Who'd you take? Adelman Offense: Far, far better on Adelman. Gets more out of his players, they enjoy the system better, and you see some players explode. Confidence is driven from it and it's very efficient. Van Gundy was all drop it to Yao, or let T-Mac do his thing. We were VERY predictable on offense and that's why I feel we lost games. We may have ranked as an average team offensively with JVG, but when push came to shove, we were very predictable. Thus, no post-season success. Defense: Van Gundy is premiere at this. I think a lot to do is with the personnel, but keying in on certain things, etc. but Adelman is nowhere near Van Gundy. Van Gundy had great defensive schemes to defend certain players, certain plays that I don't think anyone in the league can compare to. Development: Adelman is far better here, too. There's no way Aaron, Luis, Carl, etc. become who they are in Houston if Van Gundy was here. I'd be curious on how VSpan would of played had he stayed in Houston. Van Gundy's only "development" was Chuck Hayes and Luther Head. Both who are the same players as they were from Year 1.
IF a big if.... Jeff learned somehow to instill offense and give young players an opportunity then I would go with him That's not happening.... I would go with Thibs if we had no coach....
Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but weren't many of the defensive schemes during JVG's tenure the brainchild of Tom Thibodeau? I'm more inclined to believe that considering what he did with Boston, as well. I suppose the dream coaching staff would be Rick Adelman with Thibodeau as an assistant. Mmmm, delicious (pause).
you hatin on sikma. <object width="640" height="385"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/i8I6zGuG4K4&hl=en_US&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/i8I6zGuG4K4&hl=en_US&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="640" height="385"></embed></object>
I'd go with RA simply because the way he handled Tmac. JVG did too much butt kissing with Tmac. Granted, he was heavily dependent on him. JVG just was not very good with the players. Kind of a long the same lines though, would you rather have RA + CD, or JVG + DM. I think I would go with JVG + DM. I don't think CD would do very well at getting talent that RA could produce with. I think DM would get the talent and control JVG enough to get him to use it. Although, Morey's first action as GM was to fire JVG and hire RA....
it is all about playoff success. we got a lot further with Adelman with less talent playing very challenging teams.
I'm probably in the minority here, but I've always been a bigger fan of JVG than Adelman. I felt that Adelman benefited early in his Rockets tenure from a defensive philosophy that JVG instilled in the team. Prior to JVG, we werent know as defensive hawks, and afterwards, particularly last season, our defensive identity has started to slip. Thats not to say I'm not content with RA as our current coach, quite the opposite, I think he's great. I just feel that management made a number of player personnel mistakes during JVG's coaching tenure; some of them include: -Never getting a legit PG option aside from Rafer. I cant believe I ever thought V-Span was the solution. RA's first season and we get AB and re-sign Francis. -No offense aside from Yao and T-Mac. We had a few decent energy guys off the bench like Snyder. -No legit PF Dont get me wrong, I felt that JVG should have gotten out of the first round a few of those seasons, and that was ultimately his downfall, but I loved his passion and coaching approach.
There was a Thibodeau influence, but it works both ways. Some things Thibs did in Boston were from JVG. Ultimately, it all comes down to working under Riley. A lot of similar principles there. Also the personnel in Boston was far superior(defensively speaking) than anything Van Gundy ever had. When you have Perkins-KG-Pierce on D, and Rondo as your PG, you'll be damn good on defense. Best P&R defender, very good pressure and gambling Pg defender(even in his rookie stage), and a top low post 1 on 1 defender. Pierce, too, is no slouch. His 1 on 1 defense is very solid.
JVG was the defensive mastermind. Thibs was his assistant. Thibs was basically a jvg clone. They are both defensive and basketball gurus.
Result: Adelman: 2nd round, 22 win streak with half of Yao-TMAC. JVG: first round exits when up to 2:0 with young and healthy Yao and TMAC.
