In the previous 22 chapters of this series we looked back at the history of the Rochester Royals’ transformation into the Houston Oilers and the Oilers’ subsequent successes and failures in their new home; the short but eventful lives of the IBL and the ABA as they both attempted to supplant the NBA as the dominant force in pro basketball; Houston’s back- to-back 1989 and 1990 NBA league titles; their painful 1991 NBA Finals loss to the New York Knicks; their premature exit from the 1992 NBA postseason; their return to the top of the mountain with their 1993 NBA Finals victory over the Chicago Bulls; their triumphant rematch against the Knicks in the ’94 NBA Finals; the departure of Michael Jordan to Chicago as a free agent; the Oilers’ 1995 NBA Finals victory against the Indiana Pacers; their defeat by the Bulls in the 1996 NBA Finals; their stunning early exit from the ’97 NBA playoffs; the opening of the Enron Center; the Oilers’ controversial 1998 Finals loss to the Bulls; the consequences of the NBA’s first-ever lockout for Houston’s performance during the ’98- ’99 season; the abrupt name change for the Oilers’ home arena triggered by the Enron scandal; the arrival of Chinese pro basketball sensation Yao Ming in the NBA; the team’s response to 9/11; Yao’s debut season with the Oilers; and Houston’s 2003 NBA Western Conference playoff run. In this installment we’ll look at the Oilers’ disappointing 2003-04 and 2004-05 seasons and the franchise’s efforts to get back on track for the ’05-’06 season .

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The less said about Houston’s 2003-04 NBA season the better-- at least as far as Oilers fans are concerned. Yao Ming, then in his sophomore year with Houston, was one of the few bright spots in a largely unproductive season for the franchise. While Yao was taking a step forward in his evolution as a player, the rest of the team seemed to be moving three steps backward in theirs. The Oilers commenced their 2003-04 campaign with a nine-game losing streak and was already twelve games under .500 before the season was two weeks old. When Houston blew a 20-point halftime lead in a pre-Thanksgiving game against the San Antonio Heat and wound up losing that game by eight points in overtime, rumors began flying thick and fast that Oilers head coach Mike Fratello had one foot out the door and the other on a banana peel.

The rumors only grew after a six-game losing streak right before Christmas knocked the Oilers into last place in the NBA Midwest division. At a time when by all rights Houston should have been taking control of its destiny in the division, it was instead floundering at the bottom rung of the NBA ladder, and it seemed like everybody except the monkeys at the Houston Zoo were clamoring for Fratello to be replaced as head coach. But things began turning around right after New Year’s Day, when the Oilers took off on a surge of wins that knocked the rest of the Midwest Division on its ear....

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....and put it back in the thick of the playoff hunt just in time for Valentine’s Day. By the All-Star break, the Oilers had clawed their way back to a respectable third place in the Midwest Division standings and some of the more optimistic members of the Houston fan community were even starting to cherish a modest hope of finishing second in the division. But a 25-point blowout at the hands of the Knicks at Madison Square Garden let the air out of that balloon; the loss sent Houston into a tailspin that would last most of the final month of the ’03-’04 regular season.

The Oilers were officially eliminated from playoff contention with a 117-116 overtime defeat against the Celtics in Boston. It was a heartbreaking and somewhat ironic end to a season which had seen Yao Ming improve greatly as a player and in some quarters be touted as a possible Finals MVP come the postseason. A noticeably agitated Mike Fratello answered “No comment” when asked about his future with Houston-- which turned out to be a wise move, because back at the Sonic Center the Oilers team ownership was debating a possible coaching change in the off-season. They’d hired Fratello for the specific purpose of bringing the NBA league championship back to Houston, and so far he hadn’t delivered on that front. As far as some members of the Oilers front office were concerned, he was skating on the thinnest of thin ice.

In the end the brass elected to keep Fratello as head coach for the ’04-’05 season, but they made it crystal clear to him he was living on borrowed time. One more season of missing the brass ring, and he was gone for good. With that stark warning, the book was officially closed on one NBA campaign....

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...and opened on another as the Oilers steeled themselves for what promised to be a grueling ’04-’05 season. The Dallas Mavericks and the San Antonio Heat were becoming genuine Western Conference powers, the Lakers were returning to their old form with Kobe Bryant having become one of the greatest superstars in the NBA, and even the chronically underachieving Clippers were starting to show signs of life. In short, Houston would have to climb a very steep and rugged mountain in order to accomplish the goal of bringing the O’Brien Trophy back to the Energy City.

The Oilers began learning how steep that mountain would be when they lost their season opener at New Orleans by 17 points. The Bobcats basically ran circles around Houston at both ends of the court, and to add insult to injury(literally) Mike Fratello had to leave the game during the third quarter to receive medical attention after getting hit with a beer bottle thrown at him from the stands. His assistants were left trying to turn things around for the Oilers in the fourth quarter, and unfortunately for them it was a job they couldn’t get done. Almost as soon as the final buzzer sounded in the Louisiana Superdome Houston sportswriters started predicting that Fratello’s days as Oilers head coach were numbered.

