I love JVG as a person/announcer, I just hated his style basketball and coaching. I really hope he stays in the booth. That is his calling. He's probably the best in the business.
Great read, thanks for the post Clutch. LOL @ VSpan comment. In our defense, watching Rafer every game can make you desperate to find alternatives.
CD always listened a little too much to Rudy T and JVG about the type of players they wanted. Rudy had an obsession with finesse shooting bigs (like he was): Horry, Chilcutt, Langhi, Griffin, Boki, etc JVG's Senior Home: Weatherspoon, Juwan Howard, Mark Jackson, Charles Oakley, Vin Baker, Mutombo, Rod Strickland, Jon Barry, etc CD could bring in guys - but he didn't go around team building on his own.
I think that one big issue was that the Rockets lacked the resources to get complementary players after the McGrady trade. They didn't have 1st round picks in either 2003 or 2004. They had to package the then-youngish trio of Francis, Mobley and Cato for McGrady. They also had not-so-good contracts signed from the latter part of the Rudy years (along with the Juwan Howard contract that they had to take back) clogging up the payroll. Basically, they only had the MLE to spend and no draft picks to fill the holes in the rotation. So, they took a bunch of cheap gambles, got a few useful guys like Sura, Dikembe, Jon Barry, David Wesley, etc. and other guys who didn't work out (Ward, Jackson, Oakley, etc.). The big issue was, for the most part, not whom they went after post-2004-- the league minimum to $2 million-ish kind of FA signings have a high failure rate anyway, whether you are talking about Charles Oakely and Derek Anderson or Marcus Cousin and David Anderson. The big issue was that decisions made during the latter part of the Rudy T era, along with the Tracy McGrady trade, had deprived them of the kind of resources (draft picks, cap flexibility, even expiring contracts) needed to do anything else. As for listening to JVG: It seems like CD did so when signing 10-day/minimum guys like Oakley and Jackson. However, it's hard to imagine that some of the major decisions, like landing Stromile Swift, were JVG-driven moves.
Enjoyed the read. Still don't buy the Spanoulis stuff. He should have been playing and learning on the job. The problem was JVG kept running Rafer out there while Rafer was firing up 3 for 14s and he wouldn't make the definitive move to Spanoulis and let the guy learn. Spanoulis was quicker, faster, saw the floor better and with a better body to play better D with. He needed court time to improve and get in the flow. If I ever say JVG in person, I'd tell him there's no way he can justify having a point guard on the floor shooting in the low 30s and not able to finish in the paint.
You might be right, but no way Clutch goes into a deeper convo on why the guy didn't play...I mean, what happened happened, and there is no need to bring it back over and over again... At the end of the day, VSpan was missing his home country a lot, even if he had earned some playing time would he still have stayed in the US?
My guess that discussion re: current state of the Rockets might just fall within the "several interesting things said that [Clutch thinks] are best left there."
I respect your basketball knowledge and enjoy your posts and all, but I'm going go with Van Gundy on this one.
