I don't want to argue about results or effectiveness in this thread. If you think JVG's grind-it-out style was perfect for the Rockets and he was unjustly fired - fine. I'm not going to try to dissuade you. But, in the end, basketball is about entertainment. We all want our team to win the title, but there's always going to be one team that wins it all and 29 that are disappointed. We watch an 82 game regular season. Then, unless your team is below-average, you get at least one post-season series. I'm tye type that tends to watch most games even in a bad season. But I can't say that the Rockets have been what you call fun to watch the last couple of years, on the whole. There have been great games - but the 82-79 masterpieces just don't get my juices flowing. Maybe that makes me a poor student of the game. Perhaps I should better appreciate great rotation and good D more. I do enjoy it - but I like my games to be 108-106 whenever possible. Moreover, JVG's defense wasn't even always premised on playing good D. Sometimes, it was just plain conservative rather than well-executed. For example, I got sick of our players rarely crashing the boards after a shot. Sometimes, a long carom would go out to exactly the spot where an offensive rebounder would be for most teams. Not for us! That player had already retreated to set up the defense. I'm not arguing about whether this style is effective. But I will say it's boring. If I were a neutral, I wouldn't have watched the Rockets. And this year, for the first time ever for me, I actually found myself flipping away from Rockets games in favor of Suns or Raptors games. I still cared about the Rockets' result more - I just didn't feel this overwhelming need to see it happen. And this is coming from a guy who watched the Rockets, no matter who else was playing, during the Stevie Franchise dribble-fest years. So, will Adelman be an improvement? I have no clue. But, unless the team misses the playoffs entirely, it'll be a heck of a lot more fun.
I enjoy basketball, Phoenix's run-and-gun, the Barkley style, even Comets basketball. What I didn't enjoy watching was VSpan (and Snyder) lose a year's worth of experience and development, while Head fumbled with the PG position and Alston found new ways to bring the offense to levels ineptitude.
Gundy ball is never graceful. It works OK mostly against scrub teams in regular season. In playoff series, whenever opponent teams figure out Gundy's game strategies on both ends of the floor, Gundy ball is inevitably reduced to ineffective and ugly ball. Thank god the 3rd-tier head coach is now a disgraced former coach. Good riddance. Good for Rockets. Good for fans.
it was cool watching them defend well. but watching the offense was discouraging. and then, even after a win, jvg would talk about all these negatives on defense making difficult to even be enthusiastic about that. jvg took all the fun out of it.
i usually would watch the first quarter, get pissed at the boringness, come back for the last 5 minutes
The Rox under Gundy were capable of being entertaining and in the second half of the 2004-2005 season they were very entertaining. I don't know if that's because of JVG or in spite of JVG. For whatever reason then the Rox played with a lot more passion and free flowing. But I agree this season the Rockets while winning more often looked more robotic. There were a few highlights but they awesome T-Mac dunks or fast breaks didn't seem very common. When it happened you could tell guys like Alston, Head and Snyder really enjoyed running the court but didn't get that many opportunities too.
I'm pretty sure I enjoyed the 20+ times the Rockets thumped thier opponents. Especially the 50 point victory over Philly and the 36 point victory over the Mavs. I guess some people's memories are just short when it comes to the good of JVG ball.
Those were rare anomalies. Everyone enjoys those huge-margin wins.. but for the most part JVG's offense does seem slow. For some reason, when I think of JVG's offense I think of everyone standing still and some "pass pass pass" then Tmac shoots an ill-advised clanker.. or Rafer's dribbling and topped with a miss floater.
I remember the last year with Rudy where Francis would do a give and go with Yao at the three point line. That play got us the win or brought to overtime several times that season. With JVG, I can only remember one great last second comeback and that was Tmac's superhuman effort against the Spurs. I only time the rockets were fun to watch during JVG stint here was during the second half of Tmac's first season here.
Also people forget that it was a dramatic improvement from the iso-mania, dribble-mania, ignore-Yao-mania that marked the 1 page playbook of Rudy T's latter years.
Was JVG's offense that different from Rudyball? Seriously... on offense we played an inside out game. On defense of course we played man. We weren't much of a run and gun team. Maybe its that I just got accustomed to watching it as a teen but I do enjoy watching it when the 3's are falling. However much like the 90's... when the 3 wasn't falling... it wasn't much fun. Mike
To me, those who say they enjoyed JVG Rockets games are straight out lying. And those who say they didn't care it was ugly cause it was a winning type of basketball should take a closer look at our record: 52 - 30 Overall 28 - 24 vs Western Conference teams (where the best teams are) 24 - 6 vs Eatern Conf. teams (where we find the Knicks, Hawks, Bobcats, Bucks, Celtics, 76ers, etc) So I ask again: Did JVG play winning Basketball? To me a 28-24 Conf. record, even though we were supposedly the 4th best team in the West, is not acceptable and the reason why I call the JVG experiment a total failure (entertainment and results wise). And don't even get me started on never making it past the 1st round on playoffs!
Come on man, you really think Yao would be who is he today if JVG coached him his rookie season instead of Rudy??
The offense was not nearly as bad as everyone is now making it out to be. We had plenty of games where Tmac and Yao went off and the offense look good. As far as Western Conf. records, 28-24 is a winning record, and how did the rest of the teams do?
