Why wait to call PJ? A coach is going to get canned sooner or later, Nuggets-Knicks-Kings, PJ won't hesitate to take a job if he thinks he can get rings with them. We waited out on Larry Brown and lost. Don't let another hall of famer coach go while he is available. Forget the commitment to JVG. Its a business and he knows it. He will be wiping his tears with $100 bills and be drying them in his Benz convertible. I want Championships, not 80ppg against the worst team in the leage.
Because you don't just fire the guy whom you put your future on a year ago, and just assemble the team based on his wishes. What does that say about the owner and the GM? Plus, how can you cut the guy when we just 8 games into the season with a roster full of new players? Yes, losing to the Hawks really sucks, but that happens to all the good teams, and we are not even a good team yet.
Why not? The Diamond Backs fired their GM after 2 days. The Sixers fired their coach after like 3 weeks. This team has more potential than any other team in the league. Get the best coach available, worry about hurt feelings later. BTW, I didn't start this thread as a fire JVG Now thread. I'm just stating the simple fact that JVG isn't the right coach for this team. His philosophies aren't logical with these players. I'll give JVG more time, but not much.
Phil Jackson has said that he is not even going to consider the NBA during this regular season. He has plans through February, and wants to "watch as much of the NCAA tournament as humanly possible."
i can already sense and smell the championships if phil was our coach but with jeff... i smell a fart
I'm usually one of the types of fans whoi gets flustered and uses every profanity when the Rockets lose. However, we have turned over almost an entire team in less than a year. T-Mac and Yao ar barely learning to play together, as is the entire team. Ward looks bad because he was only supposed to play 10-15 minutes a game in a back up role, however Sura is injured, Ward is not starting material and was never meant to be the starter. By mid-season, everyone crying that the sky is falling will retract most of their statements made on this thread. I will agree that JVG is not an offensive-minded coach, but defense does win championships, look at the Pistons last year. However, so does depth of bench, and that is what is hurting the Rockets. Guys like Ward and Bowen need to be playing less. Boki needs to get PT, and not because I'm a Boki fan (though I'd like to see him do well) but we need to see if once and for all this guy can play and contribute. IMO, the team and fans must wait until Sura comes back to make an assessment of what the team can do and what it cannot do on the court. I think when Juwan Howard or Mo Taylor is traded it should be for a starting-caliber PG or SF, and some decent bench players. At this point maybe its time to use the TE to get some bench help now, maybe an expiring contract or two. One thing is for sure, this team will do well, and I think in the end the Achille's heel of this team will be lack of depth on the bench.
i agree completely. i couldnt have said it any better myself. sura may make a big difference. at the very least he will give some defense at the point. the major problem on our team is our 5 PF's and lack of depth. we have to move a couple of them for depth and we will be much improved.
I overestimated how much gas in the tank Charlie Ward had. I still think he would be a decent backup, but I doubt his ability to start for a competitive team.
Van Gundy gives the other teams defenses way too much time to set up every single offensive play. That leads to turnovers. We need some sort of fastbreak coached and I dont think Van Gundy will cave.
I saw Phil Jackson interviewed on some show recently. He said that he would talk with the Knicks but he hadn't had The Vision yet that that would be a destination for him... although he did wax a bit about the orange and blue.
1. Yeah, but this isn't the problem. If you think it is, it's simply wrong. It's JVGs philosophy to reduce the possessions and slow down the game. There is nothing wrong with it, since it means that the opponent has limited possessions, too. It doesn't matter if your team scores just 90 ppg if it lets the opponents just score 88 ppg. It's the same as scoring 98 ppg and getting 96 ppg from the opponents. Besides that you just have to realize that we don't have the players to score a lot of points. We never had the last couple of years. 2. You have to realize that we traded a lot of offensive quality to Orlando. There were a lot of people saying T-Mac alone would score as many points as Steve and Cat did when we traded them away. Back then I just had a smile on my face knowing that sooner or later the awakening will come and these people will realize how good Cat and Steve really were. Right now we have basically two better than average scorers in T-Mac and Yao. There is no way we could be a great offensive team with that being said. Jimmy is a great role player and he was one of the best offensive players in his prime. But his prime is well behind him. He can still do what the coach wants him to do, but he won't give you 18 ppg. And Mo is a great bench scorer. He can come in and take over and give this team a boost. But he is no starter. Our offensive power at the 4 is simply average, since the 4 is the best position in the whole league. There is no way we could be a great offensive team without a great 3rd scorer and more than solid point guards. We just don't have the players. 3. Agreed. We have a lot of problems that we had last year. But after this offseason it had to be clear that we wouldn't be a contender over night. We gave up more defense and offense to Orlando than we got back. T-Mac is a great player and probably a better fit than Cat or Stevie, but he can't do it all alone. But CD was right not to spend that kind of money for good role players other teams did. We didn't overpay a Brian Cardinal or Derek Fisher though they would have helped us. We knew that would mean we won't be as good as we could have been. But that's ok, because Yao is still not ready to lead this team to the finals. We can get better players in the next years. 4. Doesn't matter as long as we are a good team. Unfortunately we are not a good team until now. But we will get better. 5. Name the players on our team that have to be developed. We don't have players who JVG could develop. And I don't know what the fascination with Boki is all about. Granted, he has shown a little improvement, but he is still far away from where he should be. And then again he is a role player off the bench. If he can't handle playing 2 games and sitting the next 3 he is simply not a good fit for our bench. That's what makes great role players / bench players great role players / bench players. They come in and execute the game plan, every time they get the chance. I'm just tired of all the negativity after the losses...
