A-Train's comment was hilarious. apparently no matter what jvg does it's right. call your players out before you meet them? great. have any sort of problem with a player? trade him. it always works out great. think your always right and have an argument with a player? well the player must be wrong, ship him out. jvg: dammit francis, why did you let that guy score? sit the hell down for the next 2 games. cuttino, was that a bad shot? sit the hell down. no, 86 that, you're ****ing traded cuz i'm a mother****ing mother****er. steve too. mo t, did you just miss a rebound, you're traded too. yao, did you just miss a layup from 6 inches instead of dunk?! well that's cool, cuz you're god. no wait, sorry, i'm god. but you're kind of like jesus and stuff. you know, the man, but not quite The Man. but it's all good. oh and here's your new teammates, eric snow and jr bremer. they're not better than steve and cat, but they'll always pass to you and i hear from an old guy that they're way more complete. luckily i'm such a hard ass or they'd never be here. and would people stop acting like jvg coached st. mary's sisters of the poor jv team to the finals. the knicks may have had players past their prime and some overpaid players, but they had about 80 million dollars worth of it and they played in the hugely mediocre east. they had 27 wins, the #1 seed had 33. hardly insurmountable odds, and had allan houston's shot not rolled in against the heat, jvg would've been sitting home after round 1. of course then he beat the juggernaut pistons and some other worthless team. uhh, i guess if getting ass-raped by the spurs counts as darn near winning the whole thing, then i guess they did. did we also darn near make the 2nd round this year? jvg is a good coach. he took a slightly above average team and got pretty good results out of them. rudy is a good coach. he took a team that was under .500 midseason and won a title 2 years later with them. he then won another with an unbelievable playoff run. and he took a team with 2 good guards and won 45 games in the loaded west 3 years ago. bill simmons, aka the sports guy (who everyone seems to like on here), you know who he said should be caoch of the year that year? yeah, rudy. he didn't have to make the playoffs b/c some people can actually see things for what they are, a team overachieving just to be close to the playoffs. last year is the ONLY year in the last 4 you could've expected the playoffs and we missed by 1 game. wow, rudy, thanks for everything, but you missed by 1 game, get the **** out. gotta bring in the dude who's sorta had success.
JVG has my respect. anyone who can go with alonzo toe to toe, or face to toe in this case, has my uptmost respect
I understand. I think JVG is a good coach but folx are overhyping him They want to ask . .. WHAT HAS FRANCIS DONE What *exactly* as JVG done. He has never finished the race. and the Team he had was not Ridiculously horrible Allan Houston, Spreewell and EWING [just starting his decline] He had some solid role players too. And as I recall it was at the start of the GREAT WESTERN Power build up. Beyond the bulls. . . the East was becoming the LEASTERN CONFERENCE In the late nineties. . the team I remember most are Pacers, Knicks, Heat and Bulls. Where else were the other POWER TEAMS {I just don't recall them . .. i could be wrong) He simply OUT COACHED Riley [his great claim to fame] and if RUDY had his Championship handed to him by DREAM RILEY HAD HIS HANDED TO HIM BY TWO OF THE GREATEST OF ALL TIME KAREEM and MAGIC not to mention Worthy, Scott, Cooper, Wilkes, McAdoo, etc Rocket River I'm just saying let's be even with the criticism. You cannot praise Van Gundy for flying off at the mouth to the media. . thenturn around and them BAM if Francis does it. . that is just hypocritical
Does being a nice guy and being a good coach have to be mutually exclusive? Greg Popovich has 2 rings in the last 5 years. Phil Jackson has like 9 rings. Torre's Yankees are a dynasty. Leyland's Marlins are the big surprise Champs. Vermeil and Ram last time I checked did pretty well for that one year too. How well does Phil Jackson coach? Does anyone know? Does anyone care? He'll be called a good coach just for winning the rings. What has Rudy done in the last 4 years? Name one coach that hasn't been fired yet after 4 lottery years. If you're a good guy and put up good results then you're a good coach. If you're a good guy and put up lousy results then you're just a good guy.
