Gater, Rudy led his last team to 43 wins with Yao as a rookie, I would bet that if he hung around through the TMac trade he would have been more successful than JVG. Rudy was a good coach, but a better motivator..... And yes, I agree Rudy was not the right coach for the Francis and Mobley teams, but for this team....I think he would be. DD
I love Rudy for the two championships and I don't think his time has passed as far as his ability to coach in this league. Remember when he coached the Lakers while they weren't great but considering it was the first year without Shaq and Phil Jackson they weren't that bad. If Rudy could coach the Kobe + others Lakers I certainly think he could do OK with the T-Mac and Yao + others Rockets. That said the biggest problem with Rudy T isn't his coaching ability but his heart. I don't think he has the heart to come back and put himself through the wringer of coaching especially with recurring health problems and how he parted from his beloved Rockets. So while I love Rudy and would love seeing him down on the sidelines raising his arms after a T-Mac drive and dunk its not going to happen.
"Today's NBA" is an overblown cliche that needs to be retired immediately. Look at the reigning NBA champions. Rudy took them as far as they could've gotten. In case you hadn't noticed, Yao and McGrady aren't exactly Francis and Mobley. Are zones allowed in international ball?
Lets not forget the last quarter of that year was coached by someone else who all of us would agree wasn't a good coach. The Rockets still finished only a few games out of the playoffs and its likely if Rudy had finished that season they would've made it.
Leave Rudy alone!! Let him be what he wants to be! Let him enjoy life, his coaching contribution to the Rockets is over and done with! Thank you Rudy!
And the coach whose team beat the Rockets and threw everyone into a tizzy? Jerry Sloan, decidedly an "yesterday's NBA" guy.
Rudy the coach? Fine. Rudy the GM? Atrocious. There's a good chance the McGrady trade never happens, since Rudy likely seeks to extend Mobely to a big money deal, and add some years to Cato's contract after an improved 2003. There's also the return of Moochie and Matt Maloney to multi-year deals, while they trade three #1 picks for the draft rights to Bryce Drew's little brother.
How different would Rudy's offense be from Van Gundy's? As far as i can tell, the offese the rockets ran this year was almost exactly like the one they ran with dream and clyde.
Horsedung. IIRC,that team high-watered in mid- January with an overtime win vs LAL. They were something like 8 games over .500. Rudy's last 23 gmes from that point on was something like 8-15. They were not headed for the playoffs...they were headed down the toilet. I give up. The only thing worse than a VG apologist is someone who won't realize when something is history and not going to resurrect.
Not quite. When Rudy T stepped down on March 17, 2003 the Rockets were on a 5 game winning streak. Its true they hit a slide in February but at the time he stepped down the team was on the upswing. If you noticed in my first post in this thread I said Rudy coming back wasn't going to happen.
I admit, I wondered if once JVG had taught our guys some discipline and defense, and he couldn't take us all the way, I thought perhaps that Rudy would come back and lead us to some championships. Probably a dream ... but ... I think he does know how to peak his team, and get the most from who he has, and lead them. He was always a smart player with tons of heart and hustle, and he brought that to coaching. I believe he could adjust to today's NBA, too. He did the ISO, because that was what he had in Francis. He did inside out when he had Dream and Clyde. He used what he had. The unfortunate part is that he got bladder cancer. I know it's quasi-curable and in remission. But, most don't know what it does to you. Once you get it, you have to go in every 3 months for a cystoscopy. If you don't know what that is, it involves putting up a camera up where no man wants it stuck. Liquid fire for awhile, and quite exhausting, since it involves anesthesia, and sometimes chemo. Bladder cancer is highly repeatable (80%), and grows like weeds, and its best cure is early detection, hence the cystoscopies (for life). At first, you think you'll be able to get back to normal life, but it changes you, and you have to develop better self-care habits, or it'll kill you. Stress makes it come back and grow. You get bone tired at spots, and have to disconnect, like he did in LA. You say you're the same, but you aren't, and you don't know when you will and when you won't. So, I'm sure that Rudy can be involved in basketball, as a scout, talent evaluator, advisor, maybe even some type of assistant coach, just not as a head coach. He learned the hard way that he can't do it. ... and we should hope he doesn't, or we might share responsibility for killing him to pursue that dream, or change his quality of life by having his bladder taken out ... and that would be a tragedy for us and to one of the icons of our team and sport. Winning is important, but not if it hurts someone we love. Unfortunately, I believe that JVG is right. We DON'T have the talent to be champions, and that's no excuse for him not being able to take us farther, that's just reality. That was very clear in the playoffs. Utah was better, quicker, smarter, more talented top to bottom. They had depth, we didn't, even from undeveloped players. It was 3 on 8. We need the pit bulls and leaders to surround 2 very talented but softspoken guys, but JVG got a lot out of who he had, considering all the injuries ... it just wasn't enough. Now some stuff is making a little more sense in terms of front office turmoil. I'm sure JVG had some say in what he wanted ... certainly Battier is someone he would have wanted, although I doubt he would have wanted to pay so high a price, and give up 2 trading chits for 1, reducing another valuable player he needed to trade for. But, it sounds like CD was trying to please everyone, and when you do that, you homogenize everything, and get mediocrity. It's scary for me that the front office doesn't see that, especially Morey. Perhaps he'll make good deals, and be able to evaluate our personnel, and not make bad deals. But, since he was never a player or coach, I don't know if he'll have any clue as to what we need, and he'll have to listen to others. If he's listening to the guy who's making his paycheck, we might not get the good players we need, since he'll always be looking for the bargain or final piece. He won't know how to construct a team like Colangelo. I hope he get's an assistant who does.
