Mario Elie is still stopped to celebrate the moment, but the achievement was so grand, the memory so cherished, he is identified not by his name but with a reference to that one magnificent shot.
There are touchstones collected on the way to championships that resonate even decades later. The Rockets’ consecutive championship years brought the birth of “Clutch City.” They culminated with the “Heart of a Champion.”
Elie produced the “Kiss of Death,” a triumph that still has him stopped around Houston “all the time.”
“It’s pretty cool,” Elie said. “People remember that. They tell me where they were. They don’t call me Mario. They say, ‘Hey, ‘Kiss of Death.’ That’s my new name.
“It’s pretty cool, me being in my late 50s and people still remembering that moment and being part of that special group and helping bring this great city its first championship.”
Elie, 56, was in his fifth NBA season, his second with the Rockets, when he sank his career-defining corner 3-pointer to beat the Suns in the 1995 second round 25 years ago Wednesday.
When he did, giving the Rockets a 103-100 lead in the closing seconds of Game 7 in Phoenix, he marked the occasion by pressing three fingers to his lips and blowing a kiss goodbye to the Suns’ bench and particularly to reserve center Joe Kleine.
“I saw the shot and it was a Hollywood movie, just hanging in the air,” former Rockets Kenny Smith said of the moment long before he became one of the faces of TNT’s Inside the NBA. “I was just waiting and waiting and waiting. And it went in.”
Suns guard Kevin Johnson, who had made his first 21 free throws, had missed his second attempt, leaving the game tied. The Rockets came out of a timeout and got the ball to Smith. When the Suns had Danny Ainge join Johnson in trapping Smith, the Rockets had them.
“I expected it,” Smith said. “My whole concentration was thinking, if it was me, the first thing I was going to do was have one trap. Coming out of the huddle, I was saying to myself, ‘Do not throw this damn ball away when they come to trap you.’ I kept saying that in my head. So, I kept telling Robert (Horry) to keep coming towards me. I didn’t want to make a long, cross-court pass and they steal it and lay it in.
“Once I got the ball to Robert, I knew they would be in scramble mode. I was like, “Oh perfect.’ Robert is a pretty good ballhandler. We’re out of the woods. I was so relieved once I got it to him.”
Horry caught Smith’s pass a few feet inside the midcourt line and lofted his pass to Elie, alone in the opposite corner.
“Ainge started on me,” Elie said. “He ran to the backcourt and everybody spaced out pretty good. Robert sort of went to the frontcourt. Clyde (Drexler) sort of flashed middle. Dream (Hakeem Olajuwon) was under the basket and I was on the far corner. Kenny, being the point guard he is, made the correct decision. I know two guys they weren’t going to leave were Clyde and Dream.
“He said it wasn’t a great pass; it was my great athleticism going up to get it. But it was a good pass. I just had to jump a little bit.”
Ainge rushed back from the backcourt, but never came close. Center Danny Schayes was the closest defender but was not about to leave Olajuwon alone under the basket.
“If he did leave Dream, I would have just lobbed it to him,” Elie said. “Once I got the pass, I said, ‘I got time to set my feet, get my shot off.’ That’s what I did. It was sort of a late contest. At that point, I was just worried about my shot. But if I had missed it, Dream was right there to put it back in.
“Everything worked out. The shot felt good leaving my hands. And the ‘Kiss of Death’ came out of that shot.”
Elie nailed his shot over Schayes with 7.1 seconds remaining.
“I told him he was a wicked man,” Olajuwon said that day. “He didn’t just go for two. He went for the 3.”
The Rockets sent Ainge to the line and when he tried to miss his second free throw, he banked it in. The Rockets had come back from a 3-1 deficit to the Suns for the second-consecutive season, finishing off a great series thought to be typical of what the Rockets had become.
The term “Clutch City” had been invented in Phoenix the year before when the Rockets rallied from down 0-2 to tie the series with a pair of road wins. The win was another example of clutch.
But even before the final comeback, the series required the fortitude that had marked the first championship run.
“It was hard,” Elie said. “We were down 3-1 on the road and Clyde is sick. One of the top 50 greatest players and a guy we count on quite a bit, and we knew the situation, got to win two out of three on the road, and our second-best player is not at 100 percent. We had to step up. Just him showing up sort of lifted the team. This dude looked terrible.”
Charles Barkley had declared the Suns to be “Buttkicking, Inc.” before the series began and when the Suns went up, 3-1, he wrote on the blackboard “Back in business.” But the Rockets won Game 5, 103-97 and they were on their way. They blew out the Suns in Houston and returned to Phoenix for Game 7.
“We were a championship team,” Smith said. “We had an ability to always believe. That started when the whole city was calling us chokers (in 1994). We weren’t sure ourselves if we were. But we saw those headlines, ‘Choke City.’ We decided, we will not be that.”
When Elie nailed his shot, the Rockets had again conquered the Suns. When Elie turned and saw Kleine, he celebrated.
“In a series, guys are always going at each other,” he said. “Kisses were being blown back and forth since Game 5. I got the ultimate kiss, staring him down. As I watched the video, it was funny. I was so locked in on him, I barely could feel my teammates jumping on me. I was so in the moment. I see Sam (Cassell) jumping on me. Chucky Brown. Clyde just laughing.
“It was a great moment. I’ll never forget it.”
He may never get the chance, with reminders coming often even if they don’t always include his name.
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Mario Elie: They don't call me Mario. It's 'Hey, Kiss of Death.' - Houston Chronicle
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