star rather than an NBA draftee. The four blocked shots were impressive (though I think most of them turned into Utah baskets, anyways). What I liked more was that he was apparently willing to actually set a screen for the Rockets' guards -- something to which most of the Rockets' bigs seem to object. It was nice seeing Martin and Lowry actually able to come off of a screen rather than get chased around by two Jazz-men. On the other hand, Smith wasn't much of a factor on the boards and fouled too often. These things are, hopefully, fixable, but it should be clear that (for right now) he doesn't seem to be so much a replacement for Jordan Hill (who rebounds well, something that is very important) as he is a complement to him.

The hero of the game was, of course, Kyle Lowry, whose 32 points on 9-of-13 shooting was spectacularly efficient. He didn't have an assist in the first quarter or so, but he finished the game with 9 as the Rockets started to make the easy shots he gave them (and as the Rockets started to just go ahead and take the open threes available). He went up against one of the worst defensive PGs in the league in Devin Harris (a player whose slide into mediocrity perplexes me), and he made the most of it. This will almost certainly be lost in the fervor over Westbrook's 40 points last night, but it should be noted that Lowry took less than half of the shots that Westbrook did. So there.

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Canis Hoopus

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Can you believe we last saw Rockets basketball on Thursday? That's a long time in this season.

So, I guess I had some plans to write something mildly analytical comparing Kyle Lowry to Andre Iguodala, but that will have to wait so that I can give voice to the sentiment that (I suspect) most right-thinking individuals feel, even if they won't admit it to themselves or others: This Jeremy Lin shit is getting old. And it has only been around for about a week, too. At this point, I'm hoping he crashes and burns just so maybe ESPN and every other arm of the Sports Entertainment Media Machine can stop freaking talking about him for a few minutes.

It wasn't always like this. When the Rockets cut Lin so that they could sign Samuel Dalembert back in December and the Knicks picked him up, I was pretty certain that he was the best point guard on their roster. No, I didn't foresee him throwing down 30-point games, but I thought he could be an average point guard. I was sorry to see him go, but understood why the Rockets did it (stupid Jonny Flynn has a stupid guaranteed contract). Seeing him succeed is not only a feel-good story about an unrecruited-and-undrafted player -- it's personal validation of my own analysis, and that always feels good. What couldn't you like about Lin? He was an odd player, coming out of the Ivy League (Division I's legacy applicants at this point). He seemed clever and played clever. He had the ideal sort of body for a point guard, he attacked the basket, he played good defense, and yet he couldn't get playing time on a bad Warriors team that gave Acie Law over 600 minutes last year. Watching him tear through the Spurs defense in the closing minutes of a preseason game was kind of amazing (I came out of that game with two certainties: Terrence Williams can play, and Jeremy Lin can play; the former was a classic case of a highlight play overriding your sensibility, the latter had a little more grounding to it). For someone like me, Lin was basically the perfect basketball icon. He did the sorts of things coaches say they want players to do, and yet he couldn't get playing time. He was living proof of the old guard's nonsense.

But, like the consummate hipster I am, I was a little bitter when Lin suddenly got starting time and wasn't just quietly competent but rather obviously playing spectacular basketball: He was no longer the secret band that plays at the local dive (you wouldn't have heard of them, they play some great stuff influenced by Brahms and postmodern architecture. Now leave me alone and go back to the Kings of Leon and Nickelback for you cannot touch my impeccable taste, you philistine) but rather he was the local band making it big and getting noticed by all the wrong people.

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All Star reserves were announced before the game. Kyle Lowry didn't make it, but he deserves a spot. Our illustrious commentators speculated that he would want to come out and play great against one of the guards who took his spot: Steve Nash. And that kind of happened at the start of the game -- Lowry shot well enough, after all, but the Rockets' starters largely sputtered and died on offense as the game wore on.

Steve Nash is an all-star, and he deserves it. Anyone watching this game can see the massive difference between the Nash Suns and the Sebastien Telfair Suns. Yes, his defense is bad, but he's still one of the most efficient players in the NBA and a brilliant passer at the age of 38.

So I guess Lowry vs. Nash could be the all-important "storyline" coming into this game, but it was instead a story of another sort: that of the Master vs. the Student: Nash against Goran Dragic. And, like Vader slaying Obi-Won (wait, that's predictable) like Sauron betraying the Elves, the student was the victor tonight.

Dragic pulled off an excellent game, 11 points (on 9 shots, which is kind of meh) with 11 assists (very good), 2 steals, and just 2 turnovers. Altogether very solid. The 11 assists are the key -- he kept finding the open man (usually a wide-open Patterson) and kept the ball moving for the second unit. Yes, there is a reason they are the Dragon Army (NOTE: McHale's Navy is stupid. It's what Basketbawful calls the Rockets. C'mon) and not Patterson's Bears or something. Dragon is absolutely Nash's student -- you can see it in the clever passes, after all -- and his ferociousness on the break, combined with his smart decisions (like a mid-air touch pass to Budinger at the rim) is proof of his lineage.

