Well I for one think this post has been very nice to read and not bashing at all. It is allright to discuss strenghts and weaknesses of a coach because it's not about two games. This critique has been going on for some seasons now so one should think that it is true. Rudy has not been getting the most out of his talent the last few years period. He uses their strenghtes great and all but he is not capable of getting his star players to adjust their game and start concentrating on their weaknesses. In Steves case it is his playmaking skills. With Cuttino it is shotselection and so on. Things that have been questioned for a long time now and should have improved more than they have. But is this the players or Rudys fault. Well I look at Kenny Thomas and see a player who has adjusted fine over time with Rudy and actually learning from past mistakes (too many 3s). But one could argue that since he is not asked to carry the team on his bag every night it is easier for him to work on finetuning his game. So what do you think, is it just the players that have too many issues on their mind during the game, so they really can't focus enough on weaknesses. I mean Francis is always looking for the rebound and always wanting the ball, so maybe he doesn't think so much about what he really should be doing, namely get the team to take over the game. Just a thought, it could all be Rudys fault
I agree with a lot of posts in this thread, btu I think there are some things Rudy can improve upon regardless of how complete a coach he is. Take the baseline inbound play where they stack up and eventually the PG comes off a pick. They've been running that same play for two years. Unless the defensive COMPLETELY falls asleep, there is no chance for a quick inside score. Even with the defender playing on mediocre man to man on the play, it is still difficult to get the ball until at least 4 seconds have passed. I have League Pass and watch other teams, but is it common around the elague to have one inbound play that isn't that decent? I remember a time in the eary 90's where they had a n inbound play with a number of options, often resulting in a sweet Horry inbound jam. We have the talent, we should be able to do stuff like this.
My only complaint about Rudy as a coach is his desire to exploit one weakness over and over until it cannot be exploited any longer. He is a percentage coach. If something is working 65 or 70 percent of the time, he will run it until the percentage falls. Percentage doesn't mean scoring. It means getting a good shot. The main problem I have with that philosophy is that it relies on the success of only a couple of players. When it was Hakeem or Hakeem and Clyde or Hakeem and Clyde and Charles, great. These are three of the top 50 of all time. But, with a young team that has half a dozen guys who can score on a regular basis, YOU MUST get other guys involved. When they are not involved, especially with the attitudes of players today, they get bored and out of sync. The five-man offense was supposed to help eliviate that problem. Now, all that being said, it is tough to criticize the guy when three of his best scorers are in street clothes, his #1 draft pick is struggling to get acclimated, his other draft pick is still recovering from surgery and getting into shape and his primary power forward couldn't hit the ocean from the beach. That essentially leaves him with two options: Francis and Mobely. I mean, but look around the league. There are very few teams who aren't enamoured with the ISO. Why do you think scoring has gotten worse over the last decade instead of better? The one-on-one type of play we are seeing began with the league's love affair with Micheal Jordan. Who knew that "Being Like Mike" would be a disaster?
I agree with Rileydog. Their execution of the pick and roll is horrible. 90% is the guards. They do not run their man into the pick and work it properly. AND I have not once seen a pass to a guy rolling. You might as well just have a telephone poll as a pick. If they get this going better, especially with Rice, MT, and Yao Ming they would have a very consistent way of scoring/getting fouled. (See: Utah Jazz) HORRIBLE! Rudy has done a bad job coaching injuries so far... 1) Collier - he sucks just leave him out. He's simply that bad individually and for the team... 2) Playing Hawkins, Collier, Boki and Mooch at the same time? WTF - the thin air must have gotten to RT Good thing: RT resisted playing Rice and Thomas and still won. Saving them may have been brilliant. In 5 months, this is still a W, ugly or not. Losing KT or Rice because you brought them in too soon would be many L's... OK. We have looked bad but we did improve, albeit against Denver pulling one out of thin air. We are 3 games away from MT being back. We should have KT and Rice either tonight or next game. Yao Ming, Grega's Brother, and EG looked better. Hawkins did OK. Cato doesn't suck, Collier does. Steve, Cat and Mooch are playing as expected, like it or not. Let's see what happens against a good team at home with some thick air.