Huh?? Gregg Popovich, a nice guy that everybody likes? When did this happen? by most accounts I 've read, he's a pretty surly guy, and not many people outside his own team like him at all. respect, sure, but he's not a "nice guy that everyone likes." Hell, I hate him, and I'm someone. So not everybody likes him. For that matter, is Phil Jackson a nice guy that everybody likes? Joe Torre, ok, there's one. But he also has the most free-spending owner in the history of sports.
well said. And I'm pretty sure one could come up with a list of a-holes who won championships. And it might be longer than the list of "good guys".
MFW, They don't have to be mutually exclusive at all. Yet, it is downright silly to say that good guy's can't be good coaches, as Bobblehead prooved. Some player's love playing for someone like Rudy, while other player's need a kick in the ass from someone like Rudy. Why do you think coach records are always up and down from team to team and season to season?? I continue to be absolutely baffled by your reasoning and standards regardless. Don Nelson missed the playoffs 3 years in a row with Dallas. He had a strectch were his teams were below .500 in 5 out of 7 seasons. Is he not a good coach??? Rick Adelman had missed the playoffs 2 or 3 years in a row with Golden State. Is he not a good coach??? Pat Riley has had a below .500 record and missed the last 2 playoffs. He is not a good coach I guess.
I also do not have a lot of respect for using any kind of messenger to get a point across and using the media is probably the worst. Say what you want face to face and that should be good enough. The problem I have is that the quotes I hear from JVG are about people not doing what they can to help the team. The quotes I hear from SF are about what he has earned and how he can get his. I just don't like the attitude.Of course all these quotes have been filtered and rearranged by the media so it may all be a bunch of BS. I really hope so because I think if JVG and Francis are on the same page this is going to be a great year.
codell, we're really beating a dead horse here. If you read my post I did not say good guys can't be good coaches. I only said that good guys are only good guys if they don't win. I guess the simple answer is that a good coach will do what it takes to win. Let's talk about your Riley example. Riley WAS one of the most highly regarded coach, until he started coaching the Heat. Many still call him a good coach but his stock certainly went down. Don Nelson on th other hand, had losing seasons, but he turned that around and now Dallas is a contender. Rick Adelman? Same thing. So you see, results determines what separates a good coach from a bad one, as coaching ability has always been subjective. Now let's come back to Rudy. He knows as we all know that Steve and Cat need "guidance." After 3 1/2 losing seasons, he could have pushed them a little harder, made them play a certain way, cut down on mistakes, etc. I guess that two of our players making little or no progress in 4 to 5 years is a bit hard for me to swallow. You can argue that Steve is not the smartest of players, but you'd still have to question Rudy's ability to coach players. In short, you think he's a good coach, I think he's an average coach.
Earl Campbell made Bum Phillips alot better coach Hakeem made Rudy a better coach. I love Rudy, he was the man for Hakeem's time. Rudy is special because he was a great person, was always a Rocket and kept everyone together through 'choke-city' to Clutch City. Was he the best coach for Steve and Co. ????????? ???????????????????????? I hope Jeff Van Gundy is.
I'm afraid that I have to disagree with you here. I don't feel that JVG is trying to use "THE PRESS" to send messages and play head games with his players ala George Karl. In fact, I have been really impressed with his no nonsense, pragmatic attitude and approach to the team's current situation. I confess that I was not really a JVG guy when the change was announced but he has won me over with his "No Excuses" philosophy. When I read his statement about the team will ultimately be judged on wins and loses, I had to say "FINALLY! There's someone in the Rockets organization who understands. So I see nothing "classless" in what he's doing because to me, he's simply speaking a truth that hasn't been spoken around here for a very long time.
First of all, making a simple statement that you want 100 % commitment from your players, whose boss you are, is not "flying off at the mouth". I have not seen JVG essentially sending more of a message than that. Secondly, your request to "be even" is misguided. JVG is the players' boss. The boss has more rights than the players do to do whatever he thinks is necessary to make this a winning team. There is a saying in Latin..."Quod licet iovi, non licet bovi" - it means if Jupiter (a Roman God) is allowed to do something, that does not mean that some bull is allowed to do the same. It's like with parents and children. Parents need to be allowed to scold their children, but children should normally not be allowed to scold their parents. This is not about equal rights. Thirdly, I DO agree that sending messages through the media cannot be a constant source of motivation. I think it needs to be used in small doses, if at all, otherwise it can really lead to stirring up bad blood.
