ummm, rudy got cancer and had to leave before "the collapse." while it was against fairly sorry teams, we had just won 5 in a row and were in the playoffs when he left. then larry came in and it fell to pieces. now onto krosfyah and Mr. Clutch...
Please. This is not exactly JVG's hand-picked team. 1. He took whoever he had to take (e.g. Spoon) to get rid of the holdovers he had to get rid of (e.g. Moochie). 2. He accepted whatever throw-ins he had to accept (e.g. Howard, Lue, Gaines) to get the star he wanted (McGrady). It's getting a lot closer to being his hand-picked team. But there's a lot of residual garbage to be discarded or replaced at the next opportunity. I'm far more persuaded by the criticisms of his temperament than by the criticisms of his judgment in changing or managing the roster.
I like the direction JVG has taken in regards to Yao. Even though he's struggling now, Yao has tried to become a more physical, low post scorer. If Rudy was still the coach, I think he would have tried to maximize Yao's natural 'finesse' abilities instead.
wrong true. i mean, we didn't break up the defending champions and bring in drexler. and then one year removed from back to back titles, we didn't break it up and bring in barkley. and we didn't make a huge trade for francis. no big trades from us, that's for sure. yao had been there one year. 2 years previous we completely overachieve to win 45. no tangible results? jvg's been here one year, what's his claim to fame? 2 extra wins last year and .500 ball this year? and boy are they taking us places. what did he not get out of francis and barkley. pippen okay, but barkley strolled in, put up 19 and 13 on our way to the conference finals and became our best player over hakeem in time. francis went to 3 all-star games. like call coaches, rudy needed a great player to win. however, when rudy took over, we were under .500 in the middle of the season. two and a half years later, we won the title. this wasn't phil jackson coming to a 61 win laker team with kobe making his ascent from HSer to HOFer and winning the title. there wasn't even guaranteed success in our future, much less titles. we only added role players like cassell and horry, and as rookies no less. rudy should be given quite a bit of credit for our turnaround. brilliant. hey, what's a common complaint about yao now? that he doesn't get enough touches and shots. it's hard to get yao the ball and yao makes it hard. yao was a rookie when rudy had him. he didn't even look like he knew how to play basketball his first few weeks with us. surely you don't argue yao was even close to where he is at now, where he still doesn't get enough shots. but yeah, it completely debunks the theory. rudy didn't make rookie yao dominate. throw him out. and of course he would've sucked with tmac, because ummm...well he would've sucked. superstars are what rudy is good at. we now have a couple (well more like 1.5 but the point remains). face it, we let rudy go through the rebuilding after hakeem, charles, and drexler all left with nothing in return, and then handed jvg yao and tmac once all the bad times were gone. a little different don't you think? i dislike it for the same reason. i'm starting to like it more b/c it's starting to focus and concentrate on yao and tmac much more. and we actually score more now. wow, quite a bold statement there. you like the years after rebuilding more than the rebuilding years. we lost 3 HOFers for nothing b/c they just retired (hakeem essentially did b/c we just traded him for a TE) and pippen for cato and walt williams. what a shock that we had to go through a period of restocking talent. but we still had winning records the two years we weren't completely decimated by injuries. we don't even have a winning record right now with tmac and yao. coming off a championship? with several guys on the team not liking it?
thats a great quote. "rudy had his chance". the fact that the guy brought a city that had nothing to really cheer for, 2 championships, and really united the city where you could go anywhere and talk about the rockets, i think he should have been the tommy lasorda of basketball. you guys act like its an easy thing to aquire talent, and hope that all these players who you have never seen play together before the day they put on the jersey, can fit and play well together. 4 years is not a long time in rebuild years, and we barely missed the playoffs in most of those years. giving a 2x nba championship coach 4 years to get us where we expect to be every year was a sh1tty way to see him off. and i dont think rudy is loyal to a bad combination as you say. just because he didnt make the moves that some of you wanted long ago doesnt mean that he is loyal to a fault. if you remember, rudy traded a valuable part of a defending nba champion to aquire clyde drexler, who without, we probably wouldnt have defended our crown. he also traded a big part of those teams to pheonix to aquire barkley. i think the difference is that rudy had a couple of guys he believed in, and knew that just because he wasnt in the playoffs every year didnt mean that he thought he should give up on them because this team was done getting better or adding players that could make it better.
That's my point exactly. JVG shouldn't totally get credit for building the current team. Tmac pretty much fell into his lap and all he had the say was I don't mind losing Francis, Cato, and Mobley. The team as it stands would be better served with Rudy as their coach. Rudy's system if you want to call it that, relies on mismatches and we have 2 almost every night with Tmac and Yao playing.
Hiploser said: I think what we're all forgetting here is that JVG got rid of Moochie Norris. Seriously. He was able to get rid of MOOCHIE. The worst player in Rockets HISTORY. Sorry dude, but you must have missed Allen Levell. My buddy and I used to call him, " The spastic frog". Allen would dribble down the court and bounce the ball off his foot all the time. Also, I swear, one time he just dribble right down court and suddenly seemed to fly out of bounds like a spastic frog in heat. We rolled on the floor like loosened idiots laughing. p.s. Keep Uncle Jeff, Les. Roll the ball out there like coach Guy v.
Brilliant Post!!! You unequivocally refuted every point Mr. KROSFYAH tried to make. He absolutely cannot rebute these facts unless he wishes to continue living a lie. If he is honest to himself he will now apologize for error in judgement otherwise he will be doomed to a life in denial. CASE CLOSED!!!!
