The gulf of Houston By Adrian Wojnarowski Friday, May 18, 2007 5:57 pm EDT SAN ANTONIO -- Les Alexander never did find Jeff Van Gundy's grinding basketball style, nor his doom and gloom coaching persona, very endearing. The Houston Rockets owner preferred his team to be running, as well as his coach to be chipper and encouraging about the Rockets with the television cameras rolling. Well, whomever Alexander thought he hired four years ago, he must have done his research on the wrong guy. In a meeting last spring, Alexander told Van Gundy that the coach was damaging his business, one league source said. In the end, the gulf between management and Van Gundy was too deep to repair a relationship that had deteriorated over the past two years. The Rockets wanted to fire him, and he wanted to leave, but together they did a strange sort of dance in the two weeks since Houston's season ended with another first-round playoff exit. The team didn't want the P.R. hit of firing a coach whom had done a Coach of the Year-worthy job, and Van Gundy was hesitant to walk out for the second time as a pro coach. Still, one league executive with ties to Alexander said, "Les really grew to dislike Jeff," and nothing ever did get past that truth. Finally on Friday, it was over. Alexander has Rick Adelman waiting to take over as coach, and thus, the end officially came for Van Gundy. After rejecting two overtures for contract extensions during the regular season, Alexander and new general manager Daryl Morey believed what Van Gundy was privately telling people: The coach wanted out. After several meetings with ownership since losing to the Jazz in seven games in the Western Conference playoffs, Van Gundy did lay out some circumstances with which he would've been willing to stay on the job. Only, it was never going to happen. There were still too many fundamental differences in opinions on the roster and the style of play. Alexander wanted to play fast with an un-athletic team and 7-foot-6 Yao Ming, a choice that would've all but made obsolete a center who had been the league's dominant player until breaking his leg last December. For example, management liked Kirk Snyder, but Van Gundy considered him a mistake-prone player and didn't trust to use him in the playoff rotation. After losing to Utah, it didn't help the coach's case that Yao expressed frustration to a Chinese newspaper about Van Gundy failing to play Snyder in the series. Van Gundy didn't have much of a working relationship with outgoing G.M. Carroll Dawson and had been thrust with a new G.M., Morey, who was a product of the Bill James school of statistical analysis. For now, Adelman brings the cachet of extraordinary success with the Blazers and Kings. Only Michael Jordan's Bulls kept him from a title in Portland, and Shaq's Lakers from the NBA finals with the Kings. In 14 seasons, Adelman, who was fired in 2006 in Sacramento, never missed the playoffs. Perhaps it is inevitable that Van Gundy will coach again, but expect him to stay out in the near future. He has shown considerable promise as a television analyst for TNT in the past, and ESPN is using him in these playoffs. His family has enjoyed life in Houston and Van Gundy has said that he doesn't want to uproot his oldest daughter out of school. For now, the Rockets get to start over with a cheerful, offensive-minded coach. It's Alexander's team, his business, and he has his man now. http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/blog/nba_experts/post/The-gulf-of-Houston?urn=nba,33123
He wasn't fired, they just did not renew his contract. Their next hire, Eric Musselman, proved to be a debacle.
i'm trying not to wake up my family, but i laughed out loud on this one with that picture i posted of him stuck in my mind.
Looks like the same reason JVG is gone. The owner(s) just didn't like him. http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2439143 Owners should be hands off, IMO.
Because he couldn't get his team over the hump and the ownership wanted a more defensive minded coach. Sounds eerily familiar(with offensive swapped for defensive), and it didn't work out so well in Sacto.
if he shoots 4 of those in a half court game. he would probaly shoot those 10 times a game. whenever rafer shoots those, its basicaly a turnover.
One convenient omission in the article was the part about not missing playoffs in 14 seasons... that isonly true if you ignore Adelman's years in Golden State (between Portland and Sacramento). My take... Adelman is very good at managing talent level and egos when the team is loaded with talent (especially offensive talent). My other take... Houston ownership and management looks horrible because of this.
Very much a similar siutation... the details a bit different (with Adelman it's the owner thinking they didn't play their best defensively under him). The bottomline, though, is that the owners in both situations thought the coach didn't get the most out of his wonderful players and decided to try someone else. The creative difference is such that it became clear that coach and ownership really didn't see eye to eye. Adrian W. is right... given the distrust between Les and Jeff, it's time to move on for both of them. I still think Les is a bit delusional if he thought guys like Kirk Snyder is the solution (and yes, Yao is a bit delusional, too.... he also thought Span was like Nash early in the year, no?)... if Snyder is so great... perhaps he wouldn't have come so cheap after being rejected by both Sloan and Scott? But in any case, I give Alexander and Morey credit for hiring Adelman, a very very good coach to succeed Jeff, rather than go the way of the Maloofs and hiring an Eric Musselman. Hopefully, they'll trust Adelman enough to listen to him this time around. So far, I like the fact that Morey realizes an upgrade is needed and it's on him to bring that in.
