The Rockets’ Entire Aesthetic Stems From The ‘Chappelle’s Show’ Prince Sketch

In 2004, basketball was still all about the midrange and big men dominating in the paint. The Shaq-Kobe Lakers were still the league’s most dominant team, with the rugged Detroit Pistons emerging in the East behind a bruising style. Then, on February 18, 2004, the tide began turning, unwittingly, leading to the emergence 16 years later of the greatest small-ball experiment in NBA history.

On that day, Chappelle’s Show aired the legendary Charlie Murphy’s True Hollywood Stories Prince sketch, in which Prince and The Revolution took down Charlie Murphy and friends in a game of basketball at Prince’s house.

There are a number of legendary lines from that episode, but none have had more influence on folks playing ball at every level than Prince yelling, “Shoot the J. Shoot it!” after flinging a no-look pass to the corner where a worse teammate hesitated to put up the shot.

It was in this moment that the NBA’s analytics movement was born. Daryl Morey, two years away from becoming the Houston Rockets assistant GM, was a year into working for the Celtics as their SVP of Operations at the time and had an awakening. He clearly saw Chappelle’s Prince, a dominant, isolation player capable of hitting stepbacks and attacking the rim with size and skill, destroying the opposition with a five-out look around him. He saw lesser players being encouraged to fire away three-pointers, knowing the math advantage was there. There was no traditional center, but they all switched and screened in perfect, positionless, Prince-y bliss.

Fourteen years later, he finally was able to put together a team in this image. Harden as Prince. P.J. Tucker as Micki Free. Russ as the guy in the tiger print shirt. All willing to play whatever role was needed for the good of the team.

— Robby Kalland (@RKalland) August 24, 2020

On top of all of the clearly defined historical basketball influence of the sketch, I’m also like 90% sure P.J. Tucker, James Harden, and Russell Westbrook have worn these exact outfits to a game this season.

Game, blouses.