Beating Alcindor and UCLA was one of Elvin Hayes' defining moments. James Drake/Sports Illustrated

Like Olajuwon, Elvin Hayes was a star at the University of Houston, where he led an upset of top-ranked UCLA at the Astrodome and took the Cougars to consecutive Final Fours. He was the No. 1 overall pick and eventual Rookie of the Year for the San Diego Rockets in 1969. When the Rockets relocated to Houston in 1971, he came home to become the city's first NBA star.

His star faded quickly there, however. Unlike Olajuwon, Hayes was shipped out after only one season in Houston in an incredibly short-sighted deal.

He would eventually return to finish his career in Houston ... but not before winning a championship in Washington and establishing himself as one of the NBA's 50 Greatest Players. Known for his silky turnaround jumper and two rebounding titles, Hayes also was durable -- missing only seven of a possible 1,066 games in 13 seasons in Washington. His career 12.5-rebound average is the fourth best in NBA history.

Marin, who was coming off a career-high 22.3 points-per-game average, lasted only a season and a half in Houston as he hit the down slope of his career.

Just as Houston swindled Moses Malone from the Buffalo Braves in 1976, so did the Rockets get caught with their collective hand in the cookie jar trying to parlay Malone into something bigger. Ralph Sampson's disappointing NBA career put an even dimmer light on this deal ... as did Malone's NBA title and MVP performance in Philadelphia the season after he was traded.

It didn't take Malone long to make Houston regret that trade. Manny Millan/Sports Illustrated

All Malone had done in Houston was anchor a turnaround in 1980-81, when the Rockets went 40-42 in the regular season, before taking the champion Celtics to six games in the NBA Finals. He also won two MVP awards in Houston, and he helped groom young Hakeem Olajuwon while he was learning the trade at the University of Houston.

Malone would play for eight NBA teams and amass more than 27,000 points before he was done. But it was his blue-collar, goggle-wearing, elbow-throwing work in the paint that carved out his legend. He led the NBA in offensive rebounds a record eight times and retired as No. 5 on the all-time rebounding list. He also averaged 20.6 points for his career (24 in his time with the Rockets).

"He'd get the ball back five times in a row if he had to," recalled Clyde Drexler. "Sometimes, he did it just to show people he could do it. He'd get it back as many times as he needed to in order to get the bucket. And very few people in the history of the game have had the kind of success that he enjoyed."

Chalk it up to hindsight, but we received a surprising number of letters condemning the 1996 blockbuster that brought Sir Charles to Houston and gave the Rockets a Hall of Fame triumvirate of Olajuwon, Barkley and Drexler. As we searched the stacks, however, we found nothing but good vibes emanating out of Houston when Rockets pulled off the deal.

Unfortunately, Plan B was adding Scottie Pippen a few years later. Stephen Dunn/Allsport

What dampened the mood, probably, was the loss to Utah in the 1997 conference finals and the quick deterioration of the star trio, which played only 40 games together in the '96-97 regular season. The math went something like this: A combined 37 years of NBA experience, four Olympic gold medals, three NBA championships, 30 All-Star appearances and more than 60,000 points was equal to a combined age of 100.

It was a calculated risk on Houston's part, giving up four of its top seven players for a 33-year-old, oft-injured superstar.

Of course, it's hard to pin the blame on age when you lose a playoff series to Karl Malone and John Stockton.

No, what did Houston in was the NBA's most elusive elixir: chemistry. Eager not to let their 1994 and 1995 titles slip into obscurity, the Rockets went for the big kill. But, as much as they loved him, Barkley's overblown personality wasn't enough to replace the "team concept" lost by the trading of four key players.

They would really make a mess of things a few years later by bringing in Scottie Pippen, who cost them only Roy Rogers.