The Rockets have only played 2 games this season, but it is clear that Rudy Tomjanovich is not qualified to coach the Rockets. During training camp, Rudy said that the Rockets would be running a new “motion style” offense, instead of the isolations that ruined the Rockets’ offense last season. Two games into the season, the offense looks exactly the same as last year. One player getting the ball, going one and one, and shooting, while the rest of the players stand still and watch. The Rockets offense has looked terrible in the first two games this season. Rudy desperately needs to call motion plays. If Rudy mixes up motion plays to get everyone involved, and isos on occasion, the Rockets’ offense could be deadly. Rudy needs to center the motion offense around Steve Francis. Steve has been one of the only Rockets players that has shown life in the first game, averaging 30 points and 10.5 rebounds per game, including a 39 points outburst in a loss to the Pacers. Steve is the team’s superstar, and if Rudy can run some plays to get Steve open, he will be able to score almost at will. I believe that Rudy is great at getting along with his players, but he is not a good coach. His play calling has been terrible over the past few season. He is also terrible at playing the right players at the right time. Against the Pacers, Steve was lighting it up in the 3rd quarter. The Rockets were down and needs to start off the fourth quarter strong. But what does he do? He substitutes Moochie Norris into the game for Steve, for the first 4 minutes in the fourth quarter. The Rockets ended up losing. Who knows what would have happened if Steve had played the entire fourth quarter. Another thing that Rudy is terrible at is using Moochie Norris. How many times has Mooch ran down the shot clock by dribbling the rock around, like he is playing keep away. If Rudy was the great coach that people make him out to be, he would sit Mooch down, and tell him to pass the ball around, instead of dribbling until there is 1 second left on the shot clock and throwing up a prayer. Other then the drafting of Yao Ming, Rudy had a terrible summer break. When the Sonics offered the Rockets Rashard Lewis for a sign-and-trade for Eddie Griffin, Rudy promptly rejected the offer, thinking that the Sonics were crazy. Well it turns out that Rudy was crazy. Rashard Lewis is turning into a superstar, while Eddie is staying the same and not improving at all. The Rockets’ success will sadly be based on Rudy’s coaching this year. I doubt that Rudy will change at all. But I still believe that the Rockets will make the playoffs this season. The Rockets’ need to let Rudy go. He is not fit enough tot coach this team. His play calling, substituting, and turning down Rashard Lewis, because of Eddie Griffin, have come back to bite him in the butt. Les Alexander and Carroll Dawson have to realize that Rudy is not a good coach, and doesn’t fit in well the Rockets. After this season, Rudy has to go. But the sad thing is that Rudy will probably be our coach for a long time.
Look, I'll agree that there are problems and I'll even agree that they are partially the fault of the coach. I think we can all agree on that. But, your sentence is pretty ridiculous. Nothing is CLEAR two games into the season when three of your best players are not playing. By your logic, we could say that Steve is a ballhog who has no business out there unless he can learn to pass. I'm sure you wouldn't agree with that and neither would I (although some have already said it). The only thing that is CLEAR is that the Rockets have not played well in their first two games. If they still look like this after 20 games, we have every reason to worry and there will probably be a legitimate reason to claim Rudy is the problem even though we all know that the vast majority of blame always ends up on the shoulders of the coach despite the fact the players are almost always the one's at fault. But, until then, the only thing that is clear is that the team is struggling. Beyond that, everything is unclear at best, totally murky at worst.
