I am happy so far. I can see better offensive sets while the defense is not that far behind from last year. The team is still gelling. If by mid season the team is not clearly better, then we have problems.
There is no place on this board for this kind of rebel rousing sir! Patience??!!! How long does that take??
I am by no means a jvg apologist or a RA supporter by any means. I think they both have their respective strengths as coaches and both are fairly comparable in terms of ability. With that said, so far I have been fairly disappointed with ra's performance to date for a variety of reasons. 1. He appears to be having the same "conditioning issue" with francis that jvg had last year with bonzi. I don't want to get into a debate about whos right and who's wrong and coming into camp in shape, etc, etc, etc. All I know is that in a situation like that the team is ultimately the one who suffers (see bonzi last year). 2. For an alleged offensive genius Rick Adelman appears to be having a lot of issues with getting yao the ball in scoring positions, a problem that jvg also definitely had. But no one has ever mistaken jvg for an exceptional offensive coach. This was evidenced by yaos 5 shot attempts in the first half of the game today. 3. Adelman's offensive increases definitely do not outweight the defensive slippage we are experiencing with him at the helm. I think it was durvusa who summed up all the comparisons in offensive cats from last year to this year, and there were virtually no tangible changes ( i know, i know, its early, etc). The defensive stats have all changed however, and for the worse. So unless the offensive stats make a dramatic increase it looks like we were better off under jvg with a mediocre offense and stellar defense, versus a slightly upgraded offense and mediocre defense. 4. One thing about Adelman I do like is his apparent willingness to be innovative with lineups and personnel, something that i think jvg completely lacked with his rigid, unyielding approach. Examples include using shane at the 4 and trying the yao, deke twin towers against the spurs in the first game. Both things that jvg would have never considered. On that note, despite adelman's willingness to be innovative, it is all the more puzzling that he absolutely refuses to give steve a shot, surely the guy can't be that out of shape. Right now rafer is a 0, and luther is a negative value, i am fairly certain that the opportunity cost of giving steve a shot is pretty much as low as its ever going to be.
to respond to number 3. There is a big difference. The outside shooting has been horrible this year compared to last. The overall PPG is the same, the possessions have been the same. T-Mac and Yao's performance (better than last year)has disguised the poor performance(even counting the Spurs game) of basically everyone else. Also, check the number of easy baskets T-Mac and Yao get when they are in there together. Dunks and easy lay-ups left and right compared to last year.
To an extent, I agree with you but my only point is the offensive improvement (with better players ie mike j, bonzi, scola) is so marginal versus the defensive slippage that im not sure hiring ra was such a good idea. My point is that who is more likely to win a championship....a number 1 defensive team with a middle of the pack offense, or a middle of the pack defensive team with a slightly better than middle of the pack offense. JVG is an elite defensive coach, no one can argue this point. If we are to lose that then it should be to become an elite offensive team which we have not become yet, under RA (nor do i see us becoming it because i still don't believe yao is being utilized as efficiently as he should be, and starting shane, chuck, and rafer, and giving luther mins off the bench gives us too much of an offensive deficit).
The jury's out on Adelman not because we're only 10 games into the season but because he spent all but one game of the preseason trying to figure out who would sit on the inactive list. Feigen wrote today about how we are now seeing the first signs of promise from a new offense that will take a while to gel. When we're seeing those first signs with our best or second best player out with an injury, yes it will definitely take a while. Way longer than if he'd insisted on running that offense when TMac was healthy. We all knew it would take a while. So why not start in the preseason? Why did we spend significant time in the first five preseason games deciding between Butler, Snyder, Novak, Harris, Reed and even Lucas? Come on. Seriously. Lucas? Like our number 6 point guard was going to crack a 9 man rotation? We needed those preseason games to test an entirely new offense on the 9 to 10 players he new and everybody knew comprised the actual rotation. Now we're finally trying that offense out without McGrady? That makes a lot of sense. The lessons learned here will pay great dividends for all those games where McGrady isn't in the rotation. I know it's spilt milk and I remain extremely optimistic but I can't remember a time in Rockets history when the preseason had an opportunity to provide a better jump start on the season. Instead it was spent largely figuring out who would be numbers 14 and 15 on the inactive list and the 9 or 10 players he and we always knew would wind up playing all the minutes didn't start playing in rotation until the final preseason game. What's happening now should have happened a month ago. With TMac. Mistake.
Unless RA has been the one missing all those shots, then maybe firing the coach after 10 games is a bit premature. RA hasn't missed a shot yet, by my calculations.