Rockets Notebook Houston Chronicle -- November 18, 1997 By Michael Murphy Robert Horry, the starting power forward for the Los Angeles Lakers, is still amazed when he runs into former Rockets teammates in his travels around the league. While Horry says he has come to terms with the deal that sent him, Sam Cassell, Chucky Brown and Mark Bryant to Phoenix in the blockbuster trade that brought Charles Barkley to Houston last year, he admits he sometimes has a hard time understanding why it happened. "Man, we're all over the place," he said. "Sam is in New Jersey, Carl [Herrera] is in San Antonio, O.T. [Otis Thorpe] is in Vancouver, and I'm in Los Angeles. If they had a team in Mexico, I guess one of us would be there." The thing that amazes Horry most is how quickly it happened. "What was it, three, four years ago [that the Rockets won their first title]?" Horry said. "That was so long ago. It seems funny, man. You look at teams that won championships, they don't break the team up unless they have a losing season. You stick with it. But we got rid of the first team the first year. After the first championship, we traded, getting rid of O.T. [traded to Portland in the Clyde Drexler deal]. "And then the year after that, we won it again, and then they got rid of almost half that team. It was funny, but that just shows you how this league is. There's always something behind what's going on. They get rid of people for certain reasons -- trying to sell more tickets or trying to get more support. That's just how it is."

Jules Jefferson, Houston: It was when the Houston Rockets traded Sam, Robert, etc ... for an aging Chuck. I believe that was the end of the Rockets' chance for a title. Sam is one of the best point guards in the game today, and Robert was a great player for Houston and now is a role player.

Had the Rockets drafted Clyde Drexler in 1983, the way everybody hoped they would, Houston fans would have been saved a lot of hand-wringing over the years.

Thirteen years after the fact, Drexler became a Rocket. Craig Jones/Allsport

The Rockets had the first and third overall picks of the '83 draft. Ralph Sampson was a layup at No. 1, and many fans figured hometown hero Clyde Drexler was a layup at No. 3. But the team went for Louisville forward Rodney McCray instead, and a saddened Drexler slipped all the way to 14th and went to Portland.

Management felt McCray was ready to step in and contribute immediately, while Drexler's skills were going to take some time to adapt to the NBA. While McCray became a serviceable player in Houston (and indeed a fan favorite for his hustle), Drexler became one of the most dynamic players and highest-scoring players in the league.

But, as we said, Houston fans learned to love McCray ... so much so, that when he was traded in 1988 for forward Otis Thorpe, fans again went into a tizzy.

Of course, they grew to love Thorpe in time, too. Especially when he became a key player as the Rockets won their first NBA title in 1994. That's why Rockets fans moaned again when the team dealt Thorpe in the middle of the next season ... to Portland for Clyde Drexler, whom the Rockets had bypassed a decade before. As happy as fans were to have Drexler coming home, they were equally worried that the chemistry of the team would turn for the worse.

It didn't, of course, and fans were ecstatic when the Rockets repeated in 1995.

Instead of going head-to-head, Jordan and Olajuwon could have been teammates. Jonathan Daniel/Allsport

Legend has it that Houston twice shied away from trading Ralph Sampson -- once to Portland for the No. 2 pick in '84 (which could have been Jordan) and again to the Bulls for Jordan after the '85-86 season.

The Rockets, however, stuck with Sampson until 1987. By then, all they could get for him was Joe Barry Carroll and Sleepy Floyd.

We're not making this up, just scratching our heads after finding this Sam Smith story from The Chicago Tribune in 1998:

