April 17, 2024 • 51 mins
Hannah heads deep into the heart of Texas to reminisce about her punk rock radio origins and early years covering the Houston Rockets. Former GM Steve Patterson, and Rockets legends Rudy Tomjanovich and Ralph Sampson bring us inside the ’81 and ’86 NBA Finals. Then, Hannah and good friend Judy Cohen take a trip down memory lane, complete with ’80s fringe, North Beach Leather, and a story about how they scammed their way into the Super Bowl.
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Whether Even before I stepped foot on campus at the
University of Notre Dame, I knew I wanted to work
in sports broadcasting. My dad, Mike Storn, made a career
in sports management, and I spent my childhood surrounded by players,
(00:24):
geames in the business.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
So Annahlin grew up in an atmosphere of professional sports,
and that was simply a way of life. As she
went to college, she said that she wanted to be
a broadcast major, and her father, not unused to giving advice, said, oh, no,
you don't want to go into broadcasting, you need to
(00:49):
major in something else. So she doubled major, one for herself,
and she got one for me, and began her sports
career not as a fan, but as a on air
entertainer in our own right.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I had a double major in international government and broadcasting.
While at Notre Dame, I got as much experience as possible,
hosting a sports talk radio show, DJing at our campus
radio station, and doing reports for our local South Bend
TV station. In the summers, I interned at both TBS
and a Houston TV station. By the time I graduated,
(01:30):
I actually had a TV reel that reflected all that
hard work. But there was just one problem. It was
nineteen eighty three and sports broadcasting jobs just didn't exist
for women, save for one or two that appeared on
NFL telecasts. After disappointing seasons in Dallas and New York,
(01:52):
the Denver quarterback seems kind of revitalized with the broad
gos having grown up around sports. I knew it would
be a lot more fun than, say, covering city council meetings.
I was determined. I answered all the want ads in
the back of broadcasting magazine, typing letters, and mailing my
tapes to TV stations around the country, hundreds of them.
(02:15):
I set aside the rejection letters that flooded my mailbox,
and I managed to get a handful of interviews, but
they inevitably led to more rejection. I was barely twenty
one living at home this summer after graduation. My dad
and I used to go jogging together and we would
talk about my job search.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
On a run. One day, he reminded me that it
takes just one person to say yes, and he pointed
out that mathematically, there were more radio stations in the
country than TV stations, so why not try that. I
wrote and recorded some radio tracks for sportscasting and for DJing,
which I sent to stations around the country and that worked.
(02:58):
I got my first job at a.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Heavy metal radio station in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
We rock because you rock C one oh one Rocks.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
CE one o one Baby Yeah.
Speaker 6 (03:14):
And actually that's where the name Hannah Storm came from, too,
right right. They renamed you to Hannah Storm because the
storm's blown in by the sea at C one oh one.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Rock and Roll CE one oh one. Our station was
licensed in farm country. The studio itself was actually in
the middle of a pasture and there were so many
cows in the area that every night on my way
in from my ten pm to two am shift, I
had to show them away in order to get inside.
(03:46):
The station was a little concrete bunker under the shadow
of a transmitter tower. When the station went down occasionally
I had to crak it up by hand. And while
I loved sports.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
That wasn't what I was there.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I was the station's newest DJ, and that was the
headbanger era. I played def Leopard, Black Sabbath, The Scorpions,
Motley Crue, and Quiet.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Riot back to back to back.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Hannah's storin is my given name not very rock and
roll or, according to my boss, easy to remember, and
there were hardly any Hannah's at the time. It wasn't
a popular name. My boss wanted to change my name
on air to Anna Storm. I didn't want to totally
lose myself, so we reached a compromise.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I could keep my first name.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Thus Hannah Storm, the Storm by the Sea ce one
oh one. You get the idea, and it just stuck.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
I guess it's worked for me all these years.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Hi, everybody had a Storm back at Madison Square Gardal
on Rocket Central.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
My name is Hannah Storm.
Speaker 7 (04:56):
I'll be hosting me halftime and postgame shows for you.
I ran a Storm thirty six Sports.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
From the NBA and iHeart podcast This is NBA DNA
with Me Hannah Storm, Episode three, h Town. After six
months in Corpus Christy, I was still looking for sports
gigs and still answering one ads. This time I found
(05:24):
one in a publication called Radio and Records for a
drivetime sports announcer and weekend DJ at a major Houston
rock station, KSRR ninety seven Rock. I was tired of
getting rejection letters, so I changed up my tactics. I
drove to the radio station on my day off, camped
(05:45):
out in the lobby, and when the program director left
for lunch, I handed him my tape and resume. I
was pretty terrified, but it worked. About a week later
I got the job.
Speaker 8 (05:57):
That fuzzy sweater except from the eighties, Yes it is
from the eighties.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I would have massive I would have massive ear rings on.
If I was really really doing.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
Me too, mine would be dangling airplanes.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Ninety seven. Rock is where I met one of my
best friends, Judy Cohen.
Speaker 8 (06:14):
We were the only girls, I mean and I mean
girls because we were young. There were people in sales
and that kind of thing, but we were the cool ones.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
We really bonded because it was all dudes and you know,
rock and rollers and stuff, and then and then there
was you and I exactly barely out of college. So
we became friends, like really like kind of like sisters.
To be perfectly honest. Why do you think we hit
it off so quickly? Besides being completely outnumbered.
Speaker 8 (06:41):
I I just because our age and just we had
a lot of the same things. We liked, really really
bad fashion taste.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
There's that saying. The higher the hair, the closer to God. Yep,
that was the reality in Houston in nineteen eighty four.
And you know, everything's bigger in Texas. Big hair, big earrings,
big nails, big shoulder pads, and lots of leather. North
Beach Leather maybe there is the store called North Beach Leather.
Speaker 7 (07:14):
The shorter the better, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Shorter the better. Yeah, the glitter the so.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
North Beach Leather had like wild leather suits, leather dresses,
leather outfits. And we got them to give me my
clothes for that season and they were epic. It was like,
oh my god, mini skirts, big shoulder pads, all the fringe.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I mean, just think tells.
Speaker 8 (07:37):
Right, do you remember going to the grand opening of
the hard Rock Cafe. I do, so here's what I
remember with that number one Kenny Logins performed. If that
isn't just synonymous with the nineteen eighties right there, right,
Oh yeah, you and I will silver le may.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Of course we were silver lemet. I mean it was
either that it was either something shiny or leather, like
there were two food groups of clothing.
Speaker 8 (08:01):
I just remember it was like the craziest night because
it was like, oh my god, the.
Speaker 7 (08:04):
Hard rock Cafe came to Houston, Texas, and.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Right, I put us all the people ex all these
people were there, and then like sports people were there,
and you know, all the radio station people were there,
and we just walked in thinking we owned the joint.
And I guess we did sort of own the joint.
Ninety seven rock KSRR for kick Ass Rock and Roll
(08:29):
doesn't actually exist anymore, but in the early eighties it
was a Houston institution. I did sports reports in morning
and afternoon drive, and we hosted tons of events with
musicians and athletes. We were famous for our Friday beach
parties in Galveston, Texas, broadcasting live to huge crowds in
(08:51):
the summertime.
Speaker 8 (08:53):
Arnell Saint James was the disc jockey in the afternoon,
so it was his beach party, if you will, on
a Friday afternoon, and it was insane. People would line
the streets and to get into the beach to get
a free koozy, and they'd be throwing coozies everywhere, and
you and Colonel were signing the coozies in some unmentioned
(09:14):
areas of certain individual bubbles.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, we signed a lot of body parts, Yes you did.
People weren't wearing.
Speaker 7 (09:21):
Much Oh my gosh.
Speaker 8 (09:22):
But it was like we would go down in the
morning to set it up and we have the bands
down there, and just god, it was like hundreds and
hundreds and thousands of people all just crammed onto this beach.
Speaker 7 (09:33):
And they would just do anything to see you and Colonel.
Speaker 8 (09:36):
You would do your sports from there, and Colonel would like,
you know, play the music and whatever, and just the
Kozies and bumper stickers, Kozyven bumper stickers that we would
throw out, and it would be like every Friday in
the summer, every Friday.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
On a much smaller scale. I occasionally convinced the station
to send a band of one me to cover big
sporting events like the Final Four or the Super Bowl,
and Judy always tagged.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Along with me.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Back in the day, I would watch the games and
then call in live updates from a payphone.
Speaker 7 (10:14):
Well, you mentioned the Super Bowl.
Speaker 8 (10:16):
That's that's by far one of the best stories ever,
just because we've totally scammed our way into the game.
Speaker 7 (10:22):
I mean, you had two tickets. I don't even know
how you had those two tickets.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
From Warren Moon. Warren Moon gave me two tickets.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I remember, because like Warren Moon was like, okay, we
needed tickets. I mean sure, the radio station was like,
you could go cover the Super Bowl, but you'll have
credential or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, so I wasn't going to get credentialed. So yeah,
I got two tickets from Warren Moon.
Speaker 7 (10:48):
But then we grabbed two friends and we had four
of us, and.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
We're all from the radio stations.
Speaker 8 (10:52):
All from the radio says a year before you had
gone to New Orleans and you're like.
Speaker 7 (10:55):
Oh, it's so easy.
Speaker 8 (10:57):
You can just buy tickets right outside the stadium, everyone
selling their tickets.
Speaker 7 (11:01):
Well, I guess by the next year.
Speaker 8 (11:03):
When it was Super Bowl twenty one, nobody was selling
their tickets. It was at the Rose Bowl and we
were walking around and walking around. We gave our friends
Andrea and Jenny the tickets and they went in and
then they lost us.
Speaker 7 (11:15):
Okay, we had no tickets.
Speaker 8 (11:17):
We had no tickets, so we were trying to buy
tickets and we see these two guys and we're like, hey,
we gave our friends our tickets and they were supposed
to like pass them through the fence to us.
Speaker 7 (11:27):
We can't find them. Can you think you can do that?
So we can just get in and they're like.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Sure, I know.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
They literally passed their use their tickets that had been torn.
That's what they did back in the day. They tore
the tickets through the fence and.
Speaker 7 (11:40):
Said, please make sure you get them back to us.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Somehow, how did we get in with a torn ticket?
Speaker 7 (11:45):
So we talked our way in. Who knows?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
I mean, isn't that funny?
Speaker 7 (11:49):
And then we never found them.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
If those guys are listening, Judy still has your tickets.
And soon I had multiple jobs, finally getting on television
by writing and reading the local sports calendar every Thursday
on Home Sports Entertainment with Rockets announcer Bill Worrell. That
morphed into a gig at Channel twenty, which had the
(12:14):
rights to both the Rockets and the Astros road telecasts.
I hosted pregame, halftime and postgame in addition to my
radio shows.
Speaker 7 (12:24):
I'm in the Rockets Central. My name is Hannah Storm.
I'll be hosting the halftime and postgame shows for you
at the half elemisade.
Speaker 9 (12:30):
Hey we got history, man, remember our halftime shows back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Dale Robertson is a legendary sports writer in Houston who
also happened to be my studio analyst. Why don't you
tell people about our famous halftime shows, Dale, Well.
Speaker 9 (12:46):
I'm not exactly sure how I ended up on them,
but it was flattered to be there with you. You
were you were still show we saying your formative period
as a broadcaster.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
John Lucas had sixteen points leading Houston a chem olaje
one with fourteen.
Speaker 10 (12:59):
Lewis Floyd had to We had fun.
Speaker 9 (13:00):
We did all the all the road games, or at
least most of the road games. As I recall, this
was the probably mid late eighties.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Here's Judy again.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
What do you remember about the Houston Rockets and covering
the Rockets back in those days?
