Why is Jordan so strong? This question is like asking me why I am so handsome, Jordan averaged 28 points per game in his rookie season, of course, he averaged more than 30 points per game in his career, 3 regular season MVPs, 6 Finals, 6 championships, 6 FMVPs, 10 season scoring titles, 14 All-Stars, 3 seasons of steal king, one year of Best Defensive Player, 11 All-Defensive Team selections, and all of them were for a team, 9 selections to the All-Defensive Team, It's all for a while! Jordan's first championship was in the 1990-1991 season, which happened to be the "seven-year itch" of his career, followed by a wave of three consecutive championships, during which all the strong opponents in the NBA were picked out by Jordan's Bulls one by one, including the consecutive blocking of the Jazz with Utah's double, the Pistons who took revenge on Isaiah Thomas, the Heat who swept Glen Rice, the Knicks who defeated Patrick Ewing four times in five years, and the Suns who beat Charles Barkley's Suns, averaging 41 points per game! These teams became the best and best stepping stones for Jordan to ascend to the throne!

At this time, Jordan has no desire on the basketball court, and he suddenly announced his retirement to play baseball at the peak, this decision gave hope to many players in the league who were eager for a championship, and the Rockets' lineup this year was basically the same as last year, Olajuwon, Thorpe, Maxwell, Kenny Smith, and Robert Horry, a sophomore, and Scott Brooks, a role player who joined the team three years ago, yes, it was the former Thunder head coach, when he mainly shot three-pointers, In 1993, in the draft, a point guard named Sam Cassel with an extremely ugly appearance was selected with the No. 24 pick in the first round, and Mario Aley, who was kicked to the Rockets by the Trail Blazers, this season's Rockets players are in surprisingly good shape, Olajuwon averaged 27.3 points, 12 rebounds and 3.7 blocks per game, and Thorpe can also contribute 15+ per game steadily10. This season, the Rockets scored a team-record 58 wins and made the playoffs again.

In the first round, the Rockets led by Olajuwon faced the Trail Blazers led by Olajuwon's teammate in college, Drexray, and the weak Trail Blazers were obviously not the opponent of the Rockets, easily advancing 3:1, Olajuwon once again broke the interior of the Trail Blazers, averaging 34 points, 11 rebounds and 3.8 blocks per game in this round of the series, shooting as high as 50%! It is worth mentioning that Robert Horry, a sophomore, has shown the potential to play the best role in this series, averaging 15 points, 4.8 rebounds and 4.5 assists, 1.1 steals and 1.5 blocks per game, shooting nearly 60% from the field and 50% from three-point range! He has shared a lot of heavy responsibilities for Olajuwon on the offensive end.

But in the second round of the playoffs, facing Charles Barkley's Phoenix Suns, Olajuwon had great difficulty. At that time, the Suns had "flying pig" Charles Barkley, who averaged 25 points and 11 rebounds per game with his big ass, Kevin Johnson who averaged 20+10 per game in the season, Cedric Ceballos, who averaged 19 points and 6.5 rebounds per game, and Dan Marley, a defensive tough guy nicknamed "Thunder Gong", who averaged 16.5 points per game, and the most famous iron man in history, AC Green. There is offense, defense, focus, and tactics, and the Suns showed the potential of a championship-caliber team that year, and of course, who of the two teams can have the last laugh ultimately depends on the matchup between Olajuwon and Barkley!

In the first game of the finals, the Rockets except for Olajuwon, everyone else played unsatisfactory, Kenny Smith shot 2 of 7 from beyond the three-point line, Thorpe only grabbed 7 rebounds in the whole game, Horry only hit 5 of 13 shots, and Maxwell only scored 3 points on 1 of 9 shots! The Suns' Ross Barkley also didn't play well, hitting just 8 of 21 shots, scoring 21 points and 12 rebounds, but Kevin Johnson had 20 points and 12 assists, and Olajuwon became the lone hero of the Rockets! He hit 16 of his 24 shots from the field, scoring 36 points and 16 rebounds to completely dominate the interior, but still couldn't prevent his team from losing 87-91 to the Suns.

