During a quiet moment recently, Dallas Mavericks assistant coach Del Harris fondly studied the players in an old photograph hanging on his wall.

“Forty-four days of sheer joy,” Harris beamed. “That’s what we had together.”

The picture is of the 1980-81 Houston Rockets, the last team with a losing record (40-42) to win a conference championship and reach the NBA Finals.

Only one other team had scaled such heights. In 1958-59, an extraordinary rookie named Elgin Baylor led the Minneapolis Lakers into the Finals following a 33-39 regular season. But the league consisted of only eight franchises then – two divisions of four teams. A team had to finish last to miss the playoffs.

What Houston accomplished in a 23-team league in ’81 was truly spectacular. Perhaps everyone should have known something special was happening when the Rockets rocked the playoffs’ very foundation by flabbergasting the reigning NBA champion Lakers in the first round, twice on the road. They then defeated the San Antonio Spurs and the Kansas City Kings to advance to the Finals. Although they played valiantly, they fell to the Celtics and their fabulous second-year forward Larry Bird.

But what a run.

Harris’ eyes moved slowly from face to face on the team photograph, and he did not rush his thoughts. Not surprisingly, his first focus was on two players who later became head coaches – Mike Dunleavy, now with the Clippers, and former Rockets and Lakers head man, Rudy Tomjanovich.

“Dunleavy and Rudy T were great guys to have on any team,” Harris said. “Both went on to be assistants for me before becoming head coaches.”

Harris continued his review.

"Moses Malone, his greatness wasn’t recognized, although he’d already won an MVP award. He’s still probably the least heralded all-time great player: three MVPs, the fifth all-time scorer, one of the great rebounders. We keep in touch to this day. I’ve already promised him playoff tickets.”

He eyed a couple of guards, and the others in the shot.

“Tom Henderson, tough as nails. We had one of those mutual respects, something that never had to be vocalized by either one of us.

“Calvin Murphy, by far the best sixth man in the game, before they started handing out an award for it. "Downtown" Freddie Brown in Seattle was the only one close to Murph. Allen Leavell, Billy Paultz, Robert Reid, all had very respectable careers in the NBA.”

And yet, little was expected of those Rockets – until the entire team hopped aboard some magic carpet before the last five games of the regular season and rode it all the way to Murphy’s leg injury deep into the Finals.

Those “44 days of sheer joy” qualify the 1980-81 Rockets as the greatest Cinderella story in NBA history.

During the 1998 season, Tomjanovich, then coaching in Houston called his Rockets together following a shootaround in Oakland and spoke to them about their 1980-81 predecessors. Beleaguered by injuries and accused of being too old, that year’s Rockets struggled to stay above .500 most of the season while capturing the eighth and final playoff spot in the West.

Drawing the obvious comparisons between the two teams, Tomjanovich told his players, “In ’81, everybody talked about us being old, about how we were going to get run off the court by younger, faster teams.

“We really weren’t a very good team then, but we got into a style of play that was really uncomfortable for the teams that faced us in the playoffs.

“We were very slow and didn’t want to get caught up in a running game. I think for that reason we were probably the best in the league at getting back on defense. Our big guys like Moses and Billy Paultz busted their butts to get down court, and once we started forcing teams like the Lakers and Spurs into a half-court game, we frustrated them. They got completely out of rhythm.”

Almost until the very end, the 40-42 regular season had been as ho-hum as most during the Rockets’ early history. The franchise had moved from San Diego for the 1971-72 season and spent much of its time toying with .500.

The 1976-77 Rockets first piqued the city’s curiosity – with a young and hungry Malone acquired from Buffalo during the season and Rudy T in his prime, John Lucas dishing the ball, and Murphy wearing down defender after defender with 18-foot jumpers.

But, by 1980-81, the Rockets seemed mired in frustrating mediocrity. Of their 40 regular season victories, only 11 were against teams with winning records. Nearly one-third of their victories (13) came against the league’s four division cellar dwellers (including six over the expansion Dallas Mavericks).

Of the 23 teams, 12 entered the playoffs, six in each conference. Games were usually high-scoring affairs – better than one-third of the league averaged 110 points or more per game, with lowest-scoring Detroit still managing 99.7. The 3-point shot was in its second NBA season, but few coaches implemented it into their game plans. In addition, today’s sophisticated, rotating defenses had yet to emerge.

In Houston, the Rockets’ red glare lagged noticeably behind the popularity of the football Oilers and baseball Astros. The Oilers had a coach, Bum Phillips, who really did wear a cowboy hat, and a phenomenal running back, Earl Campbell, who was usually running over somebody. The Astros’ star was a 33-year-old right-hander from nearby Alvin named Nolan Ryan. And yes, he really did ride horses.

They were true Texas heroes, symbols of such cherished Lone Star traditions as hard work, grit and the macho mystique. For those very reasons, Malone should have won the hearts of the Houston fans. What hard hat at any oil refinery, what ship-channel dock worker, what human existing anywhere in the city where the sweat never sleeps could not have admired Moses’ unrelenting work ethic?

But they didn’t – until the 1980-81 playoffs. Moses was the heart and the muscle of that team. Murphy was their spirit and Rudy T was their gallant, beat-up veteran. Although he had two years remaining on his contract, this was to be Tomjanovich’s last go-around as a player.

For the better part of the season, Harris had searched for some spark, some way to elevate the Rockets to find another level. Following a late-season loss to the Celtics, he decided to slow down the tempo and go to a bigger lineup. He sat Tomjanovich and inserted Paultz, an incredible hulk who must have been dieting the day he was officially weighed at 245 pounds. Harris also inserted Dunleavy at guard.

“We ran on opportunity,” Harris said, “but we primarily became a half-court team from that point on.”