Speaker 7 (13:13):
Well, person of all the Robert Reid Show.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
How could we forget the Robert Reid Show. So he
was obviously a member.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Of the Houston Rockets the team this year and.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Somebody had decided to produce a show like a talk
show with him in.
Speaker 7 (13:27):
A bar off the Interstate ten.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Off of I ten, I mean, and it was a club.
Speaker 8 (13:34):
Yeah, it was one of those just cheesy places that
you knew nothing good was happening, but it was really CD.
Speaker 7 (13:44):
But it was awesome because there you were, and you
were just.
Speaker 8 (13:48):
I knew then that you would not be doing the
am PM radio sports thing for much longer because you
were so in your element.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
It was just so awesome to watch.
Speaker 8 (14:00):
You know, you started getting gaining a lot of respect,
not just from your bosses, but from like the players
and stuff. Because you would hang out at the summit
where the Rockets played, and that was always fun to
tag along with you to go to go like see
all these different people or whatever. But you were never
phased by it. You were never phased by it was
always just you were in your element.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
It's funny because I also really didn't love going in
the locker room. You know, it was pretty overwhelming. I mean,
here you are. You know, you're a young woman, you're Yeah.
There was a wonderful woman, Emanina Martini, who had been
in Houston for a long time.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
It was really cool, so she was there. She was
like the og.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
But really I was like vastly, vastly outnumbered, and you
know I got it like a lot of pushback and
like even like in the press box. You know, just
as a female, you're just you just stick out like
a sore thumb.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
A lot of people aren't necessarily thrilled with.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
You being there, and you know, then you kind of
multiply that you go out on locker or like a
huge football locker room or whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So I never went in the locker room.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah, I would stand outside the locker room with my
little microphone. Yes, my taper corner, my corner exactly players as.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
They were leaving to do an interview.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
The cool thing is you got a lot of one
on one interviews that way. I still carry the torch
for Houston because to me, h Town has one of
the best fan bases in America, not just because of
(15:35):
Houston's successes but also all those years of near missus
that left their fans starving for a title.
Speaker 9 (15:44):
In the early nineteen seventies, it was almost a nobody
town because all of our teams were drefful. The Oilers
were in the middle of having back to back one
in thirteen seasons. The Astros were ten years into their
history and had not even had a winning season yet.
And then, of course here were the Rockets. And I'm
going to say that first team in seventy one seventy
who probably finished fifteen sixteen games under five.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Hundred Rockets legend Rudy tom Jonovitch, who would later coach
the team, was a power forward at the time, basket and.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
They need one.
Speaker 9 (16:13):
Now, I'm Janet's put it up out a hook.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
And he moved with the Rockets from San Diego to Houston.
Speaker 6 (16:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
I was in my apartment ready to leave, and a
bulletin came on and it said, the San Diego Rockets
have been sold to a group of people in Houston, Texas.
You know, we came to town and we found out that
basketball wasn't a big deal.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
It was a football state.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
They had us out at a mall one day, meet
a couple of players, and they have a banner, Meet
the Houston Rockets, and nobody recognizes us because we're brand new.
We don't get to sign autographs. Finally, elderly lady comes
up and says, oh my god, I loved you guys.
How do you fit in those spaceships? She thought we
(17:07):
were with mass up. We said, no, we're with the
basketball team.
Speaker 6 (17:10):
See. Oh god, you know.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
That is hilarious. Oh my gosh. So what were those like?
What was that first season? Blake?
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I mean, what do you remember? You said Houston was
a football town. So were people showing up.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
What was it like.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Yeah, we had text Winner as our coach, and tex
wound up getting in the Hall of Pain and did
so many wonderful things with the triangle offense. However, he
was a college coach. He needed to make some adjustments.
So we started the season two and eighteen, two wins
(17:54):
and eighteen losses, and we were blessed because one of
those ris the refereemade a mistake on a goldtending and
called it the wrong one.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
We got to win the.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
Game, but you know, we battled that and you know, I.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
Think we run thirty games after that horrible start.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
By the time I got to Houston, the team had
turned a corner.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
You know.
Speaker 11 (18:21):
The first years were tough. I can remember. You know,
the revenues were not great. We had several owners who
went bankrupt because there were other businesses that did well.
I mean, Houston was a boom bust, oil wildcatting kind
of a town. I remember one time we almost couldn't
make payroll. My father was talking to the Knicks about
selling Rudy Tom Jonathan's contract to the next to keep
(18:43):
the franchise afloat.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
That's Steve Patterson.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
When we met in nineteen eighty four, he was working
his way up the ranks of the Rockets front office.
Like me, Steve grew up in basketball. His dad, Ray Patterson,
was president of the Rockets at the time and the
original president of the Milwaukee Bucks, A big pleasure shot.
Speaker 10 (19:09):
Again, I can't believe.
Speaker 11 (19:11):
He was investing in the team. And he was running
a prep school called Whale Academy in Wisconsin at the time,
and both he and the school invested in the Bucks
because they were going public and al maguire was supposed
to be the coach at GM. He was the head
coach at Marquette University for a successful college coach, and
at the last minute, the night before they were getting
a public the school wouldn't let him out of his contract.
(19:33):
So the guys on the board looked around and said, well,
there's only one guy here knows anything about basketball, Ray,
will you do it for a year, because yeah, I'll
come do it for a year. And so he kept
both jobs actually for two years.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
It's crazy.
Speaker 11 (19:46):
Yeah, he was headmaster of the school and ran the
Bucks for two years.
Speaker 7 (19:50):
Let's go to the pip off right now.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That's so crazy because at the time my dad was
with the ABA, and they tried really really hard to
get Louel Cinder to come to the ABA. It was
kind of a battle between the two leagues, but he
ended up in Milwaukee.
Speaker 12 (20:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (20:08):
I mean both teams actually were putting up money to
get him to each league, and it was actually really interesting.
I think it showed some of Kareem's character because what
he told both teams both leagues was make me your
best offer.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
There's some kind of crazy rumor that George Mike and
had a million dollars in his pocket, but he was
so convinced that that Korea was coming to the ABA
that he never gave it to him.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
I'm pretty sure. I don't know if that's true or not.
Speaker 11 (20:33):
It was the first million dollar contract over forty years now,
of course it's not.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
And it's so crazy.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Would you think how far the game has come that
your dad was actually running a prep school and the
Milwaukee Bucks at the same time.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
I mean, that blows my mind right there.
Speaker 11 (20:49):
Yeah, I think there was always like seven or eight
people in the front office. The marketing campaign was seen.
The Bucks for a buck tells you a little bit
about pricing its versus today.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Steve's dad, Big Ray did not mess around after drafting
Leuel Cinder in nineteen sixty nine. He traded for Oscar
Robertson in nineteen seventy. Milwaukee won its first title in
nineteen seventy one, and Ray left the next year to
lead the Rockets in Houston. When did folks start to
(21:24):
kind of warm up to the Rockets and warm up
to the basketball scene?
Speaker 6 (21:29):
Well, we made it to the playoffs. Finally.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
We were playing the mix and very close contest and
we weren't really experienced in that kind of competition, and
we lost our close game and our fans went crazy.
We didn't really get good till Bell Harris came in
and we actually wound up going to the finals with
(21:56):
a losing record.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
What was that playoff like?
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Again, you guys just just scooted in there at the
very last second end of the playoff picture. But then
you kept winning as time went on. So kind of
take me through that magical postseason.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
Yeah, it was very interesting.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
I was on the team, but I had gotten hurt,
and Del Harris went with Billy faults and Moses three.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Seconds on the shot clock too, Billy cluckt Bell There's
more again.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
Alone and then Calvin and Mike Dunlevy. We would change
the pace on people, grind it out. You know, we
had to beat La to get out of the West.
And you know that was magic when he was here.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Awhile he's opening, Magic blocked it beautifully.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
And just remember seeing how uncomfortable they were. They couldn't
get into showtime because we slowed it down so much
and we had two big guys protecting the basket.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
The eighty eighty one Rockets team was stacked. They were
led by Hall of Fame center Moses Malone, part of
a monolithic starting five known league wide as the water Buffalo's.
Speaker 11 (23:17):
No, I mean they were not an actual bunch. Mike
Nolan and Calvin Murphy in the back court and see
Jack Maarn you know, a couple of other big LUNs.
That was a different game those days. You can smack people.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
You can't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, that was a whole different kind of basketball back
in the day. And then the Rockets went to the
NBA Finals in eighty one.
Speaker 11 (23:42):
Yeah, a sub forty two and we snuck in on
the last.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Day and then had this crazy run and made it
all the way to play the Celtics for the championship.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
What do you remember about that?
Speaker 11 (23:54):
Moses just put the team on his back.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I was just Malone now with fourteen twenty eight point.
Speaker 11 (24:02):
What a phenomenal player. People sort of don't remember how
Grady was. I mean, that guy could go for thirty
and twenty every night. And you know, we had some
young guys like Robert Reed and who hit Rudy and
Mike Nolan and Murph and you know, it was a
lot of fun. The summit was rocking, and you know,
the community then really started to kind of wake up
and embrace the team as we went into the eighties.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
From there, that eighty eighty one Rockets squad lost to
the Celtics and a young Larry Bird in six games.
Speaker 10 (24:35):
Great three points hung by Larry Bird.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
The Rockets came back and had another good run the
next season, making the eighty one eighty two Western Conference Finals,
but they couldn't afford to keep Moses Malone, so they
sent him to the Philadelphia seventy six ers for a
few first round draft picks, one of which was used
to acquire Hall of Famer Ralph Sampson.
Speaker 10 (25:00):
Sampson double team on him the seventh.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Foot three or whatever Ralph's arrival in Houston marked a
new era. He was, as they say, a unicorn, the
prototype for a guy like the Spurs, Victor Wibanyana, the grass.
Speaker 10 (25:19):
Ralph crap fund with a great morven.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
What was it that the organization saw in Ralph to
make him the number one pick?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Was it pretty obvious?
Speaker 6 (25:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 11 (25:27):
I mean completely obvious. He was seven for he could
play point guard, extremely talented, very athletic, hard work.
Speaker 6 (25:35):
They're very professional Ralph Sampson. You know, we knew where
we're taken him.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
He was a super versatile player, had a great touch,
could play with his back to the basket. He was
so tall and almost was a disadvantage, especially in driving
the sexuastings he could be, but he was a un protector.
Speaker 6 (26:04):
He was a phenomenal player.
Speaker 10 (26:05):
Right and he dumps at home and Shapson with his
first bucket.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Ralph was soft spoken and serious. He majored in rhetoric
at the University of Virginia, where he was a three
time National Player of the Year. Ralph led the Who's
to the nineteen eighty NIT Championship, the nineteen eighty one
Final four, and big regular season victories over the Likes
of North Carolina's Michael Jordan and Georgetown's Patrick Ewing. You
(26:33):
were such an unusual player right at seven four, but
with interior and perimeter skills. Kind of take us back
to how your game developed as a big man back
in the day.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
Rightly, I didn't like basketball when I was growing up.
I played baseball, and I was really good baseball player
a pitch. I played basketball, But basketball at an early
age was you can only score sixteen points a game,
and I had sixteen points in the first five minutes.
Speaker 12 (26:59):
It's crazy. By the way, evolved from.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
That to high school, and my high school coach let
me play at any position I wanted to if I
practice it.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Oh wow.
Speaker 12 (27:10):
So six seven in ninth grade, I was getting beat up.
I was probably one hundred pounds, soak and what.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
So he was very innovative and got to a wave
room at that stage, which no one said that weights would.
Speaker 12 (27:20):
Mess your jump shot up or mess you dow up. Right,
So that was kind of there.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
But he was innovative and he led me in practice
practice every day against the fastest guard that we had.
But it started with him making me do that in practice.
