page_title: Houston Rockets
section_title: 1984–1987: The "Twin Towers"
hierarchical_section_title: Houston Rockets / Franchise history / 1984–2001: The Hakeem Olajuwon era / 1984–1987: The "Twin Towers"
caption_attribution_description: English: A ticket for Game 2 of the 1987 Western Conference Semifinals featuring the Seattle SuperSonics versus the Houston Rockets at The Summit on May 5, 1987. The SuperSonics defeated the Rockets 99-97 in Game 2 and eventually won the series 4-2.
context_page_description: The Houston Rockets are an American professional basketball team based in Houston. The Rockets compete in the National Basketball Association as a member team of the league's Western Conference Southwest Division. The team plays its home games at the Toyota Center, located in Downtown Houston. Throughout its history, Houston has won two NBA championships and four Western Conference titles. It was established in 1967 as the San Diego Rockets, an expansion team originally based in San Diego. In 1971, the Rockets relocated to Houston.
  The Rockets won only 15 games in their debut season as a franchise in 1967. In the 1968 NBA draft, the Rockets were awarded the first overall pick and selected power forward Elvin Hayes, who would lead the team to its first playoff appearance in his rookie season. The Rockets did not finish a season with a winning record for almost a decade until the 1976–77 season, when they traded for All-Star center Moses Malone. Malone went on to win the NBA Most Valuable Player award twice while playing with the Rockets and led Houston to the Eastern Conference Finals in his first year with the team.
context_section_description: In his first season, Olajuwon finished second to Michael Jordan in NBA Rookie of the Year balloting, and the Rockets record improved by 19 games, good enough for a return to the playoffs as the third best team in the West, where they were upset by the sixth-seeded Utah Jazz. The duo of Olajuwon and Sampson earned much praise, and was nicknamed "Twin Towers". In the following season, Houston won the Midwest Division title with a 51–31 record. The subsequent playoffs had the Rockets sweeping the Sacramento Kings, having a hard-fought six-game series with Alex English's Denver Nuggets, and then facing defending champion Lakers, losing the first game but eventually managing to win the series – the only Western Playoffs defeat of the Showtime Lakers – to get to the franchise's second Finals appearance. The NBA Finals once again matched the Rockets up against the Celtics, a contrast to Houston's young front challenging the playoff-hardened Celtics front court of Larry Bird, Kevin McHale and Robert Parish. The Celtics won the first two games in Boston, gave the Rockets their only home playoff defeat that season in game 4, and clinched the title as Bird scored a triple-double on Game 6.
  After the Finals, Boston coach K. C. Jones called the Rockets "the new monsters on the block" feeling they had a bright future. But the team had a poor start to the following season, followed by nearly a decade of underachievement and failure, amidst players getting injured or suspended for cocaine usage, and during the playoffs were defeated in the second round by the Seattle SuperSonics in six games, with the final game being a double-overtime classic that saw Olajuwon notching 49 points, 25 rebounds and 6 blocks in defeat. Early in the 1987–88 season, Sampson, who had signed a new contract, was traded to the Golden State Warriors, bringing the Twin Towers era to an end just 18 months after their Finals appearance. Sampson's once-promising career was shortened due to chronic knee injuries, which forced his retirement in 1991. Jones' prophecy of a Rockets dynasty never materialized until the early 1990s.
caption: A ticket for Game 2 of the 1987 Western Conference Semifinals between the Rockets and the Seattle SuperSonics.
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