Goran Dragic played very well, but Nash put together something a little better. 14 points on perfect shooting and 13 assists (with 4 turnovers) is a great game, though one that will perhaps go unnoticed because of the loss. The difference, of course, was that the guys around Nash (Marcin Gortat excepted) just aren't as good as the guys around Dragic.

Dragic may have been the bench leader, but the bench as a whole was just wonderful. All were great. But the best performer (after Dragic) was certainly Patrick Patterson. Patterson played like the Rockets' power forward of the future, knocking down everything he was given, rebounding well, and just rarely making a mistake. We talked about this in the OALABII post -- Patterson plays very intelligent basketball. The game-icing rebound (I like thinking of it that way) was a clever little tip from Patterson (against Gortat) towards Lowry. Oh, and he scored 14 points (on 8 shots, half of which must have been wide-open jumpers he found). So, you know, P-Squared was great.

Dragic-Patterson reminds me of the '09 bench one-two of Lowry-Landry. That was pretty cool back in the day, too.

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Start Time: 8:00 PM CST

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We're going to get this started a little early, because the full All-Star rosters are going to be announced on TNT at 6:00 PM (CST).

Don't forget that Lee (UofTOrange) will be on 1560AM at 6:30, too.

Maybe it was that Samuel Dalembert still isn't in ideal shape and wasn't particularly effective in the first quarter. Maybe it was just that Jeff Adrien reacted to his first real playing opportunity appropriately and forced Kevin McHale to play him. Whatever it was, Jeff Adrien played the most minutes of his Rockets career, going for over 16 minutes with 9 rebounds (9 more than Dalembert, leading the Rockets in the category tonight), setting a career high. His 'tude (as I'm told the kids call it) was visible all game.

You could see it as soon as he came into the game, in fact. The Jeff Adrien we're used to seeing is just a guy who fouls a lot int he final minutes of blowouts while being bizarrely muscled and short (you know, for an NBA forward; not for a normal person). That wasn't the Jeff Adrien we saw tonight. Jeff Adrien destroyed the boards in his limited minutes and even played some quality defense. He was absolutely fearsome, securing rebounds in the gigantic vice he calls a set of arms and swinging his elbows about, daring anyone to challenge his control.

Or, maybe the game took on Adrien's qualities, and so he just didn't seem out of place. The Adrien we knew fouled a lot, and so it makes a weird sort of sense that his first real outing was a whistle-fest, with some 103 fouls called. It was those fouls that could have decided the game. The Nuggets had a big advantage in free throw attempts this game (especially considering their "lead" in turnovers), but they utterly failed to convert from the line, shooting a Shaq-esque 57.6%. Had the Nuggets hit all of their free throws, they'd have won 104-99. Of course, had the Rockets hit all of their shots, the game would have been tied.

That was pretty much where the symmetry ended. The Rockets won this on a spectacular 10-for-19 performance from three point territory. That was almost entirely the doing of Kyle Lowry (5-of-6) and Chase Budinger (4-of-7) -- only Goran Dragic hit another three all night. The Nuggets, however, shot a miserable 3-of-22 from three, and so despite the layup drill they ran for most of the first half, they couldn't overtake the Rockets' shooting.

This was one of the better nights to take on the Nuggets, certainly. Nene was out, as were Afflalo and Mazgov. But, as Xiane was quick to point out in the thread, it's tough to really care too much about other teams' injury problems, you know, what with those of the Rockets over the last six years or so. And the Nuggets still came into the game with their two best players this year (Ty Lawson and Danilo Gallinari), so it's not like this team was utterly and completely crippled. But the Nuggets did suffer a devastating loss when Gallinari went down with some sort of foot fracture. That sucks. It really does.

Nevertheless, the Rockets stole one tonight in a game few would have thought they'd win (this morning, at least). On the road in Denver against one of the West's best teams, this was a great win. The Denver announcers are punks, however.

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The game started off with what I thought was a pretty funny series of turnovers and missed shots from each squad. That pretty much kept happening throughout the night, but the Rockets fought for every rebound and loose ball and took a 20-point lead on the strength of insane shooting and great defensive play. Nevertheless, a -9 turnover differential and a 31-to-13 difference in free throws eventually took its toll. At some point in the second quarter, Tim Duncan realized that the refs would call every touch foul on him in the lane, and the Spurs began to give him the ball at every opportunity. And once Dalembert got into foul trouble, Duncan exploited his matchup against Hill to its fullest, establishing great post position and selling every miss as a mugging.