And it didn’t help his cause any when Houston dropped three of its next four road games. Even Yao Ming, for all his great and undeniable talent on the court, couldn’t single-handedly pull the Oilers out of the funk they’d slipped into; by Christmas Eve they were already teetering on the verge of being eliminated from NBA playoff contention. Rumors flew thick and fast about the Houston head coaching position, naming everybody from former head coaches Rick Pitino and Bill Fitch to the Sonic Center night janitor as a potential successor to Mike Fratello.

But around New Year’s Day weekend, the Oilers caught fire with a 117-110 home win against the Lakers that turned the team’s fortunes around with a vengeance. That victory sparked a twelve- game winning streak which in turn led to a surge in team morale, which led to still more wins and a return to the playoff hunt for Fratello and company. By Valentine’s Day Houston had vaulted into a second-place tie with Dallas in the Midwest Division. In early March the Oilers clinched the number 2 seed in the 2005 Western Conference playoffs with a 40-point home blowout of the Detroit Pistons; all across the country sportswriters began to turn their attention towards Houston’s impending first-round series with the Sacramento Kings, eagerly waiting to see how Mike Fratello fared in his latest postseason campaign.

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At first the Oilers seemed to be on track to run the table all the way to the 2005 NBA Finals. They swept the San Antonio Heat in the first round of the Western Conference playoffs and won their second round series against the Minnesota Cyclones in six games. But in the ’06 Western Conference finals, Houston’s irresistible force ran into the immovable object of a white-hot Dallas Mavericks team that was looking to redeem itself in the wake of its 2003 NBA Finals loss to the Miami Marlins. Dallas’ most reliable scorer, German-born superstar Dirk Nowitzki, was a particular source of concern for the Houston coaching staff: he’d been a major Oilers nemesis from the day he first arrived in the NBA, and there was no reason to think that would change when the Oilers and Mavs squared off in the Western Conference finals. If anything, the smart money said he would probably be even more dangerous with a potential NBA Finals berth at stake.

Unfortunately for Houston fans, the smart money turned out to be right. Nowitzki lit the Oilers up for 48 points in a 119- 93 Mavericks victory in the conference finals opener and another 39 points in a 131-100 blowout of Houston in the second game of the series. By the time the series shifted to the Sonic Center for Game 3, Mike Fratello’s coaching job seemed to be hanging by the proverbial thread; the thread would snap altogether after the Oilers lost Game 4 in overtime 124-118. That Game 4 defeat paved the way for Houston’s eventual elimination from the postseason with a 95-71 Dallas win in Game 5-- and set the Oilers ownership looking for fresh blood to replace Fratello as head coach.

Two weeks after the Oilers lost the ’05 Western Conference finals Fratello was sacked; the ink had barely dried on the press release announcing his termination before speculation started to run rampant in the media about who his successor might be. There was a great deal of public sentiment in favor of bringing Oscar Robertson back to Houston to become the new Oilers head ooach; it was thought that Robertson’s passion for the game and experience in dealing with high-pressure playoff situations might be exactly what Houston needed to regain the NBA league championship.

Ultimately, however, Houston ended up turning to one of their other past greats to take over the head coach’s position: Jerry Lucas. It was a decision made partially out of practical considerations and partly out of a desire to eliminate the last traces of ill will remaining from the team’s controversial trade of Lucas to Cincinnati more than three decades earlier. But the Big O would eventually be returning to the Oilers payroll-- one of Lucas’ first moves as new Oilers head coach was to recruit his old teammate as a strength and conditioning advisor for the 2005- 06 NBA season.

From there the Lucas-Robertson tandem turned to analyzing the next NBA amateur draft class in search of that key player who could act as a cornerstone for a future Oilers championship run. In particular they were looking for someone to bolster Houston’s defense, which over the past three seasons had been a source of consternation both for fans and for the team’s front office. Last but not least Lucas and Robertson sent Oilers scouts to Europe and China to survey the professional basketball scene abroad for talented free agents who might be interested in coming to America to bring their skills to the NBA.

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The first fruits of the Lucas-Robertson team’s labors would ripen in the 2005-06 season opener, when Houston squared off with the Cleveland Cavaliers at Quicken Loans Arena. The Oilers jumped out to a 17-point lead in the early minutes of the first quarter and stretched that lead to 25 points before the quarter was over; by halftime Houston enjoyed a 31-point edge over Cleveland, an edge they would retain the rest of the night. Even with LeBron James raining down buckets with the same talents he’d one day be taking to South Beach, the Cavs couldn’t seem to catch up: the Oilers won the game by 22 points to kick off what would become a nine-game win streak.

By the time the season reached the six-week mark, the Oilers were neck-and-neck with Dallas for the top spot in the overall Western Conference standings and were maintaining a respectable six-game lead in the NBA Midwest division. And the team was also enjoying a healthy run of success off the court: a Forbes article published just before Christmas 2005 ranked Houston as the third- most profitable franchise in the NBA. The computer game leviathan Electronic Arts put Yao Ming front and center on the cover of the box for their hit Xbox game NBA 2K6 and watched as initial sales of the game went through the roof. The Rice and Baylor admissions offices were deluged with applications from prospective students who wanted to be close to the Oilers phenomenon-- or play for the Oilers themselves one day....