That evolved at an early age from high school to
Collage College to the NBA.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
So you were running the floor like on a regular
basis and practice against the guards.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Oh, absolutely, that's wild guarding and driveling. He would have
double teem me.
Speaker 12 (27:47):
As well, because I would literally get frustrated because there
was a boxing on or his own and I couldn't
get the ball.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Everybody was somebody in front of me, somebody behind me,
So I can never get the ball only when the rebound.
I gets frustrated. I'd grow up and not turned over.
And he was left handed, he would stop his foot.
He called me stick. He said, stick, you can't do that.
You're gonna turn the ball over. So he said he's
gonna do it at a game regardless. So he put
me in practice and the rest of history after that.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
By the time he was a senior in high school,
Ralph was the most sought after recruit in the country.
After his first season at UVA, he was being courted
by the pros.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
So imagine read our back and mister Fitzgerald, the owner
of the Celtics, came knocked on my parents' door with
a brew caase that only had a million dollars in
and so I say, all these one hundred dollars buildings.
Speaker 12 (28:34):
I always have my parents, are we okay?
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Every year that I had the opportunity to come out
of school, I would go back and say.
Speaker 12 (28:39):
Are you all right?
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Do we need anything or et cetera, And my dad
would say, my mom would say, and we worked all
these years. You know, is your decision. We don't read
anything because we have everything we want. And so with
that in mind, I didn't need to come out. I
just need to develop my game work.
Speaker 9 (28:54):
Houston Rockets select Ralph Sampson University every.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
D So you get drafted by the Houston Rockets. What
kind of situation do you walk into there in Houston?
And what was Houston like as a basketball town at
the time.
Speaker 12 (29:10):
Houston was massive?
Speaker 4 (29:11):
And then the biggest thing there that I remember, mcclorey,
is that I've gotten drafted. Well, we moved from New
York on two private little jets. We get there, we
land and we go to the inn to bring us
packed with people in the summit. So that was like
a special moment for me that oh, this is real
right and now we are coming to really be the
Ilmark guys on the team that's going to hope We
(29:32):
get this to another level.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Ralph's rookie year nineteen eighty three eighty four, he averaged
twenty one points, eleven rebounds, and two blocks a game
and earned Rookie of the Year and All Star honors.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
The team was bad, though.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
The Rockets lucked into the first pick again. They had
a twenty and fifty three record and then won the
draft lottery coin flip.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Here's Steve Patterson.
Speaker 11 (30:00):
For some strange reason, my father got accused of tanking
the year, which was totally the truth, because we had Elijah,
we had a keem Olijah. I played right there in
town at the University of Houston. So like Elvin Hayes,
came back to the team after his after playing in
(30:22):
Washington win in the championship there, and I think he
was about, I don't know, sixty eight years older some
of this time. The last game of the year, so
that we could lose, they played him fifty minutes, including overtime. No, oh,
my gosh, I was so tired he couldn't hardly move.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
The Houston Rockets select a team Elijahwan of the.
Speaker 12 (30:46):
University of Houston.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
It is a pushole, no well attired a team.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Elijah won and started playing basketball just five years ago
from Nigeria.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Is now the number one Vick does not have to
go too far from the university.
Speaker 11 (31:02):
People would say, well, you should take in Jordan or
somebody else. You could not not take Alajuan with the
first pick of the draft. You know, Ray and the
rest of us would have been to run out of
town and rare.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Then the Rockets did something which really could have been
considered unconventional at the time. You already have Ralph Samson
and then you draft a kiem Olajuan. Yeah, obviously a
kim Olajuan was a huge local favorite. You know, University
of Houston Star already formed and you're sitting right there
(31:34):
with the number one pick. Nonetheless, you know, not everybody
would put two guys that size on the floor at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
So what was the thinking there?
Speaker 11 (31:43):
He really was to do something very different. Two great talents.
Ralph liked to play away from the basket a bit,
and Alajuan was great down on the block and uh,
you know, great shot blockers. The guys that played with
them used to laugh and say, yeah, go on, go on,
gown down the lane and see what happens, right, Because
the ball's coming back out to me and I'm going
to have a fast break and square at the other end.
(32:06):
And it really for a while changed how the league played.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
You know.
Speaker 11 (32:10):
The Celtics were built that way with with with Biggs,
with Parrish and McHale and Walton. The Knicks tried to
do that with Cartwright Ewing, you know, so people tried
to emulate it. It just made you so tough on defense.
People couldn't get to the rim. What a shot that
was under total control at eighteen for a key.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
A Keeme the dream was already a legend in Houston.
He and Clyde Drexler, who would later join him on
the Rockets, led the University of Houston to three consecutive
final fours, the famed five Slama Jama. Can you describe
for people, you know, what had happened obviously at the
(32:54):
University of Houston with Fi Slama Jama and how big
a deal it was to keep a cam olajuwon in Houston.
Speaker 11 (33:05):
Yeah, I mean he had a great career there, played
with Drexler and Larry Nishah and Rob Williams and a
bunch of guys that played in the NBA. Very successful
collegiate team. You know, wound up losing a national championship
game at a blue air ball shot that got the
back in. But that was so huge that they called
him the fly by slam a jan elect fraternity.
Speaker 10 (33:37):
The team doubled quickly by bird minds away. That was
just amazing.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
It was easy to root for a team.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
He immigrated to the United States from Nigeria as a
college student. He was a devout Muslim, a gentle soul
in many ways, but extremely competitive and insanely talented.
Speaker 10 (34:00):
Guys turn around mold. Is he quick for a big man, Well,
he's got that quick drop strips.
Speaker 11 (34:06):
Are a great shot blocker, Defensive player of the year
a number of times. I was on the All Defensive team,
great scorer down the block. Played soccer as a kid,
so its foot forth was real different. It's kind of
interesting to watch him that way. You know, just continue
to grow as a player a year after year of
the year, playing at Bondi Rep, playing against Moses Malone
every day, really learned the craft and you know, became
(34:29):
one of the all time greats.
Speaker 13 (34:31):
Inside to Elijah On he thanks looking's up, Sampson copses
inside of.
Speaker 10 (34:37):
The fast in the count in East Fouler.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
The Twin Towers of Texas now a team, and Ralph
two seven footers.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
They quickly became known as the Twin Towers.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
You're there's a big man and then they draft a
Keem Olajahwan and all of a sudden, the Twin Towers
are born.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
But that kind of changes everything.
Speaker 12 (34:56):
What was that like, bro Tom? So you know, think
of about Patrick.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
You ain't going to the Knicks, Kareem in Latworthy in
La Magic and l A Burning in Boston.
Speaker 12 (35:07):
So the n BEING is a big business and so
you know you got to get the players in the
right right position to develop it. And back then the
NBA was struggling a little bit in their late seventies
just to make sure it worked. So whoever made those
draft picks or whoever behind pushing no buttons did a
really good thing within the structure of the NBA. Well,
for me, they came to me and said we're going
to draft the team and create this Twin Tower thing.
(35:28):
They showed me pictures that I said, cool, I can
go and not be in the post and get beat up.
But I thought that when I saw him play in
Houston and going to the Final four, and to see
him play, he was very raw. Uh you know, the
dream shake and all that wasn't created at that point
in time. It became one of those things. Well, okay,
we could get him in. And then Moses Belone sent
me down and said, you know, he can be really good.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
Because Mody was really taught the team early on, and
so I respect him all this because the Virginia we
had that kind of camaraderie. So I cherished the idea
of them drafting me and creating the Twin Towts because
some of the different in the league to seven fo
the de could play. So I cherished it and I
took it as something special.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
The Twin Towers had a strong supporting cast, Rodney McCrae,
Robert Reid, Lewis Lloyd John Lucas the point guard, the
piece that made the other pieces fit, but the team
lost Lucas at mid season, sending him to rehab to
fight a cocaine addiction. With no true point guard, the
team ran their offense through Reid. After winning the Midwest
(36:36):
Division with a fifty one and thirty one record, they
bulldozed their way to the Western Conference Finals against Magic
and Kareem's Lakers, the Magic.
Speaker 10 (36:46):
Man, what's going and one man really can't stop him her.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
After dropping Game one, the Rockets reeled off three straight wins.
Game five looked like it might go the other way
when a Keem Olajahwan was ejected for fighting after being
baited by Mitch Kupchak.
Speaker 11 (37:12):
Cupcheck figured out how to get in a fight with
so they both got tossed. So teams in the locker
room with Rudy and yeah, one second left, I think
it was Byron's guy had missed a shot and we
rebound in a second. We tossed it in and Ralph
and I was like, he's really gonna have to ticklar
Ver size. But you know, in practice, he used to
(37:34):
play games just like you know, like playing horse and
make funny shots. And there was one play that Denver
had and they used to be in the series before
where they throw the ball into Rascus and at at
that at the foot goal line and he turns and
shoots quickly. So Ralph has sort of imitated that in practice.
And so yeah, ball gets logged in quickly because we
(37:56):
didn't want the Lakers to get their defense set and
thrown it in a rout in the air, turns and
throws it up and it bounces around and Wiggans almost
touches it. You could see it pulls at.
Speaker 10 (38:06):
The hand one second on the clock, and it.
Speaker 11 (38:17):
Bounces around and falls in and we knock off the
Lakers in Game five.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
I was there covering it, like for my radio station
for some reason. I don't even know why they sent
me all.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
The way to do that, but they did.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
And that was my first experience being in an arena
where it's just totally silent, you know where you see
that huge, huge shot. The complete silence in the LA
Forum at the time was absolutely stunning.
Speaker 12 (38:51):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
It was a really cool moment. Can you just describe
the scene in Houston? I mean, Houston just I mean
went insane. Can you kind of describe what it was
like like after you guys beat the Lakers and before
you went to the finals, just sort of the reaction
of the town.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
Well, I started in the forum, You're like, okay, we
got to go back, and you know, all the PREPLU
dudes and everybody's like, okay, great, We're going back to
the finals, et cetera. So when we land, it was
just crazy. We go to the Summit and we got
fans all over the place and interviews and any restaurant
you want to go to, and we had to really
focus on what we had to do. We could enjoy
it for a couple of days, but Bill fish Out
(39:28):
has repurpated very quickly because he knew what we was
up against in Boston with the Boston Celtic and the fans.
Speaker 12 (39:34):
As well, so he had prepared us really really well
for that.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
After the Celtics grabbed a commanding three to one lead,
the Rockets faced elimination at the Summit in Houston, the
game intensity was at a fever pitch.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Well you know they were. They were, uh, because they
beat us the first two games. And I come back
to Houston, I said.
Speaker 12 (39:55):
My motto was, if you're gonna beat it, but you're
not gonna beat us on our own court.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Now, you had the kind of infamous moment. I was
there in the summit. You and Jerry Shesting got into
it and that is your love. Now what do you
remember about that? In Counting Sea Stinging.
Speaker 10 (40:13):
Sens it And now Dennis Judson and know Meylee is
broken out here a meleeus broken out the Ventures of
Empty then they have brought police onto the floor.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
I was having a pretty good first quarter because I
was greater play this, that other and lovely Danny Ainge
and Jerry would come around to pick. After I'm sitting
down on Robert or somebody to get open. They would
hit me in first is that you don't want to know,
and so I'm like, okay, great, if you do this
one more town. I was hyped up and greater play.
I probably had fifteen point seven rebounds subsists in the
(40:45):
first quarter. No remember all the details, but once it
broke out, it just took their level. After one more hit,
like okay, rid of me for you, and then my
emotions got carried away and then we went to fighting
to another. But the most reable part about that I
looked up and my two sisters were on the edge
of the court.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Here's Steve Patterson.
