DBWI: WI Portland doesn't trade Drexler and the #2 pick to Houston for Ralph Sampson?

(OOC: Yes, this is another Houston Rockets-wank; this is different from my previous one, though.)

Howdy.

As most basketball fans know, this year marks the 35th anniversary of the 1984 NBA Draft. As most fans know, Houston used their first pick to select Hakeem Olajuwon and then traded Ralph Sampson to Portland for Clyde Drexler and the #2 pick in the 1984 draft, which the Rockets used to select...Michael Jordan. Then, the Rockets traded Rodney McCray to Cleveland for the #4 draft pick, which they used to select Jordan's North Carolina teammate Sam Perkins (trades like this were part of the reason the Stepien rule was instituted).

As anyone who's a fan of basketball knows, the Houston Rockets used that to go on to the greatest success for an NBA team since the 1950s and 1960s Celtics, going to the NBA Finals a record 11 times in a row and winning every one and making basketball the second-most popular sport in Texas (1); it also came at a time when the Southwestern Conference was reeling from a number of football scandals, including SMU's ending its football program after getting the death penalty...

So, WI Portland doesn't trade Drexler and the #2 pick to Houston for Sampson? Do they pick Jordan ITTL? This certainly butterflies away the rise of basketball in Texas, IMO; many high school basketball players for years admitted that they were inspired by the Houston Rockets' success...

(1) Even with a Rockets dynasty that rivals the Celtics, football is still the most popular sport in Texas; that'll never change in any TL...
 
If Portland didn't make this trade, they were going to take Sam Bowie second overall. That would have been a disaster.

By 1990, they did have a good team, but they couldn't quite get over the MJ/Hakeem roadblock in Houston. Their frontcourt consisted of Shawn Kemp at PF, a platoon of Sampson (who broke his foot in 1988-89 and missed 40 games. That's how Portland got the Reign Man) and Duckworth at center, and Jerome Kersey at SF. And, in the backcourt, they had Porter at PG and Drazen Petrovic at SG (in this world, there is more playing time for him with Drexler gone).

They beat the Lakers that year in Round 2, but lost to the Rockets in six games in the WCF. The next year, it appeared that they would upset Houston, but Kersey dropped a pass on a fast break late in Game 7, and the Rockets survived. After that, Sampson missed the whole year with a foot injury in 1991-92, and had to retire. Also, Duckworth got less and less effective, and Kersey's play went on a slow decline. The Blazers didn't get back to the WCF until 1999 (after the MJ-Hakeem dynasty ended) with Kemp, Sabonis, and Petrovic (he lives in this timeline) as the anchors (they don't trade for Rasheed Wallace in this world, and Kemp doesn't become a malcontent because he doesn't play in Seattle).
 
Yeah, there's a reason they call the ExxonMobil Center "the house the Trio built (1)"--they did consider calling it Enron Center, but that ended after Enron's collapse, of course...

ObWI: WI SMU doesn't shut down its football program after getting the death penalty? It is thought that the fallout from that helped ensure that Bill Clements wouldn't seek a third term (he would have been slaughtered in the polls for his role in the SMU football scandal, IMO) and led to the loss by the Republican candidate for governor in 1990 (to be fair, Clayton Williams' gaffes ensured that it would be a landslide). It also led to the departure from the SWC of Texas and Texas A & M to the SEC, and the dominoes that resulted from that; it's also thought to be part of the reason Baylor deemphasized its football program, because the alums didn't want anything like the SMU football scandal to occur...

(1) The Trio, of course, consisting of MJ, Hakeem, and Clyde; they graced the covers of numerous Sports Illustrated and Texas Monthly issues...
 
Last edited:
Top