1. NO EXCUSES Heat and Magic look better than us .. and they had as much turnover 2. The Piston are 1. an Anomoly [I beleive Kobe tanked it] but an anomoly nontheless. . . . 2. Their Offense last year was MUCH better than ours this year or last Rocket River
Why not just give the Pistons credit that they were the better team. I don't believe Kobe "tanked" it regardless of the adversities the Lakers were going through. It's hard to believe that ANY team, even Lakers, would "tank" the finals after they've worked so hard to get there. The Lakers could have tanked it against other teams leading up to the finals. They couldn't have done it without Kobe, which shows that they did NOT tank the playoffs and certainly did not tank the finals. The pistons just had their number and they were highly underestimated. THe pistons are a very good team.
I understand exactly what JVG's philosophy is. The problem isn't that we are holding the opponenent to 88ppg, its the fact that we can't score more than that. It is terrible. We don't have the players to score a lot of points? What are you talking about? Francis/Mobley/Yao/Jackson/Taylor TMac/Yao/Jackson/Taylor/Howard These guys are more than capable of putting up points, its just that JVG's style basketball doesn't allow them to. Look at the scorers JVG has had in his career, none of them scored 20ppg (except TMac so far), and none of his teams have scored more than 80ppg. Its the way JVG plays basketball. Two better than average scorers? TMac is the 2-time scoring champ, Yao should be putting up big numbers if he didn't go through those periods of not touching the ball. There are plenty of teams out there with much less scoring talent that are putting points on the board and winning. You're acting like JVG has nothing to do with our lack of scoring. Look at the stats when he was with the Knicks, they are exactly the same as last season and this season so far. This is how JVG wants to play basketball. It is how he has always played the game, and he's not going to change that. Thats not what makes good role players at all. Boki had one bad game and he's in the dog house, how is this good for him? JVG elects to put in Ryan Bowen, a guy with ZERO offensive capabilities. He's not playing any better than Padgett or Boki, it just shows that JVG will take defense over offense anytime, even if offense is what we need. I'm tired of it too. But I'm more tired of watching JVG-style basketball. I come home excited every game day and usually finish the game dissapointed, even if we won. Les-if you want to know why the TC isn't filled everynight even with TMac/Yao? People don't want to shell out $60 to watch a very talented team put up 80points.
Last year we had 3 pretty good scorers and 2 above average scorers. But other than that we had nothing else. If you substitute Cato with Mo T, we basically had no bench scoring at all. We were one efficient perimeter scorer away from being a good team with a solid offense. But Cat, Steve, Yao, Mo T and Jimmy were not enough. On a good night they gave you about 80 points. You need another 20 though. And that is on a good night. This year it's even worse. T-Mac has basically to score for 2 good players. He is the topscorer of the nba, but I don't think he can be that good. Steve and Cat were pretty good offensive players. And it's simple. When you just rely on one player, no matter how good he is, and that player fails, it will be hard to find another player who picks up the slack. Last year when Steve had a poor game Cat could take over. If T-Mac has a poor game, do you want Lue or Ward to take over? I just can repeat it. We had the players last year to be an average offensive team at best. And we traded offense to Orlando, which we didn't get back. T-Mac and Yao won't be the problem when they finally get used to each other. You can expect them to score about 45 points a night. But what's up with the other players? They will struggle to give you 55 points. That won't happen with this team no matter who is your coach. No, I'm not. In fact I even said that his philosophy is limiting possessions. Even if this team would be coached by someone else. We might increase our ppg, but the opponent's ppg would also improve. The problem is - and I repeat again - we don't have the players to be a contender yet. But we all should have known that. JVG/CD picked up cheap veterans to fill the holes, because we didn't want to overpay players like Derek Fisher to ruin our future. This team will struggle offensively until we get the right players and JVG knows that. But when we get these players, our team will be solid offensively and great defensively. And then we are contenders. And JVG even does not have to change his coaching. If you say JVG should be fired, you basically say that we should go away from Yao to be our go-to-guy. JVGs system is a good system to hide his weaknesses. The slow pace helps to overcome his stamina deficits. The good team defense helps to overcome his speed deficits and his foul trouble. When you say you want a coach who runs more fastbreaks, then you say Yao will never score 20 ppg and will never play more than 30 mpg. If you want Yao to succeed you have to slow the game down, it's as simple as that. If you say I don't care about Yao as long as we score a lot of points, then you basically say Yao is a wasted pick and we should have taken Amare Stoudemire instead. Of course this makes good bench players. They know their role exactly and they can execute no matter how much they play. For example Steve Kerr. You could call mit 3:00 am and ask him to shoot a trey. He would make it.
Last nights game was TOTALLY disgusting and downright pathetic, however after we get better from throwing up so much, we have to remember that the season just began. Hopefully Sura coming back will give us some much needed energy and maybe the team will eventually gel. If U remember, the 92-93 team started a medicore 14-16 then took off and finished 41-11. So turnarounds can happen. I'm not saying thats what's gonna happen but U never know. If by mid-season they're still losing to sorry-*ss teams like the Hawks, then we push the panic button. Besides dynasty's aren't bulit overnight. This is definitely not the team that we'll have in a few years.