Ah, the magic of pace: Offensive efficiency (Rank) JVG 100.9 (24th) 106.2 (15th) 101.6 (29th) (injury ravaged) 106.0 (15th) Adelman 106.8 (17th) 108.4 (14th) 107.6 (17th) Both have been pretty much adequate at best when having a full complement of players (of which Adelman decidedly had a much better hand, offensively). Adelman an offensive genius? Sorry, but considering that he's never placed a Rockets team in even the top 10 leaguewide in that category, you can't really say that. Prejudices are deceiving you here again here: Defensive efficiency JVG 99.0 (5th) 101.7 (4th) 103.3 (6th) 100.7 (3rd) RA 101.6 (2nd) 104.0 (4th) 108.0 (17th) (injury ravaged) Again, with a full complement of players, Adelman was more than capable of producing a top notch defensive team - at least as good or better than Van Gundy's. The most telling thing is what they did in their two injury seasons. JVG's injury season had no Yao or Tracy for long stretches, so they basically just played defense, as their next best options were either Rafer or Howard. They battened down the hatches. In Adelman's injury season, they instead went with offense as they had a lot more flexibility. Now how much this depends on the coach and how much the players is up for debate. I tend to believe it's more a reflection on the players. By that measure, the best way to compare look at when they had the same players -> Van Gundy's last year and Adelman's first year they basically produced about the same result, both on offense, defense, wins, losses, and end result (loss to the Jazz, 1st round). I would expect to see a slight increase for hte Rockets in Adelman's 1st year, since they swapped out the inefficient Howard for the hyper-efficient Landry and Scola combo - but instead the offense pretty much stayed the same. Not sure why that. Oh and more superficial analysis straight out of the DaDakota school - yup there's nothing like magic player development pixie dust that certain coaches have and certain coaches don't. IF only Adelman was coaching Frederic Weis, Stromile Swift, Vasilis Spanoulis, Steve Novak, and all the other journeymen and rejects that were gifted to JVG as rookie franchise building blocks - they'd be in Springfield by now, right? I like how you cite "there's no way" Scola and Landry would have played, then go on to cite Van Gundy's playing of rookie UFA Chuck Hayes as an example of why they wouldn't play, or his playing of Luther Head (who became an NBA rotation palyer in the first month of his rookie season, not due to injuries either)- talk about shooting yourself in the foot. Suffice it to say, if gifted with players like Scola and Landry, they would have played under JVG. Honestly, the fact that you had to bring up a f-ck up greek crybaby who couldn't pass, shoot, dribble, or defend and ended up back on the Feta Farm with his mommy rather than play for the champion spurs basically invalidated anything you said previously. For your punishment, please put me and every single other poster not named "DaDakota" or yourself on the Ignore List.
JVG all the way, I do like Adelman however. JVG is one of my favorite coaches, I loved him when he was here.
Adelman was able to put up a "great team" (though I don't see any greatness in there) without Yao or TMAC. Another advantage. JVG's MADE his team lack of offense other than Yao and TMAC.
What!? Less talent on Adelman teams? All of these guys disagree: Vin Baker Ryan Bowen Tyronn Lue Moochie Norris Scott Padgett Rod Strickland Charlie Ward Clarence Weatherspoon David Wesley Derek Anderson Stromile Swift Maciej Lampe Kirk Snyder Vassilis Spanoulis Bonzi Wells Steve Novak Jake Tsakalidis John Lucas III Kelvin Cato Mark Jackson Eric Piatkowski Charles Oakley Adrian Griffin If JVG would have had the opportunity to work a few years with Morey, we would have been a lot better than we were under him. He came in and turned an mediocre team into a multiple 50 win team with a bunch of scrubs.
Did JVG ever have a team with supporting players who could have gone 42-40 over a full season without Yao or Tracy? Throwing out what they did with the Rockets, I'd still probably choose Adelman. But I'd say coaches are far less important (in any sport, really) than most fans think.
With the best center in Yao and a top 5 player in TMAC? That's not much of accomplishment. That's a miserable failure in my book. a bunch of scrubs? that's because JVG loved scrubs.
