The journeyman wasn’t a terrific player, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t terrific.
When I was a kid growing up in New York in the late ‘90s and early aughts, it wasn’t easy being a Rockets fan. Once the Olajuwon-Barkley-Drexler-Pippen team split up, the franchise dipped into obscurity, save for some Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley highlights on SportsCenter.
I didn’t get to watch much. Before League Pass and the Internet, I only got to watch the Rockets on SportsCenter and the occasional national TV game. In the years between Hakeem and Yao, only Stevie Franchise’s explosiveness gave TV programmers a reason to put Houston on the schedule.