I disagree. If you are willing to pay someone millions of dollars then you sure as hell expect him to toe the company line.
Why do i get the impression Jeff was playing coy and at the same time hoping Les would crawl and grovel at his feet:"pls Jeff, com back, I need you, now I know! you are the one I want!" Now that Les said:" I wasn't sure about you anyway, now that you are playing hard to get ... **** it. let's find another guy!" The whole thing is like a bad teen love story, so juvenile!
Les Alexander is an idiot...knows nothing about basketball...can't just run up-tempo with any team...can't run up-tempo (phoenix like) with this team. Why doesn't he reach in his pockets and buy some up-tempo players? Sounds like a rich brat... Morey is a tool
Jordan's Bulls are the only team that has won the championship since the 80's who did not have a dominant low post presence, and I think a simple, logical explanation was they had the greatest player of all time on those teams. And Jordan was a low post presence. Jordan was a presence everywhere but where his game excelled the most was when he was closest to the basket. He was a legit low post presence. Every other team that has won the championship over the last 20 some odd years has had a dominant low post presence. Even the old Piston teams with Mark Aguirre had a dominant low post scorer. Put simply, winning championships is really about mastering efficiency. Most of the teams over the last 20 years that won championships were in the bottom third in pace factor with only the Rox teams and the Shaq Kobe teams making it out of that bottom third. It's not about pace. It's about efficiency. We were a very good team this year. But we weren't good enough............because our offense was not efficient enough. We've all said it a hundred times, you can't win with guys out there chucking 35% and taking the 3rd most shots on the team. That is not efficiency. If you are gonna shoot those type percentages, then you'd better be getting to the free throw line as often as Corey Maggette. You cannot win a championship when you put so much on your superstars that their efficiency goes into the toilet because they are having to operate against the triple team every minute of the game because they are daring the other guys to beat them. What we need on this team is more imagination offensively, not faster pace, not slower pace, not shooters, not offensive rebounders, not a power forward that can shoot the 3 ball. We need offensive imagination and creativity, the one basketball knowledge base that Van Gundy seems to be deficient in. Yeah, he could draw up a play for a shot during a timeout, but he couldn't produce efficient enough offense and he overanalyzed and overrated turnovers and underrated poor shooting efficiency and poor overall offensive efficiency. Yeah, we need a talent upgrade. Every team that does not win the championship will need a talent upgrade and every team will be looking to upgrade their talent every season. That's a given. But you gotta recognize when a dude isn't efficient enough and you gotta either change the system or change the player in favor of one of the other 12. Van Gundy did neither. He just kept running Rafer out there for 40 mpg, night after night after night after night after night. I am convinced Van Gundy wanted to come back and coach the Rockets. What coach in their right mind would want to walk away from 111? But Van Gundy wanted to come back on his terms, getting his way and having the owner kiss his foot. And the owner and FO weren't gonna do it, because while they liked Van Gundy, they could see that we were not imaginative enough offensively, that we didn't score enough points efficiently enough and that the coach seemed content to keep running out a player for 40 mpg who was very efficiency impaired offensively, yet was taking the 3rd most shots on the team. I'm just hoping that Adelman doesn't lose what we have defensively and we slip to the middle of the pack defensively. I can't wait to see the ball movement and player movement that Adelman will bring. But I don't want to see Yao turn into Vlade and Webber defensively.
The more I hear about Le$ and his style of management, the more and more I dislike him. I just have a hard time respecting an owner that's completely unwilling to take responsibility for his decisions, always wanting the employee to take the fall/blame away from him so that he doesn't have to face his fans. Say what you may about Cuban or other owners that are a little out there, but at least those guys don't shy away from the spotlight and hope the fans are dumb enough to buy their PR bullsh!! time and time again. Le$ DOES think the fans are stupid. The irony here? I don't even mind the JVG firing, I just think he should've come out and said that HE decided to go in another direction, and not try to deflect the blame through Morey's spin. Add to that the whole Dream and Rudy thing, and suddenly it all makes sense...
Phoenix hasn't even played for a championship yet with this style, and let's not forget the Nellie Mavs. Weren't they a 4th seed perpetually and 2nd round loser until Avery focused the team on defense? I hope this doesn't turn into a Minnesota situation. Saunders out, and the team still sucks.
The reason that Spanoulis did not get the minutes that Parker, Ginobili, and Cassell got: Parker FG% - .419 3pt% - .323 A/TO - 2.15 Ginobili FG% - .438 3pt% - .345 A/TO - 1.43 Cassell FG% - .418 3pt% - .296 A/TO - 2.05 Spanoulis FG% - .338 3pt% - .192 A/TO - 0.96 As you can see, V-SPAN is the worst in all three categories (I used only the ones that do not put him at an unfair disadvantage because of his reduced minutes), sometimes spectacularly so. You can't be a rotation PG if you have an A/TO ratio of less than 1, there just isn't a coach that is going to play you a lot of minutes with those results, especially if you can't shoot. I don't know why DaDa keeps mentioning these players in relation to V-SPAN. They got more minutes because they were better.
Adelman isn't going to play like Phoenix. He'll play a mixture and mostly he'll play to his player's strengths and run a motion offense. Don't forget what Cuttino Mobley said about Van Gundy. He said we needed to run more and the defense was great but it wasn't fun. But if you combined the defense with the offense of the Clippers, then he said, "you'd have something".
No comparison to make. Look at the minutes. A player has to get minutes to get the feel of the NBA game. Why don't you compare Tony and Manu's rookie numbers to Rafer's numbers this season, after Rafer has been in the league, what, 6 years or so???? There's no comparison there either. There should have been a change at the PG spot. Rafer was not efficient and VSpan was not given an opportunity to prove what he could do. VSpan's overall efficiency was not that worse than Rafer's to warrant continuing to run Rafer out there for 40 mpg. AT THE VERY LEAST, VAN GUNDY SHOULD HAVE TWEAKED THE OFFENSE AND GOTTEN IN BATTIER'S FACE UNTIL BATTIER WAS TAKING THE 3RD MOST SHOTS, NOT RAFER.