Speaker 13 (41:03):
The Celtics had a thing they did where they would
take seas things and he would pick whoever the free
throw shooter was. As they were going back down, Ralph
felt that Jerry submarine and tried to hurt it. And
it's this kind of insane fight right in front of
me because I'm sitting courtside, and it was a dirty
play in our view, and they had done it over
(41:26):
and over and over again repeatedly, and so you know,
it got out of hand.
Speaker 11 (41:30):
And I really thought the referee should have called something sooner.
I remember turning around and screaming at David Stern. I
had to go up and apologize to him a week later.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Wait, what did you scream at him? What did you say?
Speaker 11 (41:44):
This is your effing fault, David, because you won't referee,
they won't take care of the state.
Speaker 10 (41:51):
But yeah, that was not very good at the bottom
of the pile.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
What can I be honest?
Speaker 1 (41:55):
It was out of control. It was completely out of control.
I mean, people were scattering away from the court like
it was.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
It was wild.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
And then the Rockets had to go up to Boston,
and I remember the Boston newspapers. It was like headline news.
It was Jerry Shesting versus Ralph Sampson and Ralph's a
bully and they're like quoting like Jerry Shesting's mom. It
was I mean it really it really provided a lot
(42:23):
of fodder for the Rockets as as villains.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
So you walk into the arena and out there. So
they have this mummy or stuff, the animal or stuff
whatever it was person and it was number fifty on
it and it was like hanging on the noose over
the manner.
Speaker 6 (42:42):
Oh wow.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
And Cedric, we talked about it all the time. I
said back in the nay they did that. They had
they home me over the news for that, and that's
a bitch of it somewhere a lot. You had to
be very careful in Boston at that point in time
because something could happen bad. And then when they was
winning and re root it was when they built Fish
called time out, which is raised good on his part,
right cause I got all the starters in the locker
(43:03):
room because he knew they was from the court.
Speaker 12 (43:05):
When when we are in the locker room and we
got so the memorians there was traded. But he knew
what he needed to do.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
At that point, Job Cup, we've probably have been fighting
or so I might have been fighting on the court
or something like that going on.
Speaker 12 (43:17):
You know, command Bill Fish for that noise because we
didn't know what was going to happen.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
The Boston fans were all over Ralph in Game six
and the Celtics won one fourteen to ninety seven Boston
Celtics will have.
Speaker 10 (43:30):
Won their forty first.
Speaker 11 (43:31):
Right hole game.
Speaker 6 (43:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (43:34):
It was a great young, up and coming team and
we lost to the Celtics in eighty six. They had everybody.
It would have been, Yeah, I think a different series
and you know, would have been a different decade.
Speaker 6 (43:46):
Really.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
The next year was devastating really for the franchise. Here
you are coming off the finals and the entire backcourt
gets busted for drugs. I remember as I was working
at Channel twenty at the time and the news came
down and it was just this complete disbelief because it
(44:10):
wasn't just one player, it was the top three guards
on the team.
Speaker 11 (44:15):
Yeah, we had lost Lucas Ewan in a rehab. Mitchell
Wiggans Lewis Light were different. Lewis Light always shut up
for practice, always showed up for the plane, always showed
up for the bus, never had an issue. And Wiggins,
after his first year as a rookie, he was the
same way. The league had had issues with players and
(44:36):
using drugs, particularly too much coke. They decided they wanted
to crack down with Mitch and Lou. They were the
first guys that really got tagged by the league, and
I think they were treated differently than the Orlando Origins
or others who came later, who were confronted and allowed
(44:57):
to turn themselves in and could go through having come back,
versus being confronted with the proposition of you to take
the test. If you pass it, you're okay to flunk,
your out for life, and if you don't take the test,
you're out for life.
Speaker 6 (45:10):
You know.
Speaker 11 (45:10):
So there were many in the organization that felt that
wasn't fair, and I shared that position. I do think
it sent the message to the rest of the players
in the league. But Wiggins wanted to turn himself in,
the league would let. I was there in room with them.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Samson and Akeem were so good that even missing their
entire backcourt, the Rockets remained contenders. But in February, Ralph
seriously injured his knee. Correct me if I'm wrong, but
I believe you were supposed to be out six weeks, right,
but you kind of rushed back because you wanted to
be back for your team for the playoffs. Take me
(45:50):
through that decision and what the implications of that decision were.
Speaker 12 (45:55):
I had a really bad fall in Boston at a
regular sevening game and on my left hip. I went
to UVA and took treatment at that point in time
because I wanted to get back. I felt they were
the best that I knew and trusted at that point
in time.
Speaker 4 (46:09):
So it came back early from that, and I think,
I don't think my leg had ever bounced back totally.
Speaker 12 (46:15):
And so we played.
Speaker 4 (46:15):
We played with play and I'm guarding Bill Hanslick. I
remembered the whole scenario right, and he's trying to go
back door and twisted my leg and I hear a pop,
and then I go into the locker room. I had
a bucket handled tear on my meniscus. If I'd known
what I know now, I would stayed out the whole year.
I would have just arrested the whole year. I wouldn't
never came back. But I thought we could get back
to the finals again, and you want to play, and
(46:38):
back in the day, there was no sitting out games
and load management to another that right he was gonna play.
One doctor wanted to throw it back together, but they
didn't have the technology of the day to sew it
back together.
Speaker 12 (46:48):
So it would rejuvenate itself.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
So he just took it out, so it became bone
on bone, and you know, me, I'm jumping and running
with my thing and still beating that meniscus to death.
And then fragments come off lodging, so you gotta have
multiple operations. So it just had trajectory now held you
on the top of the world right at that point
in time, and then all of a sudden Andrew takes
you out, which is a nature of the beast of
the game, no matter who you play or who you are.
(47:10):
But today's technology's totally different.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
The Rockets finished third in the Midwest that year, going
forty two and twenty. They made it to the semifinals
where they ran into the Seattle SuperSonics, losing in sixth.
Speaker 6 (47:25):
They had more.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
Yeah, we thought we had a new piece of people.
We felt that we had the opportunity to get back.
All we needed was a point guard.
Speaker 12 (47:32):
But we could not get that point guard that we
needed to momniscus, and we had some injuries. We had
the megans of a great team.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
We just never care it together, and I think that
franchise didn't keep it together for whatever reason they did
or didn't.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Steve Patterson took over as GM around that time. He
traded Ralph to Golden State about twenty games into the
eighty seven eighty eight season, closing the book on the
Twin Towers era.
Speaker 11 (47:57):
He made a choice on knee surgery to go have
his cartilage taken out instead of sewing back together. But
you know, taking that partilage out in the way his
knees were formed just caused a really rapid decline of
his career after that. It's really unfortunate because you look
at him in college and the first couple of years
(48:19):
before he got injured. I mean he was, you know,
all Rookie, All NBA All Star Team, you know, all
all the awards. He would have had a career if
you stay healthy.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
By nineteen ninety one, Ralph was out of basketball completely,
but leaving a legacy which earned him enshrinement into the
National Basketball Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4 (48:40):
Been watching this thing on TV every year with all
the grace that played his game and words Kate really describe.
Speaker 12 (48:47):
How I feel.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Do you have a favorite memory of playing with the
Rockets or what would you consider the high point of
that era?
Speaker 4 (48:56):
I mean, they are the great great games that we
played in for sure, are and you know when me
and King would see how to eye and we said, okay,
big Feller, let's go and me he was ready to play.
Speaker 12 (49:06):
I was ready to play. We said, okay, what door
were we running this team out of Tampa?
Speaker 10 (49:09):
Down the middle, tam on bank, no good.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
We bought us off Matt we wanted but to take
aim by Elijah wants.
Speaker 12 (49:15):
So we had that calaraderie.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
We had the col roder when we played Kareem so
came Wuld playing underneath and I always thought to boy
at shot owed with a top.
Speaker 12 (49:21):
But we had a great one two combination that is
still special for me today. And show him as well.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
I mean, you're such a smart and thoughtful person.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
How have you kind of come to terms with the
fact that you know, it's really injuries really shortens you know,
what you might have been able to do in the NBA.
Speaker 12 (49:42):
Yeah, I mean I've had those my first couple of years.
Hours of the NBA.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
I think, Okay, wish I could have done this, I
could have stayed longer, played longer, et cetera, et cetera.
Didn You like realize it's the nature of the beast
and what can you do after the fact you know,
what can you do now? Because you can't go back
and change anything. You would if you could, when you can.
Speaker 12 (50:00):
And changing things.
Speaker 4 (50:00):
So having the ability to have friends like Robert Bard
that's stayed there for many many years, became general, married
Rudy t and the crew that you build our relationship
with have become very special.
Speaker 12 (50:10):
That's what you focus on at de foid job. You
have no other choice but to figure it out.
Speaker 4 (50:14):
And so I take all that with a great assault,
and I use the same work ethic and business now
that I had when I played to try to be
the best that can be.
Speaker 12 (50:22):
After the career of World overay.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
As for me, my time in Houston was wrapping up too.
I still wanted a full time TV sports job, and
even though I loved Houston, I kept applying to openings
all over the country, finally getting an opportunity to cover
an expansion franchise in a new city.
Speaker 7 (50:43):
That NBA feeling is coming to Shaw and it's nice
to have our own team on the floor.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
Next time. On NBA DNA, we were like, what what
are we in for?
Speaker 10 (50:57):
The scoreboard crashes before even sipping.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Cover NBA DNA with Hannah Storm is a production of
iHeart Podcasts, the NBA, and Brainstorm and Productions. The show
(51:23):
is written and executive produced by me Hannah Storm along
with Julia Weaver and Alex French. Our lead producer and
showrunner is Julia Weaver. Our senior producers are Peter Kouder,
Alex French, and Brandon Reese. Editing and sound design by
Kurt Garren and Julia Weaver. The show's executive producers are
(51:44):
Carmen Belmont, Jason English, Sean ty Tone, Steve Weintraup, and
Jason Weikelt.
Whether Even before I stepped foot on campus at the
University of Notre Dame, I knew I wanted to work
in sports broadcasting. My dad, Mike Storn, made a career
in sports management, and I spent my childhood surrounded by players,
(00:24):
geames in the business.
Speaker 2 (00:28):
So Annahlin grew up in an atmosphere of professional sports,
and that was simply a way of life. As she
went to college, she said that she wanted to be
a broadcast major, and her father, not unused to giving advice, said, oh, no,
you don't want to go into broadcasting, you need to
(00:49):
major in something else. So she doubled major, one for herself,
and she got one for me, and began her sports
career not as a fan, but as a on air
entertainer in our own right.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
I had a double major in international government and broadcasting.
While at Notre Dame, I got as much experience as possible,
hosting a sports talk radio show, DJing at our campus
radio station, and doing reports for our local South Bend
TV station. In the summers, I interned at both TBS
and a Houston TV station. By the time I graduated,
(01:30):
I actually had a TV reel that reflected all that
hard work. But there was just one problem. It was
nineteen eighty three and sports broadcasting jobs just didn't exist
for women, save for one or two that appeared on
NFL telecasts. After disappointing seasons in Dallas and New York,
(01:52):
the Denver quarterback seems kind of revitalized with the broad
gos having grown up around sports. I knew it would
be a lot more fun than, say, covering city council meetings.
I was determined. I answered all the want ads in
the back of broadcasting magazine, typing letters, and mailing my
tapes to TV stations around the country, hundreds of them.
(02:15):
I set aside the rejection letters that flooded my mailbox,
and I managed to get a handful of interviews, but
they inevitably led to more rejection. I was barely twenty
one living at home this summer after graduation. My dad
and I used to go jogging together and we would
talk about my job search.
Speaker 3 (02:34):
On a run. One day, he reminded me that it
takes just one person to say yes, and he pointed
out that mathematically, there were more radio stations in the
country than TV stations, so why not try that. I
wrote and recorded some radio tracks for sportscasting and for DJing,
which I sent to stations around the country and that worked.