Rudy's system won 2 titles. JVG's didn't, even when he had Patrick who was still pretty good when he took the reins
If Rudy was here and we did the Cat for the Christie trade, I think the Rox might be pushing 50 game win season. SF, Christie, Yao, Cato thats a decent core. The trade for Me-Mac was a waste
francis 4 prez, You attributed at least at least 5 quotes that I did not make. Yea, brilliant post, indeed! You guys are getting so touchy thinking I'm bashing Rudy. This is not a bash Rudy thread. My main point is that it is senseless to state that...Rudy would have coached this current team better than JVG. (afterall, that is the subject of the thread). Rudy had his chance with this team and it didn't pan out for him. I'm NOT saying Rudy is a bad coach. I'm saying he had his chance. I am also NOT saying that JVG is a good coach...time will tell. Results are what count...period. So far...JVG doesn't have any results.
Yeah I was indicating that the collapse was due to rudy's cancer. Sorry if I didn't make myself clear. I thought that was common knowledge. I just thought last year the competition was tougher than the year of the collapse but that was just my perception.
JVG was hired in New York when Don Nelson was fired. Both are good coaches. Both have distinct coaching styles. I just know I wouldn't be putting JVG in charge of developing a young player. Don Nelson would have no problems with that. Look at how Don Nelson has developed Nash, Nowitzki, and various other players. Uh oh for Yao...
Okay, just for kicks. I'll refute each one of your counter points even though it distracts from the actual point I'm making. But let me say that is pretty sloppy posting on your behalf by misquoting me 4 times. While Rudy was popular, nobody was surprised when he was 'squeezed out.' Since I used the term "nobody," I'm sure you can find a few people that didn't want to see him go. But it was pretty overwhelming at the time that it was time forf him to move on. Again, I'm not suggesting JVG was the right answer. You misunderstood my statement. I didn't say he would break up ANY team. I said he wouldn't break up THIS team because Steve was his baby. Ever since he made the trade for Steve, he pretty much stood pat with this team making only minor adjustments. Again, I'm not suggesting JVG is doing good!!! But since you want to argue this point, when I say results I am referring to post season wins...and Rudy's record this past 5 years ain't so hot! Disagree? I think you are missing the context here. The point of the thread is that Rudy would be doing better with the current staff. My point is that this is irrelevant because Rudy had his chance with this team. This team is so dramatically different now and the changes made occured under JVG's regime...not Rudy's. So who cares if Rudy would do better. Shall we list every team in the league that Rudy would do better than the current coach. You attributed somebody else's quote to me. So no need for me to reply. Again, You attributed somebody else's quote to me. I rarely hear people complain about Yao getting touches anymore. What I hear most is that Yao is too soft and goes absent too often for stretches at a time. When he does get the ball, he gets blocked and the ball stripped too often. I'll grant you that Rudy only had him as a Rookie. I'm simply saying that it isn't like Rudy had some magic formula for Yao that made him play drammatically well. And if Rudy were here now, I don't think Yao's play would be dramatically different that what we see right now under JVG's system. Again you attributed somebody else's quote to me. So no need for me to reply Again you attributed somebody else's quote to me. I'm sure you recall, but the reason why we made this trade midseason was because the team was playing like crap. News Flash...the Drexler trade worked out. When I said 'no brainer' I was also referring to the feel-good aspect about bringing Clyde and Dream together. It helped to sell tickets, Dream was happy about it...and oh yea...the trade worked.
Rudy would definitely be a better coach for this team. JVG doesn't develop young players well and frankly loves playing vets. Thats why we are the oldest team in the league right now, and I bet if someone found the average age of JVG's Knicks, they would be #1 as well. Yao and TMac are both young, and both athletic (compared to their positions). Instead of adding some more youth and athleticism to the group, we added ALL OLD vets. It's not too bad since they are still capable of playing, but we are too old and too slow, and it shows in our losses. JVG and crew got us TMac, I'll give them that. But Sura, Ward, Spoon, Howard, Bowen, Barry, and Wesley were hand picked by JVG and this is definitely not a good enough supporting cast for us. I mean, the guy brought in Mark Jackson, Spoon, and Oakley last year to help.
i didn't attribute them to you. only one quote was actually attributed to anybody, the first one, to you, and it was your post. i said i was going to move on to you and Mr. Clutch and i did, and i think i threw in a quote from someone else. i wasn't going to quote you each individually in separate posts and i wasn't going to type the "originally posted by" thing in every quote. you simply posted first in the thread of the people i quoted so i used the quote function for your initial post and then did the html code thing for everyone else (if there's a way to get "originally posted by ..." in a post without using the quote icon i don't know it), including future quotes by you. i didn't think it would be tough to figure out and wasn't trying to be misleading to anyone. it doesn't really even matter. i was just refuting points as i came across them. not really, just efficient. everybody, krosfyah said the above. ok. while we weren't quite at the previous season's level, we were 30-17, hardly crap. due to various things, we actually only went 17-18 the rest of the season. the trade was hardly a slam dunk until the amazing postseason run. and what does it working out have to do with whether rudy would trade steve or not? wouldn't a big trade working make him more likely to do it? i'm not saying rudy would've traded steve. steve likely wouldn't have had the crappy year he had with jvg and wouldn't have hated rudy like he did jvg, which pretty much made it necessary to trade steve aside from the on the court stuff. however, with our history of trading for big names, i have a hard time believing we wouldn't have at least tried to get in the tmac mix. whether we do the trade or not i don't know, but it's not out of the realm of possibility based on our past history.