In the second game of the finals, Barkley broke out strongly, hitting 12 of 18 shots, scoring 34 points, 15 rebounds and 6 assists! Kevin Johnson and Dan Marley combined for 49 points! On the Rockets' side, Olajuwon continued to perform strongly, with 31 points, 17 rebounds and 3 blocks, Thorpe tried his best to defend Barkley, but Barkley was too strong tonight, and the last 6 fouls graduated, and the Rockets' outside line was inaccurate again, Kenny Smith shot 6 of 14, Maxwell shot 6 of 18, Hawley shot 4 of 12, Kassel shot 4 of 11, and other players only shot 6 times in total, and the Rockets lost again 117:124.

In the third game of the finals, Barkley fell into a trough again under Thorpe's strong defense, hitting only 9 of 22 shots, scoring 18 points and 14 rebounds, and did not make even one free throw in the whole game, but Kevin Johnson on the outside broke out, scoring 38 points on 12-of-25 shooting and handed out 12 assists, on the Rockets' side, Olajuwon scored 26 points and 15 rebounds on 11-of-17 shooting, 6 assists and 6 blocks, but the hero of the game was not him, It's the "madman Max" who hit 14 of his 24 shots and scored 34 points crazily! The Rockets defeated the Suns 118-102, chasing the big score to 2:1, behind the "Mad Max", there is actually an invisible hero, he is Sam Cassel, who scored 12 points and handed out 10 assists in just 27 minutes on the court, and the "alien" at this time has begun to have the potential of a high-quality point guard.

Game 4 of the Finals was crucial for the Rockets, there are only a handful of teams in history who have won 3-1, they didn't want to make such history, they wanted to stand on the floor of the Compaq Center with a score of 2-2, and in the end, they did! This game is a remake of the previous game for the Suns, Barkley played poorly, hitting 7 of 21 shots to get 19 points and 14 rebounds, Kevin Johnson made crazy shots all over the court to hit 15 of 31 shots and got 38 points and sent 12 assists, but everyone else didn't score double-doubles, Olajuwon on the Rockets side is still the mainstay of the team, hitting 14 of 23 shots to get 28 points, 12 rebounds, 8 assists and 5 blocks, Kenny Smith played an incredibly efficient game, playing just 28 minutes and scoring 21 points on 8-of-10 shooting, while Thorpe successfully restrained Barkley while handing over a solid double-double of 5-of-8 shooting, 12 points and 13 rebounds.

This round of the series is a duel between two great teams, the previous games were all until the last second to determine the winner, the fifth crucial battle of Tianwang Mountain, no one wants to lose, the game process must be a needle point in everyone's imagination, but to the surprise, the rocket 109:86 beat the sun by 23 points! In this game, the Rockets played extremely evenly, reasonably distributed the ball, and reduced the pressure on the big dream at both ends of the offensive and defensive ends, and finally Olajuwon and Thorpe combined to score 40 points and 19 rebounds, Kenny Smith shot 5 of 8 and scored 16 points, Mario Ailey stood up on the bench, played 23 minutes, scored 10 points, the Rockets had 11 more rebounds than the Suns, and 11 more assists, and the consequence of a reasonable rotation was that the Rockets shot as high as 52% of the whole team, while the Suns were less than 40%! The Rockets gave Barkley a taste of a lone hero, although the "flying pig" scored 30 points on 14-of-25 shooting, but everyone else's play reached an outrageous level, the first few tepid Ceballos scored 11 points on 5-of-12 shooting in this game, Kevin Johnson's good fortune was left in the last game, 4-of-13 shooting, only 11 points, Dan Marley 0-of-6, did not score a point in the game......

Even the greatest planner in the world could not have imagined that only two days later, the state of the two teams was completely reversed, and the Rockets lost to the Suns 89:103! Although Olajuwon scored 23 points, 12 rebounds and 5 assists on 9-of-12 shooting, the team's outside line once again turned into a "giant pit" Horry shot 5-of-11, Smith shot 3-of-11, Maxwell shot just 2-of-10, Kassel shot 3-of-10, and the Suns' three role players became the Suns' surprise soldiers, AC Green hit 9-of-10 shots, scored 22 points and 10 rebounds, Joe Kline scored 15 points, and Danny Ainge scored 13 points.

