out of all playoff teams the rockets faced in the last 20 years or so that portland team, imho, was easily the weakest. if you look at both rosters you can see that the rockets without t-mac still had the better team. the blazers were very young and made the playoffs for the first time. lamarcus aldridge at the time wasn't the player he's now. neither was nicolas batum. their rotation consisted of players like steve blake, joel przybilla, sergio rodriguez, rudy fernandez and travis outlaw. not exactly top notch talents and almost forgotten by now. the rockets on the other hand had the best roster in years. a healthy yao, artest in his last season before his rapid decline, scola, landry, brooks, lowry, battier, hayes and even wafer. even without t-mac we had a pretty good and well balanced team. imho, it was the best team we had in a decade and too bad that both yao and t-mac broke down for good while being on their last ride together. could have won it all that year. 2007 was the only year where we had hca and both yao and t-mac played. yao wasn't really 100 % though because he just returned in march after he broke his leg and missed 30+ games. also you have to remeber the players yao and t-mac were surrounded with. battier, chuckwagon and rafer started. even under adelman they wouldn't score 30 points in a game collectively. luckily for jvg he had top talent on his bench. talents like luther head, juwan howard, your boy v-span, jake tsakalidis, john lucas III and deke. well, i guess not really that many talents. fact: t-mac and yao were surrounded by a bunch of scrubs and the real achievement that season was that we had hca to begin with. i don't think it's fair to judge mchale after a few games in a very special season. you'll have to at least give him until this time next year to really see what he can do. so far he's won more games than he's lost so that isn't horrible at all despite the frustrating last couple of games. i expect better play and better coaching once the trade deadline passes and some issues get dealt with. my thoughts: jvg: did a great job under not so good circumstances (lots of injuries, bad management). easily one of the best coaches in the league at the time and a coach of the year candidate almost every year. adelman: also did a great job under better circumstances. has had the most "success" (22 win streak, 2nd round playoffs) and a more fan-friendly style of basketball. he was a coach of the year candidate every year he was with the rockets. mchale: still too early to really judge him. i think he's done a pretty solid job under special circumstances (shortened season without a real training camp and few practices during the season, a roster without a true identity) and he has some room for improvement.
Totally agreed. Too early to tell about McHale. Adelman was better (probably just slightly) than JVG overall.
My biggest complaint with all three is what I see as problems conceiving match ups, especially in crunch time. I love certain traits of all three. I approve of McHale's in-your-face interviews and his reputation as someone who demands effort and results. I miss Adleman's offense; when it worked, it was a thing of beauty. Most of all, I miss JVG's defense. He arguably had the shallowest team of the three, but he found ways to grind out wins. 82-76? Yes please.
I don't think we have good crunch-time players on the team. To me, that's more on the GM than the coach.
LOL! Don't start this crap again. It's OK to be wrong now and again. BTW, you did your sig wrong, too.
Adelman is obviously an offensive genius. I mean... He's a HOF coach that's a proven WINNER. This is the guy you want coaching a bunch of veterans that are contending. Kevin's better for the situation we're in. He knows how to develop players (esp. bigs) and brings an old school attitude (play both ends, earn minutes, comport yourself with class, and is a great motivator) that should be pervasive in the creation of an organization's culture. Lurch, also, contrary to many's belief, knows how to win. Right now he's working short handed and is having to showcase guys. He's not just warming up the sideline for Finch. Because of the small sample size, folks don't get this yet, but it'll come. No, JVG didn't have much on the floor outside of those two and yes, I love his passion. He's a great guy..But.. he is ... one dimensional.....defense, defense, defense....I'd love to have him on my staff(which would never happen), but not as THE MAN....very smart though. If utilized correctly would really benefit an organization.
Rick Adelman because he had the best winning percentage in Rockets team history. RA's offenses are always in the top 5 of the NBA no matter where he has coached. And his winning percentage would have been even better had Yao and T-MAC not have been injured and brokendown already. And with two broken super-stars RA still managed the 22 game win streak. The offense was defintely more fluid. And RA gave the Rockets their only 1st round playoff victory in recent memory and took the Fakers to 7 games with t-mac deciding his own surgery, losing Mutumbo in the 1 st round with Portland, and losing Yao in the 2nd round.
How awesome would it be to have JVG's defense with RA's offense along with McHale's willingness to bench his veterans that are not producing.
JVG. Give him more than Yao/T-Mac and a bunch of scrubs and you have a team that could have gone deep into the playoffs.
Actually, Adelman had better role players than JVG. But he never had a fully healthy Yao/TMac combo. If he did, we would have been contending for title. I blame the poor supporting cast during JVG's tenure partly on CD and partly on JVG. I think a lot of player acquisitions had JVG's fingerprints on them.
Yep, self-inflicted pain as a result of his fondness for C-Spoon, Charlie Ward, Rod Strickland, Jimmy Jackson, among others.
Im sorry guys it has to be aldeman he did more with less mcgrady and his lady parts do yao falling apart. Jeff van gundy could not beat the jazz in a 7th game on his home court.