The story of the game, I suppose, is that the Rockets gave up a massive lead in the second half, but they would never have had a massive lead were it not for Kevin Martin's excellent play. Martin had 29 points on 21 shots, 4 assists, and (impressively) 9 rebounds on his birthday. Martin's offense is best when he has good screens set for him, and his teammates did a great job giving him the space to work his game.

Martin's shooting cooled in the second half, but Lowry (whose early game was mostly distinguished by not committing very many mistakes, turning the ball over only once in the first half) turned it on in the second, finally getting his first points early in the third quarter (on what I think was his third shot of the night). He finished the game with 15 points on 12 shots (a number perhaps inflated when he attempted to bring the Rockets back in the final minutes of the game) with 7 assists (most of which came in the first half, when the Rockets were seemingly knocking down everything). Certainly not his best night, but he played well and fought hard in the second half (he also, fun fact, led the Rockets' starters in OALABII2.0 at 0.24; why, yes, this will now be a part of all of my recaps from here on out). Courtney Lee seemed to ape Martin throughout the game, shooting very well and playing good defense on his man.

While the Rockets' starting backcourt played well all night (including some good defense, I thought, on all their counterparts save for Parker, who kept getting bailed out), the starting frontcourt did not. Dalembert put in solid rebounding numbers but kept getting into foul trouble when guarding Duncan. Scola kept turning the ball over and missing his shots, didn't rebound well at all, and pretty much ran away with the "goat of the night" award with a OALABII2.0 of 0.52. Parsons hustled for every loose ball he could find, but he was basically a non-factor on offense. Defenses have seemed to figure out how to keep him out of the paint lately, and he needs to adjust if he's going to stay a quality starter in the league.

As the game wore on, the difference in foul calls just became too much, and frankly the last five minutes of the game featured some of the worst calls we've seen yet. Blatant blocking fouls were called charges, near-murders around the rim were no-calls. Not a good night from the officials in the least.

Ultimately, the Rockets' poor defense collapsed against one of the league's elite offenses in their building as they got all the calls they could reasonably hope for (this did not stop Timmy or Pops from complaining, however). Close games hurt the worst. These sorts of losses suck, but they happen.

After the jump, accolades and stuff, I guess.

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Start Time: 7:30 PM CST

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Pounding the Rock

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It's Speed Racer's birthday today! So here he is doing cool stuff:

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Каиис Хурус

The other day, Xiane suggested that the Rockets largely look for "high-IQ" players. And then I got to thinking about basketball intelligence when I remembered that Jeremy Lin was on the Knicks' roster. I don't think Lin has an exceptional "Basketball IQ" or anything, but he's obviously a pretty clever guy, and that probably translates to some level of intelligence on the court, I guess. But it really made me think about who on the Rockets has the greatest basketball sense on the court.

Of course, I could just go with my gut, right? I could say it's Lowry or Parsons or Scola or someone because they just seem like the type. But, instead, I'm going to take a page from Bill James and try to come up with a system to describe who, exactly, is "smart." It might not be quite scientific, but it's better than nothing.

I think the prototypical "smart" basketball player, at least for the Rockets, is Shane Battier. We all remember (I'm sure) Michael Lewis's article on the "No Stats All Star," in which Battier's game as a guy who does all the little things necessary on the court was lovingly detailed. But Dave Berri (the guy behind Wages of Wins) took issue with one of the critical points of Lewis's piece: Battier's value was, contrary to what Lewis (and the Rockets) contended, expressed very well through the box-score. Why? Because, while most fans look to the points column near-exclusively when evaluating players, the box score has a lot more than that in it: it records field goals and attempts, steals, turnovers, rebounds, etc. And, looking at those statistics, we can see Battier's value. He shoots efficiently (or at least he did up until this year), he doesn't turn the ball over, he gets steals, he doesn't commit many fouls.

There's a distinct value in not doing something bad -- not missing shots, not turning the ball over, not committing fouls. We tend to look at those players who do a lot of something good (scoring, for instance), but our attention doesn't always turn to those who simply don't do things wrong. Battier was one of those players who rarely did anything wrong on the court.

So much of Battier's value lay in his ability to simply not give the ball to the other team. To me, that's what "smart" basketball players accomplish, and fortunately for us it's something pretty easily quantifiable through the box score.

So I'm going to model OALABII (the Only_A_Lad Adjusted Basketball Intelligence Index, pronounced "wallaby") on Battier's contributions to the game, or rather his lack of negative contributions. We'll thus be looking at the five statistics that really encompassed how not-bad Battier was (and how good he was at not giving the other team another possession): minutes played, field goals, field goals attempted, turnovers, and personal fouls (later we'll incorporate steals, but at first it will be just these).

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