(02:58):
I got my first job at a.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Heavy metal radio station in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Speaker 4 (03:04):
We rock because you rock C one oh one Rocks.
Speaker 5 (03:10):
CE one o one Baby Yeah.
Speaker 6 (03:14):
And actually that's where the name Hannah Storm came from, too,
right right. They renamed you to Hannah Storm because the
storm's blown in by the sea at C one oh one.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
Rock and Roll CE one oh one. Our station was
licensed in farm country. The studio itself was actually in
the middle of a pasture and there were so many
cows in the area that every night on my way
in from my ten pm to two am shift, I
had to show them away in order to get inside.
(03:46):
The station was a little concrete bunker under the shadow
of a transmitter tower. When the station went down occasionally
I had to crak it up by hand. And while
I loved sports.
Speaker 3 (03:58):
That wasn't what I was there.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
I was the station's newest DJ, and that was the
headbanger era. I played def Leopard, Black Sabbath, The Scorpions,
Motley Crue, and Quiet.
Speaker 3 (04:10):
Riot back to back to back.
Speaker 1 (04:14):
Hannah's storin is my given name not very rock and
roll or, according to my boss, easy to remember, and
there were hardly any Hannah's at the time. It wasn't
a popular name. My boss wanted to change my name
on air to Anna Storm. I didn't want to totally
lose myself, so we reached a compromise.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
I could keep my first name.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
Thus Hannah Storm, the Storm by the Sea ce one
oh one. You get the idea, and it just stuck.
Speaker 3 (04:47):
I guess it's worked for me all these years.
Speaker 1 (04:51):
Hi, everybody had a Storm back at Madison Square Gardal
on Rocket Central.
Speaker 3 (04:54):
My name is Hannah Storm.
Speaker 7 (04:56):
I'll be hosting me halftime and postgame shows for you.
I ran a Storm thirty six Sports.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
From the NBA and iHeart podcast This is NBA DNA
with Me Hannah Storm, Episode three, h Town. After six
months in Corpus Christy, I was still looking for sports
gigs and still answering one ads. This time I found
(05:24):
one in a publication called Radio and Records for a
drivetime sports announcer and weekend DJ at a major Houston
rock station, KSRR ninety seven Rock. I was tired of
getting rejection letters, so I changed up my tactics. I
drove to the radio station on my day off, camped
(05:45):
out in the lobby, and when the program director left
for lunch, I handed him my tape and resume. I
was pretty terrified, but it worked. About a week later
I got the job.
Speaker 8 (05:57):
That fuzzy sweater except from the eighties, Yes it is
from the eighties.
Speaker 3 (06:02):
I would have massive I would have massive ear rings on.
If I was really really doing.
Speaker 7 (06:07):
Me too, mine would be dangling airplanes.
Speaker 1 (06:10):
Ninety seven. Rock is where I met one of my
best friends, Judy Cohen.
Speaker 8 (06:14):
We were the only girls, I mean and I mean
girls because we were young. There were people in sales
and that kind of thing, but we were the cool ones.
Speaker 1 (06:22):
We really bonded because it was all dudes and you know,
rock and rollers and stuff, and then and then there
was you and I exactly barely out of college. So
we became friends, like really like kind of like sisters.
To be perfectly honest. Why do you think we hit
it off so quickly? Besides being completely outnumbered.
Speaker 8 (06:41):
I I just because our age and just we had
a lot of the same things. We liked, really really
bad fashion taste.
Speaker 1 (06:52):
There's that saying. The higher the hair, the closer to God. Yep,
that was the reality in Houston in nineteen eighty four.
And you know, everything's bigger in Texas. Big hair, big earrings,
big nails, big shoulder pads, and lots of leather. North
Beach Leather maybe there is the store called North Beach Leather.
Speaker 7 (07:14):
The shorter the better, Oh my gosh.
Speaker 3 (07:16):
Shorter the better. Yeah, the glitter the so.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
North Beach Leather had like wild leather suits, leather dresses,
leather outfits. And we got them to give me my
clothes for that season and they were epic. It was like,
oh my god, mini skirts, big shoulder pads, all the fringe.
Speaker 3 (07:35):
I mean, just think tells.
Speaker 8 (07:37):
Right, do you remember going to the grand opening of
the hard Rock Cafe. I do, so here's what I
remember with that number one Kenny Logins performed. If that
isn't just synonymous with the nineteen eighties right there, right,
Oh yeah, you and I will silver le may.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Of course we were silver lemet. I mean it was
either that it was either something shiny or leather, like
there were two food groups of clothing.
Speaker 8 (08:01):
I just remember it was like the craziest night because
it was like, oh my god, the.
Speaker 7 (08:04):
Hard rock Cafe came to Houston, Texas, and.
Speaker 1 (08:07):
Right, I put us all the people ex all these
people were there, and then like sports people were there,
and you know, all the radio station people were there,
and we just walked in thinking we owned the joint.
And I guess we did sort of own the joint.
Ninety seven rock KSRR for kick Ass Rock and Roll
(08:29):
doesn't actually exist anymore, but in the early eighties it
was a Houston institution. I did sports reports in morning
and afternoon drive, and we hosted tons of events with
musicians and athletes. We were famous for our Friday beach
parties in Galveston, Texas, broadcasting live to huge crowds in
(08:51):
the summertime.
Speaker 8 (08:53):
Arnell Saint James was the disc jockey in the afternoon,
so it was his beach party, if you will, on
a Friday afternoon, and it was insane. People would line
the streets and to get into the beach to get
a free koozy, and they'd be throwing coozies everywhere, and
you and Colonel were signing the coozies in some unmentioned
(09:14):
areas of certain individual bubbles.
Speaker 3 (09:16):
Yeah, we signed a lot of body parts, Yes you did.
People weren't wearing.
Speaker 7 (09:21):
Much Oh my gosh.
Speaker 8 (09:22):
But it was like we would go down in the
morning to set it up and we have the bands
down there, and just god, it was like hundreds and
hundreds and thousands of people all just crammed onto this beach.
Speaker 7 (09:33):
And they would just do anything to see you and Colonel.
Speaker 8 (09:36):
You would do your sports from there, and Colonel would like,
you know, play the music and whatever, and just the
Kozies and bumper stickers, Kozyven bumper stickers that we would
throw out, and it would be like every Friday in
the summer, every Friday.
Speaker 1 (09:51):
On a much smaller scale. I occasionally convinced the station
to send a band of one me to cover big
sporting events like the Final Four or the Super Bowl,
and Judy always tagged.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
Along with me.
Speaker 1 (10:05):
Back in the day, I would watch the games and
then call in live updates from a payphone.
Speaker 7 (10:14):
Well, you mentioned the Super Bowl.
Speaker 8 (10:16):
That's that's by far one of the best stories ever,
just because we've totally scammed our way into the game.
Speaker 7 (10:22):
I mean, you had two tickets. I don't even know
how you had those two tickets.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
From Warren Moon. Warren Moon gave me two tickets.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
I remember, because like Warren Moon was like, okay, we
needed tickets. I mean sure, the radio station was like,
you could go cover the Super Bowl, but you'll have
credential or anything like that.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, so I wasn't going to get credentialed. So yeah,
I got two tickets from Warren Moon.
Speaker 7 (10:48):
But then we grabbed two friends and we had four
of us, and.
Speaker 3 (10:50):
We're all from the radio stations.
Speaker 8 (10:52):
All from the radio says a year before you had
gone to New Orleans and you're like.
Speaker 7 (10:55):
Oh, it's so easy.
Speaker 8 (10:57):
You can just buy tickets right outside the stadium, everyone
selling their tickets.
Speaker 7 (11:01):
Well, I guess by the next year.
Speaker 8 (11:03):
When it was Super Bowl twenty one, nobody was selling
their tickets. It was at the Rose Bowl and we
were walking around and walking around. We gave our friends
Andrea and Jenny the tickets and they went in and
then they lost us.
Speaker 7 (11:15):
Okay, we had no tickets.
Speaker 8 (11:17):
We had no tickets, so we were trying to buy
tickets and we see these two guys and we're like, hey,
we gave our friends our tickets and they were supposed
to like pass them through the fence to us.
Speaker 7 (11:27):
We can't find them. Can you think you can do that?
So we can just get in and they're like.
Speaker 3 (11:31):
Sure, I know.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
They literally passed their use their tickets that had been torn.
That's what they did back in the day. They tore
the tickets through the fence and.
Speaker 7 (11:40):
Said, please make sure you get them back to us.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Somehow, how did we get in with a torn ticket?
Speaker 7 (11:45):
So we talked our way in. Who knows?
Speaker 3 (11:47):
I mean, isn't that funny?
Speaker 7 (11:49):
And then we never found them.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
If those guys are listening, Judy still has your tickets.
And soon I had multiple jobs, finally getting on television
by writing and reading the local sports calendar every Thursday
on Home Sports Entertainment with Rockets announcer Bill Worrell. That
morphed into a gig at Channel twenty, which had the
(12:14):
rights to both the Rockets and the Astros road telecasts.
I hosted pregame, halftime and postgame in addition to my
radio shows.
Speaker 7 (12:24):
I'm in the Rockets Central. My name is Hannah Storm.
I'll be hosting the halftime and postgame shows for you
at the half elemisade.
Speaker 9 (12:30):
Hey we got history, man, remember our halftime shows back
in the day.
Speaker 1 (12:33):
Dale Robertson is a legendary sports writer in Houston who
also happened to be my studio analyst. Why don't you
tell people about our famous halftime shows, Dale, Well.
Speaker 9 (12:46):
I'm not exactly sure how I ended up on them,
but it was flattered to be there with you. You
were you were still show we saying your formative period
as a broadcaster.
Speaker 1 (12:55):
John Lucas had sixteen points leading Houston a chem olaje
one with fourteen.
Speaker 10 (12:59):
Lewis Floyd had to We had fun.
Speaker 9 (13:00):
We did all the all the road games, or at
least most of the road games. As I recall, this
was the probably mid late eighties.
Speaker 3 (13:06):
Here's Judy again.
Speaker 1 (13:08):
What do you remember about the Houston Rockets and covering
the Rockets back in those days?
Speaker 7 (13:13):
Well, person of all the Robert Reid Show.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
How could we forget the Robert Reid Show. So he
was obviously a member.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
Of the Houston Rockets the team this year and.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Somebody had decided to produce a show like a talk
show with him in.
Speaker 7 (13:27):
A bar off the Interstate ten.
Speaker 3 (13:30):
Off of I ten, I mean, and it was a club.
Speaker 8 (13:34):
Yeah, it was one of those just cheesy places that
you knew nothing good was happening, but it was really CD.
Speaker 7 (13:44):
But it was awesome because there you were, and you
were just.
Speaker 8 (13:48):
I knew then that you would not be doing the
am PM radio sports thing for much longer because you
were so in your element.
Speaker 7 (13:58):
It was just so awesome to watch.
Speaker 8 (14:00):
You know, you started getting gaining a lot of respect,
not just from your bosses, but from like the players
and stuff. Because you would hang out at the summit
where the Rockets played, and that was always fun to
tag along with you to go to go like see
all these different people or whatever. But you were never
phased by it. You were never phased by it was
always just you were in your element.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
It's funny because I also really didn't love going in
the locker room. You know, it was pretty overwhelming. I mean,
here you are. You know, you're a young woman, you're Yeah.
There was a wonderful woman, Emanina Martini, who had been
in Houston for a long time.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
It was really cool, so she was there. She was
like the og.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
But really I was like vastly, vastly outnumbered, and you
know I got it like a lot of pushback and
like even like in the press box. You know, just
as a female, you're just you just stick out like
a sore thumb.
