The Houston Rockets are an American professional basketball team based in Houston, Texas. The Rockets compete at the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of this league’s Western Conference Southwest Division. The team plays its home games at the Toyota Center, located in downtown Houston. The Rockets have won two NBA championships and four Western Conference titles. The team has been established in 1967 as the San Diego Rockets, an expansion team initially based in San Diego. In 1971, the Rockets moved to Houston.
The Rockets won only 15 games in their debut season for a franchise in 1967. From the 1968 NBA draft, the Rockets were given the first overall pick and chosen power forward Elvin Hayes, who would direct the team to its first playoff appearance in his rookie season. The Rockets didn’t finish a season with a winning record for nearly a decade until the 1976–77 season, when they exchanged for All-Star center Moses Malone. Malone went on to win the NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP) award double while playing with the Rockets and headed Houston to the Eastern Conference Finals in his first year with the team. During the 1980–81 year, the Rockets ended the regular season with a 40–42 record. Regardless of their losing record, they qualified for the playoffs. Led by Malone, the Rockets stunned the entire league by making their first NBA Finals appearance in 1981, becoming just the second team in NBA history to make the NBA Finals with a losing record. They’d drop in six games to the 62–20 Boston Celtics, led by Larry Bird, Robert Parish, and potential Rockets’ head coach Kevin McHale. As of 2019, the 1980–81 Rockets are the last group as the 1954–55 Minneapolis Lakers to make it all the way into the NBA Finals with a missing record.
In the 1984 NBA draft, once more with the first overall pick, the Rockets drafted center Hakeem Olajuwon, who would become the cornerstone of their most prosperous period in franchise history. Paired with 7 ft 4 inches (2.24 m) Ralph Sampson, they formed among the tallest leading courts in the NBA. Nicknamed the”Twin Towers”, they headed the group to the 1986 NBA Finals–the next NBA Finals appearance in franchise history–where Houston was again defeated by Larry Bird and the 67-win Boston Celtics. The Celtics continued to reach the playoffs during the 1980s, but failed to progress past the first round for many years after another round defeat to the Seattle SuperSonics in 1987. Rudy Tomjanovich took over as head coach midway through the 1991–92 season, ushering in the most prosperous period in franchise history. Led by Olajuwon, the Rockets dominated the 1993–94 season, setting a franchise record 58 wins and moved to the 1994 NBA Finals–the third NBA Finals appearance in franchise history–and won the franchise’s first championship against Patrick Ewing and the New York Knicks. During the next season, bolstered by yet another All-Star, Clyde Drexler, the Rockets–within their fourth NBA Finals appearance in franchise history–repeated as winners with a four-game sweep of the Orlando Magic, who were headed by a young Shaquille O’Neal and Penny Hardaway. Houston, which finished the season with a 47–35 record and has been seeded sixth in the Western Conference during the 1995 playoffs, became the lowest-seeded team in NBA history to win the title.
The Rockets acquired all-star forward Charles Barkley in 1996, but the existence of three of the NBA’s 50 greatest players of all time (Olajuwon, Drexler, and Barkley) wasn’t sufficient to propel Houston past the Western Conference Finals. Every of the aging trio had left the team by 2001. The Rockets of the early 2000s, led by superstars Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming, followed the trend of consistent routine season respectability followed by playoff underachievement as both players struggled with injuries. After Yao’s early retirement in 2011, the Rockets entered a period of rebuilding, completely dismantling and retooling their roster. The purchase of franchise player James Harden in 2012 has launched the Rockets back to championship contention from the mid-2010s.
Moses Malone, Hakeem Olajuwon, and James Harden have been called the NBA’s Most Valuable Player while playing for the Rockets, for a total of four MVP awards. The Rockets, under general director Daryl Morey, are notable for popularizing the use of complex statistical analytics (similar to sabermetrics in baseball) in player acquisitions and style of play.

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