HOUSTON, Texas -- This was the end of a long and winding road to a championship, and now the Houston Rockets were about to discover how utterly demanding these final steps to history would be.
In less than 171 seconds, it would all be over, and a new NBA champion would be crowned. Confetti would rain down from the rafters and a noisy fireworks display would echo all over the Summit. But before those final 2: 51 would expire and the Rockets would finish this Game 7 struggle with the New York Knicks and be christened basketball champions of the world, there wouldn't be a man in a Houston uniform who wouldn't experience the absolute strain required to be the best in the business.
Hakeem Olajuwon was dragging. Kenny Smith was huffing and puffing. There was all this fatigue in the eyes of Olajuwon and Smith, Vernon Maxwell, Otis Thorpe and Robert Horry. They roamed The Summit searching into the deepest recesses of their competitive hearts for something that could carry them past the unyielding Knicks and into the NBA history books with this climatic 90-84 victory.
And now you could see something else a bit deeper into their eyes, something besides fatigue.
It's called hunger.
It was that hunger that overcame all the weary legs and the tired minds. It gave Olajuwon a little more spring to wheel past Patrick Ewing for a breathless jump hook. It put springs in Maxwell's legs when he rose above the floor and swished in a killer three-pointer and the unnerving calm to sink all those crucial free throws, when the Knicks refused to give up on their championship dreams until the bitter end.
And then, at long last, it was over. The Rockets were champions of the world and the Summit could explode in uninhibited joy for a championship they have waited for all their lives.
And in the Rockets' champagne-soaked locker room late last night, Robert Horry took a cool swig of bubbly, then savored the greatest moment of his athletic life.
"Getting here to The Finals and then winning this championship is the toughest thing I've ever done," Horry said. "All I knew in those last minutes was that there was no point in feeling tired, because we knew there was no tomorrow."
This was a Game 7 that refused to be decided until the last nervous moments. The Rockets would spurt out to a seven-point lead, then the Knicks would come back. The Rockets would generate some special play, the Knicks would spring back to life on some improbable spurt of their own.
But then Mad Max sky-walked and popped in that three-pointer that gave the Rockets an 83-75 lead, a shot that Knicks fans will remember forever as the most tormenting moment of this over-achieving season that finished just six lousy points shy of a championship dream.
In New York today, there are probably a load of angry, irrational people who will mention uncomplimentary words like "choke" in the same sentence with the Knicks. If they do, they are all fools.
This was no choke. The Knicks, though never an aesthetically pleasing lot with their grinding defensive style, overachieved to get here and scrambled desperately until the very end, making the Rockets sweat out those last minutes.
The Knicks did not choke, Patrick Ewing did not fall apart, and John Starks was not a bum because his shooting touch sadly abandoned him.
The Knicks simply lost to the better team with the home-court advantage in a seven-game series. But before the Knicks fell, they fought a good fight and forced the Rockets to draw out their best competitive instincts.
"Those last two minutes were the longest of my life," said Kenny Smith. "Those last 4.6 seconds were even longer."
As Smith said this, he was standing courtside with a freshly cut net around his neck and a T-shirt with "World Champions" plastered across his chest. And now, the wait didn't seem so long anymore.
