Background
Hakeem Olajuwon, then named Akeem, was drafted first overall by the Houston Rockets in the 1984 NBA Draft. Olajuwon quickly rose into an NBA All-Star, and in his second season, he led the Rockets to the 1986 NBA Finals, where they would lose in six games to the Boston Celtics. However the Rockets would gradually dismantle that team, and by 1991, only Olajuwon remained from that 1986 squad. Midway to the 1991–92 season Rudy Tomjanovich took over as head coach and almost led the team to the playoffs. By 1993 the Rockets were on the rise, with Olajuwon transforming into an all-around player while remaining a defensive presence in the paint. The Rockets would come within a game of the conference finals that year, losing to the Seattle SuperSonics in seven games. The Rockets then started 15–0 the next season en route to a 58–24 record, finishing behind Seattle in the West. In the playoffs they defeated the Portland Trail Blazers 3–1, the Phoenix Suns 4–3 (after losing the first two games at home), and the Utah Jazz 4–1 to advance to the finals.
Patrick Ewing was drafted No. 1 by the New York Knicks in the 1985 NBA Draft. However his rise to stardom was stalled by a pair of losing seasons and several leg injuries, despite winning Rookie of the Year in 1986. Nevertheless Ewing continued to excel, and by 1989 the Knicks were mentioned as playoff contenders. It wasn't until they hired Pat Riley as head coach in 1991 that the Knicks started to rise among the Eastern Conference elite. Riley transformed the team into a tough, defensive-minded group, anchored by Ewing, Charles Oakley, Anthony Mason, John Starks and Charles Smith. In the 1993 Eastern Conference Finals the Knicks led 2–0 on the defending champion Chicago Bulls, but then lost the next four, highlighted by a flurry of blocks by the Bulls defense on Smith in Game 5. With Michael Jordan retired the next season, the Knicks took advantage by winning 57 games, then defeated the New Jersey Nets in the first round 3–1. Still, the Knicks had to overcome the Jordan-less Bulls in seven games, before dispatching the hot-shooting Reggie Miller and the Indiana Pacers in seven games of the Eastern Conference Finals.
Read more about this topic: 1994 NBA Finals
Famous quotes containing the word background:
“I had many problems in my conduct of the office being contrasted with President Kennedy’s conduct in the office, with my manner of dealing with things and his manner, with my accent and his accent, with my background and his background. He was a great public hero, and anything I did that someone didn’t approve of, they would always feel that President Kennedy wouldn’t have done that.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)
“Pilate with his question “What is truth?” is gladly trotted out these days as an advocate of Christ, so as to arouse the suspicion that everything known and knowable is an illusion and to erect the cross upon that gruesome background of the impossibility of knowledge.”
—Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900)
“Silence is the universal refuge, the sequel to all dull discourses and all foolish acts, a balm to our every chagrin, as welcome after satiety as after disappointment; that background which the painter may not daub, be he master or bungler, and which, however awkward a figure we may have made in the foreground, remains ever our inviolable asylum, where no indignity can assail, no personality can disturb us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)