Speaker 3 (14:54):
A lot of people aren't necessarily thrilled with.
Speaker 1 (14:56):
You being there, and you know, then you kind of
multiply that you go out on locker or like a
huge football locker room or whatever.
Speaker 3 (15:01):
So I never went in the locker room.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah, I would stand outside the locker room with my
little microphone. Yes, my taper corner, my corner exactly players as.
Speaker 3 (15:13):
They were leaving to do an interview.
Speaker 1 (15:14):
The cool thing is you got a lot of one
on one interviews that way. I still carry the torch
for Houston because to me, h Town has one of
the best fan bases in America, not just because of
(15:35):
Houston's successes but also all those years of near missus
that left their fans starving for a title.
Speaker 9 (15:44):
In the early nineteen seventies, it was almost a nobody
town because all of our teams were drefful. The Oilers
were in the middle of having back to back one
in thirteen seasons. The Astros were ten years into their
history and had not even had a winning season yet.
And then, of course here were the Rockets. And I'm
going to say that first team in seventy one seventy
who probably finished fifteen sixteen games under five.
Speaker 1 (16:05):
Hundred Rockets legend Rudy tom Jonovitch, who would later coach
the team, was a power forward at the time, basket and.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
They need one.
Speaker 9 (16:13):
Now, I'm Janet's put it up out a hook.
Speaker 3 (16:16):
And he moved with the Rockets from San Diego to Houston.
Speaker 6 (16:24):
Yeah.
Speaker 5 (16:24):
I was in my apartment ready to leave, and a
bulletin came on and it said, the San Diego Rockets
have been sold to a group of people in Houston, Texas.
You know, we came to town and we found out that
basketball wasn't a big deal.
Speaker 6 (16:42):
It was a football state.
Speaker 5 (16:44):
They had us out at a mall one day, meet
a couple of players, and they have a banner, Meet
the Houston Rockets, and nobody recognizes us because we're brand new.
We don't get to sign autographs. Finally, elderly lady comes
up and says, oh my god, I loved you guys.
How do you fit in those spaceships? She thought we
(17:07):
were with mass up. We said, no, we're with the
basketball team.
Speaker 6 (17:10):
See. Oh god, you know.
Speaker 3 (17:18):
That is hilarious. Oh my gosh. So what were those like?
What was that first season? Blake?
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I mean, what do you remember? You said Houston was
a football town. So were people showing up.
Speaker 3 (17:30):
What was it like.
Speaker 5 (17:31):
Yeah, we had text Winner as our coach, and tex
wound up getting in the Hall of Pain and did
so many wonderful things with the triangle offense. However, he
was a college coach. He needed to make some adjustments.
So we started the season two and eighteen, two wins
(17:54):
and eighteen losses, and we were blessed because one of
those ris the refereemade a mistake on a goldtending and
called it the wrong one.
Speaker 6 (18:05):
We got to win the.
Speaker 5 (18:06):
Game, but you know, we battled that and you know, I.
Speaker 6 (18:10):
Think we run thirty games after that horrible start.
Speaker 1 (18:16):
By the time I got to Houston, the team had
turned a corner.
Speaker 6 (18:21):
You know.
Speaker 11 (18:21):
The first years were tough. I can remember. You know,
the revenues were not great. We had several owners who
went bankrupt because there were other businesses that did well.
I mean, Houston was a boom bust, oil wildcatting kind
of a town. I remember one time we almost couldn't
make payroll. My father was talking to the Knicks about
selling Rudy Tom Jonathan's contract to the next to keep
(18:43):
the franchise afloat.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
That's Steve Patterson.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
When we met in nineteen eighty four, he was working
his way up the ranks of the Rockets front office.
Like me, Steve grew up in basketball. His dad, Ray Patterson,
was president of the Rockets at the time and the
original president of the Milwaukee Bucks, A big pleasure shot.
Speaker 10 (19:09):
Again, I can't believe.
Speaker 11 (19:11):
He was investing in the team. And he was running
a prep school called Whale Academy in Wisconsin at the time,
and both he and the school invested in the Bucks
because they were going public and al maguire was supposed
to be the coach at GM. He was the head
coach at Marquette University for a successful college coach, and
at the last minute, the night before they were getting
a public the school wouldn't let him out of his contract.
(19:33):
So the guys on the board looked around and said, well,
there's only one guy here knows anything about basketball, Ray,
will you do it for a year, because yeah, I'll
come do it for a year. And so he kept
both jobs actually for two years.
Speaker 3 (19:45):
It's crazy.
Speaker 11 (19:46):
Yeah, he was headmaster of the school and ran the
Bucks for two years.
Speaker 7 (19:50):
Let's go to the pip off right now.
Speaker 1 (19:52):
That's so crazy because at the time my dad was
with the ABA, and they tried really really hard to
get Louel Cinder to come to the ABA. It was
kind of a battle between the two leagues, but he
ended up in Milwaukee.
Speaker 12 (20:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (20:08):
I mean both teams actually were putting up money to
get him to each league, and it was actually really interesting.
I think it showed some of Kareem's character because what
he told both teams both leagues was make me your
best offer.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
There's some kind of crazy rumor that George Mike and
had a million dollars in his pocket, but he was
so convinced that that Korea was coming to the ABA
that he never gave it to him.
Speaker 3 (20:30):
I'm pretty sure. I don't know if that's true or not.
Speaker 11 (20:33):
It was the first million dollar contract over forty years now,
of course it's not.
Speaker 3 (20:39):
And it's so crazy.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Would you think how far the game has come that
your dad was actually running a prep school and the
Milwaukee Bucks at the same time.
Speaker 3 (20:47):
I mean, that blows my mind right there.
Speaker 11 (20:49):
Yeah, I think there was always like seven or eight
people in the front office. The marketing campaign was seen.
The Bucks for a buck tells you a little bit
about pricing its versus today.
Speaker 1 (21:03):
Steve's dad, Big Ray did not mess around after drafting
Leuel Cinder in nineteen sixty nine. He traded for Oscar
Robertson in nineteen seventy. Milwaukee won its first title in
nineteen seventy one, and Ray left the next year to
lead the Rockets in Houston. When did folks start to
(21:24):
kind of warm up to the Rockets and warm up
to the basketball scene?
Speaker 6 (21:29):
Well, we made it to the playoffs. Finally.
Speaker 5 (21:31):
We were playing the mix and very close contest and
we weren't really experienced in that kind of competition, and
we lost our close game and our fans went crazy.
We didn't really get good till Bell Harris came in
and we actually wound up going to the finals with
(21:56):
a losing record.
Speaker 3 (21:58):
What was that playoff like?
Speaker 1 (22:00):
Again, you guys just just scooted in there at the
very last second end of the playoff picture. But then
you kept winning as time went on. So kind of
take me through that magical postseason.
Speaker 6 (22:14):
Yeah, it was very interesting.
Speaker 5 (22:16):
I was on the team, but I had gotten hurt,
and Del Harris went with Billy faults and Moses three.
Speaker 2 (22:24):
Seconds on the shot clock too, Billy cluckt Bell There's
more again.
Speaker 5 (22:28):
Alone and then Calvin and Mike Dunlevy. We would change
the pace on people, grind it out. You know, we
had to beat La to get out of the West.
And you know that was magic when he was here.
Speaker 3 (22:44):
Awhile he's opening, Magic blocked it beautifully.
Speaker 5 (22:48):
And just remember seeing how uncomfortable they were. They couldn't
get into showtime because we slowed it down so much
and we had two big guys protecting the basket.
Speaker 1 (23:02):
The eighty eighty one Rockets team was stacked. They were
led by Hall of Fame center Moses Malone, part of
a monolithic starting five known league wide as the water Buffalo's.
Speaker 11 (23:17):
No, I mean they were not an actual bunch. Mike
Nolan and Calvin Murphy in the back court and see
Jack Maarn you know, a couple of other big LUNs.
That was a different game those days. You can smack people.
Speaker 6 (23:33):
You can't do that anymore.
Speaker 1 (23:34):
Yes, that was a whole different kind of basketball back
in the day. And then the Rockets went to the
NBA Finals in eighty one.
Speaker 11 (23:42):
Yeah, a sub forty two and we snuck in on
the last.
Speaker 1 (23:47):
Day and then had this crazy run and made it
all the way to play the Celtics for the championship.
Speaker 3 (23:53):
What do you remember about that?
Speaker 11 (23:54):
Moses just put the team on his back.
Speaker 2 (23:57):
I was just Malone now with fourteen twenty eight point.
Speaker 11 (24:02):
What a phenomenal player. People sort of don't remember how
Grady was. I mean, that guy could go for thirty
and twenty every night. And you know, we had some
young guys like Robert Reed and who hit Rudy and
Mike Nolan and Murph and you know, it was a
lot of fun. The summit was rocking, and you know,
the community then really started to kind of wake up
and embrace the team as we went into the eighties.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
From there, that eighty eighty one Rockets squad lost to
the Celtics and a young Larry Bird in six games.
Speaker 10 (24:35):
Great three points hung by Larry Bird.
Speaker 1 (24:41):
The Rockets came back and had another good run the
next season, making the eighty one eighty two Western Conference Finals,
but they couldn't afford to keep Moses Malone, so they
sent him to the Philadelphia seventy six ers for a
few first round draft picks, one of which was used
to acquire Hall of Famer Ralph Sampson.
Speaker 10 (25:00):
Sampson double team on him the seventh.
Speaker 1 (25:04):
Foot three or whatever Ralph's arrival in Houston marked a
new era. He was, as they say, a unicorn, the
prototype for a guy like the Spurs, Victor Wibanyana, the grass.
Speaker 10 (25:19):
Ralph crap fund with a great morven.
Speaker 1 (25:21):
What was it that the organization saw in Ralph to
make him the number one pick?
Speaker 3 (25:25):
Was it pretty obvious?
Speaker 6 (25:26):
Yeah?
Speaker 11 (25:27):
I mean completely obvious. He was seven for he could
play point guard, extremely talented, very athletic, hard work.
Speaker 6 (25:35):
They're very professional Ralph Sampson. You know, we knew where
we're taken him.
Speaker 5 (25:40):
He was a super versatile player, had a great touch,
could play with his back to the basket. He was
so tall and almost was a disadvantage, especially in driving
the sexuastings he could be, but he was a un protector.
Speaker 6 (26:04):
He was a phenomenal player.
Speaker 10 (26:05):
Right and he dumps at home and Shapson with his
first bucket.
Speaker 1 (26:09):
Ralph was soft spoken and serious. He majored in rhetoric
at the University of Virginia, where he was a three
time National Player of the Year. Ralph led the Who's
to the nineteen eighty NIT Championship, the nineteen eighty one
Final four, and big regular season victories over the Likes
of North Carolina's Michael Jordan and Georgetown's Patrick Ewing. You
(26:33):
were such an unusual player right at seven four, but
with interior and perimeter skills. Kind of take us back
to how your game developed as a big man back
in the day.
Speaker 4 (26:45):
Rightly, I didn't like basketball when I was growing up.
I played baseball, and I was really good baseball player
a pitch. I played basketball, But basketball at an early
age was you can only score sixteen points a game,
and I had sixteen points in the first five minutes.
Speaker 12 (26:59):
It's crazy. By the way, evolved from.
Speaker 4 (27:02):
That to high school, and my high school coach let
me play at any position I wanted to if I
practice it.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Oh wow.
Speaker 12 (27:10):
So six seven in ninth grade, I was getting beat up.
I was probably one hundred pounds, soak and what.
Speaker 4 (27:15):
So he was very innovative and got to a wave
room at that stage, which no one said that weights would.
Speaker 12 (27:20):
Mess your jump shot up or mess you dow up. Right,
So that was kind of there.
