Houston used to be a sports town.
Just a couple of years ago, you would be hard-pressed to find a better one. In basketball, the Rockets were a perennial contender. In football, the Texans had all of the star power in the world. In baseball, the Astros were a feel-good story, the kind of worst-to-first roller coaster that fans of struggling sports teams dream of.
Now, it’s all gone.
J.J. Watt, the Texans star who helped raise $37 million for Houston residents affected by Hurricane Harvey, was the face of sports in Houston for a decade. Now, he’ll be suiting up in Glendale, Arizona. The other face of the Texans, quarterback Deshaun Watson, wants out too. Barely a year ago, they almost upended the eventual Super Bowl champion, the Kansas City Chiefs, in the playoffs. Now, the team is a laughingstock.
The Rockets have made the playoffs for the last eight years, and the team hasn’t had a losing record for the last 14. But ornery star James Harden forced his way out and is taking his talents to Brooklyn. The Rockets are one of the worst teams of the NBA’s young season.
The Astros are fresh off just missing their third World Series in four years, but the luster is gone. The Astros went from plucky underdog success story to dirty cheaters, placing an asterisk on their World Series victory. The team is now the undisputed villain of baseball.
Sports are so often a turning point for the morale of cities going through tragedy. Steve Gleason’s statue outside of the Superdome immortalizes the first touchdown in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. After the Boston Marathon bombing, David Ortiz told Boston Red Sox fans that “this is our f—ing city” as the team went on to win the World Series that season.
Watt’s Texans, the Astros’ championship, and the Rockets’ sustained success provided that same bounce back in Houston after Hurricane Harvey. Just three years later, it’s all gone. A sports culture that any city would kill for abruptly collapsed, and what’s left of those franchises is left to try and rebuild it all again from the ground up.