People on this board who deem it appropriate to call Rudy an awful coach really crack me up. To have that kind of audacity, the kind it takes to second guess a man who has played and coached in this league for as many years as Rudy has, who has won two championships (one of only four teams to do so in the 90's), who is loved by nearly every single individual in and around the league, who was integral in amassing the talent that we now possess and expect so much from, to have the audacity to sit there and second-guess this man from your couch or computer terminal, really infuriates me. It infuriates me past the point of anger. I can only laugh. Have fun wih your Rudy-bashing and backseat coaching, I'm going to go and cheer for my team. A team that I root for in no small part because I like the coach and players so much.
I can't blame Rudy for the struggles yet either. He was planning all preseason with KT, TMo, Rice looking good and knowing he had to get by with a "catch up" in Yao Ming and MT sitting out. Having to struggle through the injuries has been hard. Let's see what happens at least until 2003...
To answer the thread title question: I am pretty sure that many NBA coaches have called him a good to great coach. Secondly, I find it ironic JayZ would want Larry Brown here when he is running the biggest ISO system in the league.
Originally posted by Gascon People on this board who deem it appropriate to call Rudy an awful coach really crack me up. To have that kind of audacity, the kind it takes to second guess a man who has played and coached in this league for as many years as Rudy has, who has won two championships (one of only four teams to do so in the 90's), who is loved by nearly every single individual in and around the league, who was integral in amassing the talent that we now possess and expect so much from, to have the audacity to sit there and second-guess this man from your couch or computer terminal, really infuriates me. It infuriates me past the point of anger. I can only laugh. Have fun wih your Rudy-bashing and backseat coaching, I'm going to go and cheer for my team. A team that I root for in no small part because I like the coach and players so much. This deserves a second posting...at least. Thank you Gascon!
Thank you Gascon. I agree with you 100% except for one point - this Rudy bashing does make me angry. 2 and 1, with a hurt Rice, missing MoT, adjusting Ming, etc. The man has helped ammass talent that is going to rival Dallas and Sacramento in a few years. He will achieve his goal of being the only coach to win championships with the same team in different era's. Will you Rudy bashers be man enough to admit your wrong when we make the playoffs this year, and be legitimate contenders over the next decade?
Yes, I think Rudy is a good coach. He is not the perfect coach for everybody, but I think he knows how to give players the opportunity to succeed in areas where they are comfortable. Last year Griffin did not have the body to play in the post, so Rudy ran plays to get him open three pointers. As far as using picks go, you have to recognize that teams are double-teaming the ball. That means that if Eddie comes over to set a pick, his man goes to his left, and Steve's man goes to the right, basically allowing them to double-team Steve. The Rockets have developed some plays that run off of this, but I don't think that Rudy is finished just yet. I suspect that a lot of the Rocket's plays are going to key off of the attention Stevie is going to attract this year. If you think that Rudy isn't getting plays ready for this, you are really underestimating him. Btw, since this is my only post for the night...Moochie sucks! We need more Boki and less Moochie.
Larry Brown is an old school coach. He preaches tough d, teamwork, passing, cutting, slashing, good solid fundamentals. Statistics aren't everything, especially 3 or 4 games into the season, but the Sixers alrady have 3 players averaging more or the same number of assists per game as our highest player (Snow, Iverson, McKie all average >=4.7 apg, Francis averages 4.7 apg). I guess it's not that I don't thik Rudy WAS a great coach, and that he may be able to become one again with such an enormity of talent (which means everyone on our team healthy and playing) or a really good, talented veteran team, but I personally don't think that he is a good coach now. I don't find it surprising that in all the responses to this thread, no one has refuted the poor fundamentals that I listed.
JayZ But see, Larry Brown is all that and still runs the leagues most obvious ISO system. So that is ironic to me. Rudy preaches defense, too. Brown had Ratliff and Mutombo. Rudy had Hakeem. They both had outstanding, if not the best, defenses in the NBA. btw: in my strong opinion, the Rockets defense in the 3rd Quarter on Saturday, blew that game open. What? We had like 3 or 4 fastbreaks on steals to open the half. Hawkins is a stud defender.