Speaker 4 (27:24):
But he was innovative and he led me in practice
practice every day against the fastest guard that we had.
But it started with him making me do that in practice.
That evolved at an early age from high school to
Collage College to the NBA.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
So you were running the floor like on a regular
basis and practice against the guards.
Speaker 4 (27:42):
Oh, absolutely, that's wild guarding and driveling. He would have
double teem me.
Speaker 12 (27:47):
As well, because I would literally get frustrated because there
was a boxing on or his own and I couldn't
get the ball.
Speaker 4 (27:53):
Everybody was somebody in front of me, somebody behind me,
So I can never get the ball only when the rebound.
I gets frustrated. I'd grow up and not turned over.
And he was left handed, he would stop his foot.
He called me stick. He said, stick, you can't do that.
You're gonna turn the ball over. So he said he's
gonna do it at a game regardless. So he put
me in practice and the rest of history after that.
Speaker 1 (28:13):
By the time he was a senior in high school,
Ralph was the most sought after recruit in the country.
After his first season at UVA, he was being courted
by the pros.
Speaker 4 (28:23):
So imagine read our back and mister Fitzgerald, the owner
of the Celtics, came knocked on my parents' door with
a brew caase that only had a million dollars in
and so I say, all these one hundred dollars buildings.
Speaker 12 (28:34):
I always have my parents, are we okay?
Speaker 4 (28:35):
Every year that I had the opportunity to come out
of school, I would go back and say.
Speaker 12 (28:39):
Are you all right?
Speaker 4 (28:40):
Do we need anything or et cetera, And my dad
would say, my mom would say, and we worked all
these years. You know, is your decision. We don't read
anything because we have everything we want. And so with
that in mind, I didn't need to come out. I
just need to develop my game work.
Speaker 9 (28:54):
Houston Rockets select Ralph Sampson University every.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
D So you get drafted by the Houston Rockets. What
kind of situation do you walk into there in Houston?
And what was Houston like as a basketball town at
the time.
Speaker 12 (29:10):
Houston was massive?
Speaker 4 (29:11):
And then the biggest thing there that I remember, mcclorey,
is that I've gotten drafted. Well, we moved from New
York on two private little jets. We get there, we
land and we go to the inn to bring us
packed with people in the summit. So that was like
a special moment for me that oh, this is real
right and now we are coming to really be the
Ilmark guys on the team that's going to hope We
(29:32):
get this to another level.
Speaker 1 (29:34):
Ralph's rookie year nineteen eighty three eighty four, he averaged
twenty one points, eleven rebounds, and two blocks a game
and earned Rookie of the Year and All Star honors.
Speaker 3 (29:45):
The team was bad, though.
Speaker 1 (29:47):
The Rockets lucked into the first pick again. They had
a twenty and fifty three record and then won the
draft lottery coin flip.
Speaker 3 (29:57):
Here's Steve Patterson.
Speaker 11 (30:00):
For some strange reason, my father got accused of tanking
the year, which was totally the truth, because we had Elijah,
we had a keem Olijah. I played right there in
town at the University of Houston. So like Elvin Hayes,
came back to the team after his after playing in
(30:22):
Washington win in the championship there, and I think he
was about, I don't know, sixty eight years older some
of this time. The last game of the year, so
that we could lose, they played him fifty minutes, including overtime. No, oh,
my gosh, I was so tired he couldn't hardly move.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
The Houston Rockets select a team Elijahwan of the.
Speaker 12 (30:46):
University of Houston.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
It is a pushole, no well attired a team.
Speaker 1 (30:53):
Elijah won and started playing basketball just five years ago
from Nigeria.
Speaker 3 (30:58):
Is now the number one Vick does not have to
go too far from the university.
Speaker 11 (31:02):
People would say, well, you should take in Jordan or
somebody else. You could not not take Alajuan with the
first pick of the draft. You know, Ray and the
rest of us would have been to run out of
town and rare.
Speaker 1 (31:12):
Then the Rockets did something which really could have been
considered unconventional at the time. You already have Ralph Samson
and then you draft a kiem Olajuan. Yeah, obviously a
kim Olajuan was a huge local favorite. You know, University
of Houston Star already formed and you're sitting right there
(31:34):
with the number one pick. Nonetheless, you know, not everybody
would put two guys that size on the floor at
the same time.
Speaker 3 (31:41):
So what was the thinking there?
Speaker 11 (31:43):
He really was to do something very different. Two great talents.
Ralph liked to play away from the basket a bit,
and Alajuan was great down on the block and uh,
you know, great shot blockers. The guys that played with
them used to laugh and say, yeah, go on, go on,
gown down the lane and see what happens, right, Because
the ball's coming back out to me and I'm going
to have a fast break and square at the other end.
(32:06):
And it really for a while changed how the league played.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
You know.
Speaker 11 (32:10):
The Celtics were built that way with with with Biggs,
with Parrish and McHale and Walton. The Knicks tried to
do that with Cartwright Ewing, you know, so people tried
to emulate it. It just made you so tough on defense.
People couldn't get to the rim. What a shot that
was under total control at eighteen for a key.
Speaker 1 (32:34):
A Keeme the dream was already a legend in Houston.
He and Clyde Drexler, who would later join him on
the Rockets, led the University of Houston to three consecutive
final fours, the famed five Slama Jama. Can you describe
for people, you know, what had happened obviously at the
(32:54):
University of Houston with Fi Slama Jama and how big
a deal it was to keep a cam olajuwon in Houston.
Speaker 11 (33:05):
Yeah, I mean he had a great career there, played
with Drexler and Larry Nishah and Rob Williams and a
bunch of guys that played in the NBA. Very successful
collegiate team. You know, wound up losing a national championship
game at a blue air ball shot that got the
back in. But that was so huge that they called
him the fly by slam a jan elect fraternity.
Speaker 10 (33:37):
The team doubled quickly by bird minds away. That was
just amazing.
Speaker 3 (33:44):
It was easy to root for a team.
Speaker 1 (33:46):
He immigrated to the United States from Nigeria as a
college student. He was a devout Muslim, a gentle soul
in many ways, but extremely competitive and insanely talented.
Speaker 10 (34:00):
Guys turn around mold. Is he quick for a big man, Well,
he's got that quick drop strips.
Speaker 11 (34:06):
Are a great shot blocker, Defensive player of the year
a number of times. I was on the All Defensive team,
great scorer down the block. Played soccer as a kid,
so its foot forth was real different. It's kind of
interesting to watch him that way. You know, just continue
to grow as a player a year after year of
the year, playing at Bondi Rep, playing against Moses Malone
every day, really learned the craft and you know, became
(34:29):
one of the all time greats.
Speaker 13 (34:31):
Inside to Elijah On he thanks looking's up, Sampson copses
inside of.
Speaker 10 (34:37):
The fast in the count in East Fouler.
Speaker 1 (34:39):
The Twin Towers of Texas now a team, and Ralph
two seven footers.
Speaker 3 (34:44):
They quickly became known as the Twin Towers.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
You're there's a big man and then they draft a
Keem Olajahwan and all of a sudden, the Twin Towers
are born.
Speaker 3 (34:54):
But that kind of changes everything.
Speaker 12 (34:56):
What was that like, bro Tom? So you know, think
of about Patrick.
Speaker 4 (35:00):
You ain't going to the Knicks, Kareem in Latworthy in
La Magic and l A Burning in Boston.
Speaker 12 (35:07):
So the n BEING is a big business and so
you know you got to get the players in the
right right position to develop it. And back then the
NBA was struggling a little bit in their late seventies
just to make sure it worked. So whoever made those
draft picks or whoever behind pushing no buttons did a
really good thing within the structure of the NBA. Well,
for me, they came to me and said we're going
to draft the team and create this Twin Tower thing.
(35:28):
They showed me pictures that I said, cool, I can
go and not be in the post and get beat up.
But I thought that when I saw him play in
Houston and going to the Final four, and to see
him play, he was very raw. Uh you know, the
dream shake and all that wasn't created at that point
in time. It became one of those things. Well, okay,
we could get him in. And then Moses Belone sent
me down and said, you know, he can be really good.
Speaker 4 (35:49):
Because Mody was really taught the team early on, and
so I respect him all this because the Virginia we
had that kind of camaraderie. So I cherished the idea
of them drafting me and creating the Twin Towts because
some of the different in the league to seven fo
the de could play. So I cherished it and I
took it as something special.
Speaker 1 (36:15):
The Twin Towers had a strong supporting cast, Rodney McCrae,
Robert Reid, Lewis Lloyd John Lucas the point guard, the
piece that made the other pieces fit, but the team
lost Lucas at mid season, sending him to rehab to
fight a cocaine addiction. With no true point guard, the
team ran their offense through Reid. After winning the Midwest
(36:36):
Division with a fifty one and thirty one record, they
bulldozed their way to the Western Conference Finals against Magic
and Kareem's Lakers, the Magic.
Speaker 10 (36:46):
Man, what's going and one man really can't stop him her.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
After dropping Game one, the Rockets reeled off three straight wins.
Game five looked like it might go the other way
when a Keem Olajahwan was ejected for fighting after being
baited by Mitch Kupchak.
Speaker 11 (37:12):
Cupcheck figured out how to get in a fight with
so they both got tossed. So teams in the locker
room with Rudy and yeah, one second left, I think
it was Byron's guy had missed a shot and we
rebound in a second. We tossed it in and Ralph
and I was like, he's really gonna have to ticklar
Ver size. But you know, in practice, he used to
(37:34):
play games just like you know, like playing horse and
make funny shots. And there was one play that Denver
had and they used to be in the series before
where they throw the ball into Rascus and at at
that at the foot goal line and he turns and
shoots quickly. So Ralph has sort of imitated that in practice.
And so yeah, ball gets logged in quickly because we
(37:56):
didn't want the Lakers to get their defense set and
thrown it in a rout in the air, turns and
throws it up and it bounces around and Wiggans almost
touches it. You could see it pulls at.
Speaker 10 (38:06):
The hand one second on the clock, and it.
Speaker 11 (38:17):
Bounces around and falls in and we knock off the
Lakers in Game five.
Speaker 1 (38:22):
I was there covering it, like for my radio station
for some reason. I don't even know why they sent
me all.
Speaker 3 (38:32):
The way to do that, but they did.
Speaker 1 (38:35):
And that was my first experience being in an arena
where it's just totally silent, you know where you see
that huge, huge shot. The complete silence in the LA
Forum at the time was absolutely stunning.
Speaker 12 (38:51):
Yeah, it was.
Speaker 1 (38:52):
It was a really cool moment. Can you just describe
the scene in Houston? I mean, Houston just I mean
went insane. Can you kind of describe what it was
like like after you guys beat the Lakers and before
you went to the finals, just sort of the reaction
of the town.
Speaker 4 (39:07):
Well, I started in the forum, You're like, okay, we
got to go back, and you know, all the PREPLU
dudes and everybody's like, okay, great, We're going back to
the finals, et cetera. So when we land, it was
just crazy. We go to the Summit and we got
fans all over the place and interviews and any restaurant
you want to go to, and we had to really
focus on what we had to do. We could enjoy
it for a couple of days, but Bill fish Out
(39:28):
has repurpated very quickly because he knew what we was
up against in Boston with the Boston Celtic and the fans.
Speaker 12 (39:34):
As well, so he had prepared us really really well
for that.
Speaker 1 (39:38):
After the Celtics grabbed a commanding three to one lead,
the Rockets faced elimination at the Summit in Houston, the
game intensity was at a fever pitch.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
Well you know they were. They were, uh, because they
beat us the first two games. And I come back
to Houston, I said.
Speaker 12 (39:55):
My motto was, if you're gonna beat it, but you're
not gonna beat us on our own court.