I'm at work and don't have time to check but another thing VG and Rudy have in common...they feasted on the EC. I have a gut-level feel that the 5 game were against inferior teams. I didn't notice and my closing comment wasn't specifically to you. It's a part of human nature that I have never related to...the good old days were never really that good...it's just how we as humans choose to remember them. Especially if we were young at the time. It's like...Politicians today aren't any good because they can't throw a dollar bill across the Potomac like Geo Washington...now there was a REAL president! No matter what rational logic is used...resurrecting the Good Old Days is a human pasttime. To paraphrase Pitino...Rudy T is NOT walking into that locker room. Time for some of us to get over it.
Personally, I thought Rudy coached fine with what he had, as did Van Gundy. There wasn't much more he could have done with that group... the problem with the last few Rudy years were the talent... they overpaid for guys like Cato and Taylor wasted 3 first rounders on Eddie Griffin.. Like I said... these Rockets are still paying for the mistakes of years past. Les has a phobia now about overpaying guys... also, can someone remind me where the Rockets first round picks in 2003 and 2004 went? I think the Rocket now have picked up a few nice specialists (Shane, Chuck, etc) but have really been bargain hunting way too much.
4 out of the 5 where Eastern Conference but the day before Rudy stepped down they beat the Suns. While the Suns weren't the Suns of now they were still a pretty good team. The Rockets still lost games to the Eastern Conference that season but under Rudy they also had some big wins against WC powers, like the Lakers victory. We can never know for sure but there is nothing indicating for sure at the time that the Rockets would've gone down the toilet with Rudy. I agree the good old days weren't necessarily as good as people think. For instance I think the 80's had a lot of crap while a lot of people my age (30's) think they were great. That said I don't think you are being fair at all to Rudy T. He had bad years but the last year he coached the Rox with a rookie Yao and productive Francis and Mobley the team looked like it was going to make playoffs and development. At the same time too his stint with the Lakers showed that the game hadn't passed him by and he could be a decent coach. The only thing keeping Rudy T from coaching, in general not necessarily with the Rockets, is Rudy T. Even if Les wanted him I don't think he is coming back but if he wanted to I'm sure some NBA team would pick him up.
2003 was part of the Francis deal, so that was good. We got theirs too, although wasted it. 2004 was trading Glen Rice to Utah to get out of paying a few bucks ... WHAT A WASTE! ... We could have had Al Jefferson, Josh Smith, JR Smith, Jameer Nelson, Kevin Martin, Chris Duhon, Delonte West, etc. as another piece. Not that any of those are great, but some of them would have given us an additional starter right now. We keep wasting opportunities to add up the pieces when we squander them like this. We go after the big splashes like Francis, TMac and Yao, but we miss the lesser moves that build a team. CD has been a mixed bag when it comes to being a GM. He's a great horse trader, in terms of letting deals come to him. But, there are other times when he totally blows it. I assume it has to do with his boss, yanking stuff or pushing him. We way overpaid for guys like Mo, Anderson, Cato, Maloney, Moochie, etc. We've drafted badly, like when everyone in the world expected us to take Lewis, but instead drafted a couple guys who didn't make it, probably to please Scotty. We do way too much stuff to please. But, when it comes time to get out of deals, we also panic, like with Quitten. We should have sweetened the pot to get Oneal. We should have sweetened the pot to get TMac from Toronto, to get Chandler from CHI, to give Mike his trade kicker. Then, other times we give away the farm, like getting Battier. I know the Griffin trade totally set us back, but I don't really hold that against them. You have to take some risks, and he seemed like he was the best player in that draft, and we got a steal. Sure, we lost getting Jefferson, Randalph and Parker, but we thought we had a superstar in the making. Just about everyone was wrong on that one. It just hurts when we've done so many other bad moves. But, I did want us to trade up to get Stoudamire, instead of settling for Boki, but because we didn't want to trade Griffin, we didn't. We had seen enough. Imagine Stoudamire and Yao together. We got lucky with Dream, Sampson, Yao, Francis and TMac. But, we've really sucked when it comes to putting players next to them. If Dream would have had guys next to him, we might have been battling CHI every year he was here. AGHHH ... I guess its been this way for a long time. ... just have to sit back and enjoy the team as a fan. But, since they aren't taking JVG seriously to get the right players, I have a bad feeling Yao won't be winning any championships very soon. My dream is dying.
I was for Rudy's termination on that Francis and Cat Iso team. I hated the ISO.....but........I believe that with this team, Rudy would be an excellent choice. DD