In the end, the two teams came to the tiebreaker with a score of 3-3, and whether to go home or advance is all determined by the performance of each player in the 48 minutes of love, in the first quarter of the game, the Rockets took the lead 33:21, and the Suns played 26:20 in the second quarter to catch up, this game is completely a championship-level game, and the final result is known to everyone, the Rockets have the last laugh, the score is 104:94, and the Suns' substitute Danny Ainge played the best game in the Finals, He scored 18 points on 6-of-12 shooting, while Barkley's stats were "only" 9-of-19 shooting, 24 points, 15 rebounds, 4 assists and 3 steals, and the Rockets didn't play well from the outside, Maxwell shot 5-of-14 and Smith shot 2-of-8, but Hawley and Cassel played extremely well, the former scored 15 points on 5-of-7 shooting, the latter scored 22 points on 8-of-12 shooting, in addition to 4 rebounds and 7 assists. Olajuwon, on the other hand, dominated the game completely, scoring 37 points on 18-of-33 shooting, grabbing 17 rebounds, diching out five assists and three blocks.

The Rockets stepped on the corpse of the Suns and stepped into the Western Conference Finals, the opponent was the Utah Jazz who killed the Spurs first and then the Nuggets, the Utah Double Brake in the Jazz team, John Stockton and Karl Malone's blocking and dismantling combination Megatron Alliance, except for Jordan, no one can break it! But the Jazz have a fatal flaw is that despite the great lethality of the Utah duo, the rest of the role players are really limited in their help to the two, and in this series, except for Stockton, Karl Malone, and Jeff Hornacek (current Suns head coach), none of the rest can score double-doubles! In the key position matchup between the two teams, Karl Malone averaged 26 points and 12.6 rebounds per game, but shot only 43.3%, while Olajuwon scored 27.8 points, 10.2 rebounds, and shot 50.2% from the field! After five games, the Rockets eliminated the Jazz, and most importantly, in these five games, the Rockets' role players exploded in turns! In the first game, Horry desperately grabbed 5 frontcourt rebounds, Cassel played 18 minutes, scored 9 points and 7 assists, in the second game Mario Ailey scored 17 points, and in the third game, the wonder soldier was Cassel, he scored 14 points and handed out 4 assists, in the fourth game, the cavalry was still Cassel, he played 17 minutes and scored 10 points on 3-of-6 shooting, and in the fifth game, Hawley scored 22 points, 9 rebounds and 3 assists on 8-of-13 shooting.

In this way, after 1986, the Rockets once again stood on the stage of the Finals, and their opponent was the New York Knicks led by Olajuwon's lifelong enemy Ewing.

Time seems to go back to 1984, that year, Ewing's Georgetown University and Olajuwon's University of Houston stood on the stage of the NCAA Finals, the data of that game is no longer available, but "it is said" Olajuwon only scored 10 points in the whole game under Ewing's defense, Ewing scored not much, 15 points, but it was enough to lead the team to win, after that game, Olajuwon participated in the NBA draft, therefore, he did not have an NCAA championship ring, This incident made Olajuwon regret for the rest of his life, but it may be more regrettable for Ewing, who never got an NBA championship ring in his life.

Olajuwon and Ewing are actually very good friends off the court, but as long as they step on the floor of the game, the two will not be humble to each other, they will use all kinds of pushing, all kinds of trash talk, and so on to ensure their advantage, because they both understand that the best respect for each other is to play without reservation and go all out, and the relationship between the two of them is like Chamberlain and Russell, Bird and Johnson, Jordan and Barkley, and even Kobe and James.

This year's Knicks are in the best form of players, Ewing averages 25 points and 11 rebounds per game, guard John Starks can average 19 points and 6 assists per game, and power forward Charles Oakley can average 12 points and 12 rebounds per game Double-double data, Ewing and Oakley are very good at defending the interior, which will undoubtedly increase the difficulty of Olajuwon to score, but what about the facts!

See!