Speaker 1 (39:58):
Now, you had the kind of infamous moment. I was
there in the summit. You and Jerry Shesting got into
it and that is your love. Now what do you
remember about that? In Counting Sea Stinging.
Speaker 10 (40:13):
Sens it And now Dennis Judson and know Meylee is
broken out here a meleeus broken out the Ventures of
Empty then they have brought police onto the floor.
Speaker 4 (40:25):
I was having a pretty good first quarter because I
was greater play this, that other and lovely Danny Ainge
and Jerry would come around to pick. After I'm sitting
down on Robert or somebody to get open. They would
hit me in first is that you don't want to know,
and so I'm like, okay, great, if you do this
one more town. I was hyped up and greater play.
I probably had fifteen point seven rebounds subsists in the
(40:45):
first quarter. No remember all the details, but once it
broke out, it just took their level. After one more hit,
like okay, rid of me for you, and then my
emotions got carried away and then we went to fighting
to another. But the most reable part about that I
looked up and my two sisters were on the edge
of the court.
Speaker 3 (41:02):
Here's Steve Patterson.
Speaker 13 (41:03):
The Celtics had a thing they did where they would
take seas things and he would pick whoever the free
throw shooter was. As they were going back down, Ralph
felt that Jerry submarine and tried to hurt it. And
it's this kind of insane fight right in front of
me because I'm sitting courtside, and it was a dirty
play in our view, and they had done it over
(41:26):
and over and over again repeatedly, and so you know,
it got out of hand.
Speaker 11 (41:30):
And I really thought the referee should have called something sooner.
I remember turning around and screaming at David Stern. I
had to go up and apologize to him a week later.
Speaker 3 (41:41):
Wait, what did you scream at him? What did you say?
Speaker 11 (41:44):
This is your effing fault, David, because you won't referee,
they won't take care of the state.
Speaker 10 (41:51):
But yeah, that was not very good at the bottom
of the pile.
Speaker 3 (41:54):
What can I be honest?
Speaker 1 (41:55):
It was out of control. It was completely out of control.
I mean, people were scattering away from the court like
it was.
Speaker 3 (42:02):
It was wild.
Speaker 1 (42:03):
And then the Rockets had to go up to Boston,
and I remember the Boston newspapers. It was like headline news.
It was Jerry Shesting versus Ralph Sampson and Ralph's a
bully and they're like quoting like Jerry Shesting's mom. It
was I mean it really it really provided a lot
(42:23):
of fodder for the Rockets as as villains.
Speaker 4 (42:30):
So you walk into the arena and out there. So
they have this mummy or stuff, the animal or stuff
whatever it was person and it was number fifty on
it and it was like hanging on the noose over
the manner.
Speaker 6 (42:42):
Oh wow.
Speaker 4 (42:43):
And Cedric, we talked about it all the time. I
said back in the nay they did that. They had
they home me over the news for that, and that's
a bitch of it somewhere a lot. You had to
be very careful in Boston at that point in time
because something could happen bad. And then when they was
winning and re root it was when they built Fish
called time out, which is raised good on his part,
right cause I got all the starters in the locker
(43:03):
room because he knew they was from the court.
Speaker 12 (43:05):
When when we are in the locker room and we
got so the memorians there was traded. But he knew
what he needed to do.
Speaker 4 (43:12):
At that point, Job Cup, we've probably have been fighting
or so I might have been fighting on the court
or something like that going on.
Speaker 12 (43:17):
You know, command Bill Fish for that noise because we
didn't know what was going to happen.
Speaker 1 (43:21):
The Boston fans were all over Ralph in Game six
and the Celtics won one fourteen to ninety seven Boston
Celtics will have.
Speaker 10 (43:30):
Won their forty first.
Speaker 11 (43:31):
Right hole game.
Speaker 6 (43:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 11 (43:34):
It was a great young, up and coming team and
we lost to the Celtics in eighty six. They had everybody.
It would have been, Yeah, I think a different series
and you know, would have been a different decade.
Speaker 6 (43:46):
Really.
Speaker 1 (43:47):
The next year was devastating really for the franchise. Here
you are coming off the finals and the entire backcourt
gets busted for drugs. I remember as I was working
at Channel twenty at the time and the news came
down and it was just this complete disbelief because it
(44:10):
wasn't just one player, it was the top three guards
on the team.
Speaker 11 (44:15):
Yeah, we had lost Lucas Ewan in a rehab. Mitchell
Wiggans Lewis Light were different. Lewis Light always shut up
for practice, always showed up for the plane, always showed
up for the bus, never had an issue. And Wiggins,
after his first year as a rookie, he was the
same way. The league had had issues with players and
(44:36):
using drugs, particularly too much coke. They decided they wanted
to crack down with Mitch and Lou. They were the
first guys that really got tagged by the league, and
I think they were treated differently than the Orlando Origins
or others who came later, who were confronted and allowed
(44:57):
to turn themselves in and could go through having come back,
versus being confronted with the proposition of you to take
the test. If you pass it, you're okay to flunk,
your out for life, and if you don't take the test,
you're out for life.
Speaker 6 (45:10):
You know.
Speaker 11 (45:10):
So there were many in the organization that felt that
wasn't fair, and I shared that position. I do think
it sent the message to the rest of the players
in the league. But Wiggins wanted to turn himself in,
the league would let. I was there in room with them.
Speaker 3 (45:23):
I didn't realize that.
Speaker 1 (45:27):
Samson and Akeem were so good that even missing their
entire backcourt, the Rockets remained contenders. But in February, Ralph
seriously injured his knee. Correct me if I'm wrong, but
I believe you were supposed to be out six weeks, right,
but you kind of rushed back because you wanted to
be back for your team for the playoffs. Take me
(45:50):
through that decision and what the implications of that decision were.
Speaker 12 (45:55):
I had a really bad fall in Boston at a
regular sevening game and on my left hip. I went
to UVA and took treatment at that point in time
because I wanted to get back. I felt they were
the best that I knew and trusted at that point
in time.
Speaker 4 (46:09):
So it came back early from that, and I think,
I don't think my leg had ever bounced back totally.
Speaker 12 (46:15):
And so we played.
Speaker 4 (46:15):
We played with play and I'm guarding Bill Hanslick. I
remembered the whole scenario right, and he's trying to go
back door and twisted my leg and I hear a pop,
and then I go into the locker room. I had
a bucket handled tear on my meniscus. If I'd known
what I know now, I would stayed out the whole year.
I would have just arrested the whole year. I wouldn't
never came back. But I thought we could get back
to the finals again, and you want to play, and
(46:38):
back in the day, there was no sitting out games
and load management to another that right he was gonna play.
One doctor wanted to throw it back together, but they
didn't have the technology of the day to sew it
back together.
Speaker 12 (46:48):
So it would rejuvenate itself.
Speaker 4 (46:50):
So he just took it out, so it became bone
on bone, and you know, me, I'm jumping and running
with my thing and still beating that meniscus to death.
And then fragments come off lodging, so you gotta have
multiple operations. So it just had trajectory now held you
on the top of the world right at that point
in time, and then all of a sudden Andrew takes
you out, which is a nature of the beast of
the game, no matter who you play or who you are.
(47:10):
But today's technology's totally different.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
The Rockets finished third in the Midwest that year, going
forty two and twenty. They made it to the semifinals
where they ran into the Seattle SuperSonics, losing in sixth.
Speaker 6 (47:25):
They had more.
Speaker 4 (47:25):
Yeah, we thought we had a new piece of people.
We felt that we had the opportunity to get back.
All we needed was a point guard.
Speaker 12 (47:32):
But we could not get that point guard that we
needed to momniscus, and we had some injuries. We had
the megans of a great team.
Speaker 4 (47:39):
We just never care it together, and I think that
franchise didn't keep it together for whatever reason they did
or didn't.
Speaker 1 (47:45):
Steve Patterson took over as GM around that time. He
traded Ralph to Golden State about twenty games into the
eighty seven eighty eight season, closing the book on the
Twin Towers era.
Speaker 11 (47:57):
He made a choice on knee surgery to go have
his cartilage taken out instead of sewing back together. But
you know, taking that partilage out in the way his
knees were formed just caused a really rapid decline of
his career after that. It's really unfortunate because you look
at him in college and the first couple of years
(48:19):
before he got injured. I mean he was, you know,
all Rookie, All NBA All Star Team, you know, all
all the awards. He would have had a career if
you stay healthy.
Speaker 1 (48:30):
By nineteen ninety one, Ralph was out of basketball completely,
but leaving a legacy which earned him enshrinement into the
National Basketball Hall of Fame.
Speaker 4 (48:40):
Been watching this thing on TV every year with all
the grace that played his game and words Kate really describe.
Speaker 12 (48:47):
How I feel.
Speaker 1 (48:48):
Do you have a favorite memory of playing with the
Rockets or what would you consider the high point of
that era?
Speaker 4 (48:56):
I mean, they are the great great games that we
played in for sure, are and you know when me
and King would see how to eye and we said, okay,
big Feller, let's go and me he was ready to play.
Speaker 12 (49:06):
I was ready to play. We said, okay, what door
were we running this team out of Tampa?
Speaker 10 (49:09):
Down the middle, tam on bank, no good.
Speaker 3 (49:11):
We bought us off Matt we wanted but to take
aim by Elijah wants.
Speaker 12 (49:15):
So we had that calaraderie.
Speaker 4 (49:16):
We had the col roder when we played Kareem so
came Wuld playing underneath and I always thought to boy
at shot owed with a top.
Speaker 12 (49:21):
But we had a great one two combination that is
still special for me today. And show him as well.
Speaker 3 (49:27):
I mean, you're such a smart and thoughtful person.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
How have you kind of come to terms with the
fact that you know, it's really injuries really shortens you know,
what you might have been able to do in the NBA.
Speaker 12 (49:42):
Yeah, I mean I've had those my first couple of years.
Hours of the NBA.
Speaker 4 (49:45):
I think, Okay, wish I could have done this, I
could have stayed longer, played longer, et cetera, et cetera.
Didn You like realize it's the nature of the beast
and what can you do after the fact you know,
what can you do now? Because you can't go back
and change anything. You would if you could, when you can.
Speaker 12 (50:00):
And changing things.
Speaker 4 (50:00):
So having the ability to have friends like Robert Bard
that's stayed there for many many years, became general, married
Rudy t and the crew that you build our relationship
with have become very special.
Speaker 12 (50:10):
That's what you focus on at de foid job. You
have no other choice but to figure it out.
Speaker 4 (50:14):
And so I take all that with a great assault,
and I use the same work ethic and business now
that I had when I played to try to be
the best that can be.
Speaker 12 (50:22):
After the career of World overay.
Speaker 1 (50:24):
As for me, my time in Houston was wrapping up too.
I still wanted a full time TV sports job, and
even though I loved Houston, I kept applying to openings
all over the country, finally getting an opportunity to cover
an expansion franchise in a new city.
Speaker 7 (50:43):
That NBA feeling is coming to Shaw and it's nice
to have our own team on the floor.
Speaker 3 (50:49):
Next time. On NBA DNA, we were like, what what
are we in for?
Speaker 10 (50:57):
The scoreboard crashes before even sipping.
Speaker 1 (51:00):
Cover NBA DNA with Hannah Storm is a production of
iHeart Podcasts, the NBA, and Brainstorm and Productions. The show
(51:23):
is written and executive produced by me Hannah Storm along
with Julia Weaver and Alex French. Our lead producer and
showrunner is Julia Weaver. Our senior producers are Peter Kouder,
Alex French, and Brandon Reese. Editing and sound design by
Kurt Garren and Julia Weaver. The show's executive producers are
(51:44):
Carmen Belmont, Jason English, Sean ty Tone, Steve Weintraup, and
Jason Weikelt.
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