I remember ownership had spoken to me and said, “Are you and Pat ready to do this, or should we see if Penny wants to come back and try to reelevate his game and the franchise?” I actually called him once the deal was almost done and asked him one more time, “Is this something you would actually do? And to this day I wish I had just answered that call, and maybe he would have still been in Orlando.
My quad depleted, couldn’t even get the strength in my quad, and then I tried to play on that. I never got the opportunity to be in the same room with [Chris Rock] during the commercials. When you have a floor general like Scotty Skiles, a guy that’s tough, hard-nosed — he finds a way of getting it done. The biggest thing [for] players when they’re young [is] to understand the professional side of the league — the work ethic that’s involved on a daily basis. I sat by Penny on the bus and on plane rides — Penny was kind of moody at times. I wasn’t even worried about Nick. After practice, we had boats and we had WaveRunners and we would ride to one another’s house. Seriously. They finally got over the hump and won back-to-back-to-back championships.
Just give our franchise a shot at winning it all.” To get that far and to accomplish what they accomplished at such an extremely young age, it’s something that people will be proud of for a long time. The fans loved B-Hill and he had just taken us to the Finals and the Eastern Conference finals back-to-back. It was Nick’s time to shine. It was because of me. “I left on a clear conscience,” Grant told the Orlando Sentinel. My cell phone rings right during that time: My dad says, “You know your championships just went to L.A.?”. A lot of people forget about Penny. There were a couple games where they basically just laid down and didn’t play defense. I used to tell him, “Man, you just don’t understand. It’s just fans being passionate. That’s the first thing that came to my mind. The Rockets (47-35) began the playoffs as the 6-seed in the West, with 30-to-1 odds of winning the championship, and they remain the lowest-seeded team to win an NBA championship. No one was doubting his talent, but it was reasonable to argue what was fair market value. Together, they seemed poised to become the NBA’s next dynasty. From that, you saw the potential Penny had, that he could be a real difference maker.
Soon after, Williams agreed to help bring a team to the city. That was [later], in 2001. If he would have met Dream at that time, then Dream would have had problems, but Shaq was still young. If you continue, we'll assume that you accept our privacy policy. Best performers in regular season and playoffs, and most winning team coaches. [In Game 4,] Brian Shaw made one to put Orlando up one and Reggie Miller made one and then Penny made one and then [Rik] Smits hit a shot at the buzzer to win the game. Three months later, half a million. When they made my shoe, this company, Wieden+Kennedy, they said, “You know what? How many 7-foot 300-pounders are there on the team? We had that ability because we were a veteran team, but at the same time we were an aging team, so we couldn’t play out for 82 games.