The Jeff Van Gundy Legacy on the Rockets

Why couldn't jeff turn rafer into an all-star

 

because he's not Jesus.

 

Na NA NA NA,Na NA NA

 

He got a heck of a lot more out of him then any previous coach did, not every player is an all-star caliber player.

 

Before JVG the team was labeled as not having basketball smarts. After smart but old and non athletic.

 

Well you are only partly correct!! One might also say that a very versatile basketplayer was turned into a stick near the paint with concrete legs, during the JVG era. Gone are all his moves and abilities to score from anywhere on the court . All this because JVG imposed his will on Yao Ming's Game. Now is a new era and poentially a different game plan and Yao will be able to become, once again the versatile player that he always was.

 

Yao deserves the credit for creating 'that' Yao.

 

He got more out of less than any coach in team history, at least during the regular season.

 

I could've sworn Yao gave credit to Thibs for helping him become what he is.

Notice the improvement once Ewing was on his way out.

 

I don't hear Yao complaining about JVG at all. I hear a lot of people complaining on behalf of Yao.

I guess Yao should listen to his fans rather then his actually experience of working with JVG for the past 4 years. Fans know better than Yao.

 

What a bone headed mistake the Rockets did. It wasn't the coach that was the problem it was the players on the staff!!!!

 

Uh oh. Is someone pulling out the Ewing Theory on us?

 

You are exactly right, he also got TMac to buy in to a team concept, and he earned Tmac respect which few other coaches had. Now Tmac is no Jordan nor a even a Kobe but he is our scorer. Van Gundy also brought order to a house of chaos, he brought a championship focus to a team he inherited that was about Franchise and his buddy Mobes. oh yeah throw in Cato and Taylor and it was the weed brothers on ice.

We never had a good draft pick while Van Gundy was here except last season and Van Gundy wanted a veteran 2 guard badly enough to trade the pick, but Van Gundy didn't want Battier, that wasn't who he was after. We couldn't get the one he wanted but we could get Battier and I think Van Gundy signed off on the trade to try and win this season. Problem was Van Gundy really wanted a 2 guard and a big athletic power forward. So he had to settle with a small forward and leave Tracy at the 2 guard, which he didn't want to do.

They also had high hopes for VSpan to be the back up point. But that turned into a soap...

 

Yep, remember, even in the Championship days the Rockets would lose to those teams that they had no business losing to in the regular season. This year was the first year I can remember where the team actually didnt have alot of let down games against lesser opponents. They had one stretch of 3 games against lesser opponents, but other than that did very well against the "have nots"......

 

JVG deserves a heck of a lot more credit than he's getting from the majority of the fans. I'll missing being the best defensive team in the league. We lost to Utah because our defense was MIA. What's going to happen next year when there is none at all? I shudder at the thought.

 

van gundy is a terrific coach and the organization should have had the balls to stick with him. i think when yao gets fullly healthy we can win with adelman but i think there's going to be a lot of things we sorely miss that van gundy brought to this team. we'll see.

i honestly hope adelman is the answer and this team does things van gundy couldn't get from them. i'm just not betting on it.

 

I give no credit to JVG for developing Yao and all the credit to Yao for dedicating himself so much into making himself a better player. Yao was going to do that regardless of who his coach was.