I hope you are right Because . . . I see they Rockets as the #2 Team in our Division I think we have more talent than the Spurs and more Heart than the Mavs but those teams just seem to put it together better than we I think IF JVG, SF and Ming roll together we will beat out one of them though Rocket River I don't think 3 or 4th seed is out of the question I'm an Optimist
I don't wish to be him .. but God Knows I'd take his money Rocket River should have seen me with the KT Trade . . .
Yes you did: I think you assume that coach's change their coaching style to fit a particular team more than they do. The best example is Riley, who went from an offensive minded, fast breaking team, to a conservative/grind it out defensive team. Other than him, not many coach's have changed the way they coach. Certainly, they have hardly ever done it with the same team. This is why Brown doesn't last long anywhere. This is why Nelson was fired/resigned from 2 jobs in a row with his "out score them" philosophy because he tried to force his coaching style onto players that weren't ideally fit for it (mainly, NY). Overall, coach's rarely change the way they coach, especialy, when they have had great success with their methods in the past. I am all for the "you can't fire the players, so you fire the coach" philosophy. However, I hardlly will lose respect for a coach because the players are not coachable or do not have the bball IQ or skills necessary to compete with those ahead of you in the standings. His stock went down because Mourning went down. Funny how coach's careers take a nose dive when they no longer have HOF type players playing for them. Rudy's had a poor record after he no longer had Hakeem in his prime. Riley had a poor record after he no longer has Mourning. Popovich had a poor record before Tim Duncan came along. Nelson had a poor record before Dirk developed into one of the most unguardable players in the league. Flip Saunders had a poor record before Garnett became a stud. These coach's poor records without stud player's is not a coincidence. Steve and Yao are not close to being those types of players. Yet. ; Exactly. So who is to say that Rudy would not have turned this team around had he stayed on??? See how that works?? Nelson has 3 non playoff, below .500 seasons and you would consider him a bad coach. Now, have 3 above .500 seasons and resulting playoff appearance, he is a good coach. Hardly seems fair does it? Same thing with Adelman, who actually made the playoffs with Sac his 1st two years with a record thats only 1 or 2 games off from Rudy's past two winning seasons. But because he actually made the playoffs, which is more of a result of other team's performances more than is own, you respect him right??? Again, who is to say that he didn't try??? No one will never know what went on behind closed doors and to assume that Rudy was content with their play and never tried to get them to coach them out of making the mental mistakes is way off base IMO. Some players never break their bad habits no matter who their coach is. Some player's never improve, no matter who the coach is. Once again you are making the assumption that players are like robots and that they will always respond to a good coach, no matter who they are. You just acknowledged that Steve is not the smartest player in the league. So how is Rudy responsible for that? You can't teach basketball IQ and the fact that Steve could not properly execute a simple pick n roll should tell you that Steve's problems may not be correctable by any coach. If it was, then everyone wouldn't still be talking about how our season hinges on Steve's ability to start playing team ball, even with JVG, allegedly a superior coach to Rudy, now leading the team. Agreed. And in short, I respect Rudy as a coach and you don't. To each their own. I am going to let my new sig speak for itself.
codell, I'll rephrase my statement to better reflect what I mean: you can't be a good coach by ONLY being a nice guy that everybody likes. You are saying that coaches rely on players and I agree with that 100%. But isn't that Rudy's problem? Pop's Spurs had an aging DRob before Duncan. KG is Flip Saunders' team. Riley is left with a hole in his roster and no cap space after Zo went down. Adelman's team was a joke, talent wise and record wise. Nelson's team had Finley. But what did Nelson do? He rebuilt the team and now the Mavs are a contender. Rudy last year HAD the talent to make the playoffs but they somehow managed not to. You can say it was because Rudy went down, you can also say it shouldn't have been that close in the first place. You are right, I did assume Rudy didn't try to talk to Steve to get him to play smarter, but I definitely thought he was way too passive during moments we needed coaching. I also didn't say JVG is a superior coach to Rudy, because that part of subjective. I think JVG is an above average coach and Rudy is an above average coach. What I do think though is that JVG's style fits us better as certain players of ours need guidance and need somebody to get in their faces (ie. JVG). Regardless, I have great respect for Rudy as a person. And yes we'll agree to disagree. Results will prove everything.