Houston Just Missed Dynasty; Had The Rockets Been Willing To Trade Ralph Sampson, Jordan Could Have Ended Up in Houston Chicago Tribune -- June 11, 1998 By Sam Smith Forget the sixth championship. Michael Jordan should be going for an eighth or ninth title by now. He should be challenging the records of Bill Russell's Boston Celtics. He should be part of the greatest one-two punch in NBA history . . . with Hakeem Olajuwon. That was the real mistake of the 1984 draft. It has long been hung on the Portland Trail Blazers for selecting Sam Bowie with the No. 2 pick instead of Jordan. "[Jordan] was good," Jack Ramsay, the then-Portland coach recalled in a rather obvious description. "I saw him on that [1984] Olympic team. My Portland team, our rookies and free agents, scrimmaged against them. Everybody says now they knew, 'Oh, yeah,' but I'll tell you no one predicted this." No one predicted Jordan would become arguably the greatest player in NBA history. A shooting guard carrying a team to the NBA title had never happened before and was never even imagined -- especially by the Bulls. "Michael is a very good offensive player but not an overpowering one," Rod Thorn, then the Bulls' GM, said after drafting Jordan. "He's not the kind of guy who will single-handedly turn around a franchise, and I'd never ask him to do that." Which may have been the best break the Bulls ever had. Because if the Rockets had an idea -- if anyone had -- some things would not have been the same. Kids would be wearing Rockets jerseys, and Al Capone would still be Chicago's most famous citizen. The 1984 season was the last in which the NBA used a coin flip between the worst Eastern and Western Conference teams to determine the No. 1 draft pick. The lottery began in 1985 to eliminate the longstanding practice of teams tanking games down the stretch to improve their draft position or get a shot at the coin flip. The Rockets, who had taken star center Ralph Sampson first in 1983, lost 17 of their last 20 to settle into the worst record in the West. The Pacers, who had traded their 1984 No. 1 pick to Portland several years before for center Tom Owens, held off the Bulls, who lost 14 of their last 15. Had the Pacers not made the trade, they would have been in position to pick Jordan. And they would not have taken Bowie at No. 2. Portland did, for reasons that have been explained many times. The Blazers had drafted guard Clyde Drexler the year before. He was nearly as highly regarded as Jordan in college, and veteran shooting guard Jim Paxson was All-NBA Second Team that season. "You thought [Jordan] was going to be a good player," Ramsay said, "but we were good at 'two' guard. Our scouts thought highly of Bowie. We gave him a physical exam. The doctors said he was fine, but that turned out not to be the case." Bowie's legs simply failed him. Although he went on to have a reasonably productive NBA career with several teams, he was never more than a solid role player. If Hakeem Olajuwon was the certain No. 1 pick coming out of the University of Houston after three Final Four appearances, the other given was Portland's desire for a center. The Blazers were a playoff team, but hadn't been in serious contention since Bill Walton's injuries ended the run of Portland's 1977 championship team. "Jack Ramsay did what he had to do for his team," said Bill Fitch, who was then coaching the Rockets. "Sam Bowie was a special player. I never saw a center pass the ball any better than Sam." Another possibility, however, was Sampson, the 1984 Rookie of the Year who averaged more than 20 points his first two seasons. What if Houston had selected Olajuwon with the No. 1 pick and then traded Sampson for the No. 2 pick and used it to select Jordan? The Rockets would have had the best inside and outside players of their era. "We had to have a center," Ramsay said. "We would have done that." If only people had thought Jordan was better. "There was a time when we felt there was a chance to make a trade with Chicago with Sampson for Jordan," Fitch said. "But nothing was ever done." That was after the 1985-86 season. The thinking then was the deal might be too one-sided -- for the Rockets. Sampson was 7-foot-4 and a star who'd help lead the Rockets to the Finals in 1986, where they lost in six games to one of the great Celtics teams. The belief was Houston would succeed Boston and the Lakers as the NBA's powerhouse. "Ralph was a big commodity," Fitch recalled, "and Jordan really hadn't come into his own."

 

Joe Peddicord, Bern, Switzerland: This ain't exactly a "broken heart" situation, rather a "what if" situation. As a lifelong Houston Rockets fan, I wonder what would have happened had the Rockets accepted the deal that the Trail Blazers offered prior to the `84 draft, which would have sent Clyde Drexler and their No. 1 pick to the Rockets for Ralph Sampson. Then the Rockets (assuming they didn't take Sam Bowie) would have had access to Hakeem Olajuwon and Michael Jordan with the first and second picks. That would have been interesting.