What followed was a rash of less-than-flattering nicknames – Ugly Ball, the Water Buffalo lineup, and soon, quite simply, Rocket Ball.

“For a year and a half, we averaged 110 points a game in Houston,” Harris said, “but from that point on, I was labeled a half-court, slow-down guy. I still have that reputation today, even though (my teams are) among the league leaders in scoring every year.”

Late in the season, the Rockets managed to reach the .500 mark, then proceeded to lose five straight.

“Everybody gave up on us,” Harris said. “With five games left, we felt we had to win them all. We won the first four, including a close one over the Lakers.”

Cable television was in its infancy and satellite dishes were rare. The days when you could get hourly updates and highlights had not yet arrived, so it was not until the morning of the last game that Harris learned of the Rockets’ fate. When he awoke in his San Antonio hotel room, he received a call informing him that Golden Sate had lost on the West Coast the night before – meaning the Rockets clinched a playoff spot by one game even if they lost to the Spurs that night. They were, indeed, routed and entered the playoffs with their same old ho-hum reputation.

Their prize? The opportunity to face the champion Lakers of Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in what was then a best-of-three first round.

Dunleavy recalls the Rockets clinging to an old NBA adage as the playoffs began.

“We went to L.A. with the idea that if we could just win the first one, maybe we could steal the series,” said Dunleavy.

The Rockets rattled Pat Riley’s “Showtime” Lakers just enough to pull out a 111-107 victory. With a chance to revive the Lakers in the closing seconds, Magic drove down the lane and, expecting contact from Henderson, pulled up and tried a high, soft floater. But the crafty Henderson leaned away from Magic, and the shot never reached the rim.

When the Lakers won Game 2 in Houston, every logical thinking NBA follower assumed the earth was again as round as a basketball and life was back to normal. No way the Rockets could win a deciding Game 3. Not in L.A. and certainly not twice in one week. The Lakers had been 30-11 at home that year. The Rockets were 15-26 on the road.

But Ugly Ball prevailed. The Lakers fell completely out of sync, and Houston rode Malone’s 23-point effort to a shocking 89-86 victory – the lowest-scoring game in what would become a phenomenal 21-game Rocket playoff run.

Through the entire decade of the ‘80s, the Lakers reached the NBA Finals all but twice, winning four championships. Houston eliminated them in both instances, the second in 1985-86 behind another pair of Twin Towers – Hakeem Olajuwon and Ralph Sampson.

“Once we beat the Lakers, the fans in Houston really started getting into it,” Dunleavy recalled. “That sort of sent notice out to the rest of the league.”

Next up were the Spurs, who featured the double-pumping ballet of George Gervin, who never seemed to shoot the same shot twice, and the inside muscle of “Bruise Brothers” Dave Corzine and Mark Olberding, as well as a rough-and-tumble bench. Again, the Rockets were heavy underdogs.

“The Spurs made it so public how glad they were that we beat the Lakers,” Harris said. “But we split the first two there, and the next two in Houston, and then Moses and Murph were just great in Game 5 and we were able to win it in San Antonio.”

But the Spurs came back to even the series with another road victory in Houston, setting up a deciding seventh game in San Antonio’s HemisFair Arena. Few places in NBA history have ever been wilder or woollier than HemisFair in the days of the “Baseline Bums” and the mariachi bands.

“I kept using the newspapers,” Harris said. “The Spurs were saying they had dodged the bullet; now they were back home. Nobody gave us a chance to win for the third time in San Antonio that series.”

Moses came down with a horrible flu and missed the shootaround the morning of Game 7, and Harris was not sure his star would have the stamina to even walk on the floor that night.

Harris feared San Antonio might get off to a hot start and ignite an already excitable full house. For the first time since the opening month of the season, he inserted Murphy into the starting lineup. Little Calvin had scored 32 in Game 2 and 36 in Game 5, both victories at HemisFair.

“You own these rims,” Harris told him. “You can’t miss here.”

With Moses in the low post on one side spotting up Reid and Dunleavy, Murphy worked the pick and roll all night with Paultz on the weak side.

“They never covered it,” Harris said.

Murphy slipped into a zone and awoke with 42 points, leading the Rockets to a 105-100 victory.

“That was one of the greatest series in NBA history, with the last four games being won on the road,” Harris said. “But it was mainly tape-delayed on television. Hardly anybody got to see it.”

Kansas City, with Otis Birdsong and Phil Ford ailing, were no match in the Western Conference Finals, although their presence in the series was almost as incredible a story as the Rockets were building. Like Houston, Kansas City finished the season with a 40-42 mark, won the first-round mini-series by winning twice in Portland, then advanced to the Conference Finals by defeating the Phoenix Suns, who had the best record in the West during the regular season.

There could be only one Cinderella story, however, and with Malone anchoring the middle, the Rockets were simply too dominant. They won the series in five games.

Only Bird and the Celtics remained in the way – and they were the one road block the Rockets could not overcome.

Coming into the Finals, the Rockets had lost 12 in a row to the Celtics, and Bird made it 13 in Game 1 when, after missing an 18-footer he snagged the rebound in mid-air and slipped in a left-handed 12-footer as his momentum carried him out of bounds.

But Houston stole Game 2 behind Moses offense and Reid’s stifling defense on Bird. A split in The Summit sent them back to Boston for Game 5. But a leg injury drastically hobbled Murphy, putting him on the sidelines as the Celtics clinched the championship in Game 6.

By then, the Rockets had already left their imprint on NBA history. Their seven road playoff victories in one year was a league record until the 1994-95 Rockets won nine times.

The team did not win a championship, but the photograph still hangs on Harris’ office wall. The 1980-81 Rockets were a coach’s dream, putting everything together at precisely the right time and proving that absolutely anything can happen once you’ve reached the NBA playoffs.