I know thats directed to DD but I'll bite regarding Span... The guy needs PT with his team. He is for the most part a PG and he needs to get comfortable with his teammates. Preseason gamees will be very important for Span. Outside the team, he'll def compete in Eurobasket 2007. The point I made about getting comfortable can be easily seen if you look at all his previous season stats. He has consistently been getting better every year with a small drop after a trade....His stats were rising when in Larisa, then dropped a little when he moved to marousi, rose there, dropped a little when moved to pao, rose again the second year and now dropped again when moved to the rockets... I know Ive been saying this all season but the guy just needs more mins at his natural position and freedom to play more like what he's comfortable with.
well it turns out that a few games wouldn't have mattered huh? considering the lakers were well behind us and we lost game 7 at home, so home court meant nothing. kind of hard to get motivated to play when coach tells you that you aren't going to play unless tmac gets hurt.
defense does win championships...we aren't that great of a defensive team. SA and detroit are. it was evident in game 7, everthing that jvg has been preaching we didnt do. rebounding and defense. i like jvg because he is a very intelligent man however he never tried to grow his bench and that hurt us in the playoffs. why the heck wouldn't you play snyder? even after bonzi left? doesn't anyone remember him saying he would play only one of them? Turns out he didn't play either. His continued 7-8 man rotation bit him in the ass. i agree with certain points of DD, this seems like 04-05 all over again. We havent improved as a franchise from the last 2 years.
SUre, and with perfect hindsight we might as well go 0-82 and tried to get Greg Oden or Kevin Durant. But otherwise without a magic crystal balls you try to win games. The fact that you're a professional in the NBA getting paid millions of dollars per year should be all the motivation one needs - and don't even tell me that you somehow think Bonzi's preseason snooze button push was justified because that doesn't even deserve the dignity of a response.
Well, during the last few games of the playoffs I agree the Rockets defense was nowhere to be seen. But statistically you can't say we're a world apart from SA and Detroit - rather we were 3rd best in the league in a virtual tie with SA from a statistical standpoint. There is no question that the Rockets could play defense - by and large they did it for 82+ games. The question is why it disappeared. I think it's more ont he players but that's just a guess.
Nowhere more evident than with Rafer. Poor guy avged 44mins in the playoffs after a 37mpg , full 82 game season! And that's with being the primary ball-handler. And I'm not a Rafer basher.....The guy played his heart out this year. His stats were up all over the board compared to his career averages except for his total fg% which was 7 made shots short (out of the total 1020 he took) from his career average. Rafer had an amazing season by his standards but it's ridiculous to expect him to play that many minutes continuously.
JVG didn't ignore Spanoulis and co. any more than he did Mo Taylor or Derek Anderson before them.. They got chances, didn't work out, so those who worked better played... it's that simple.
Obviously you never saw Tony Parker as a rookie. He played through it. Rookies have to play through it. Jeff has never played a rookie more than 7 minutes per game with the exception of head due to injuries. When with the knicks, every rookie drafted was off the team within 1 year (all traded for veterans) two of them in one deal for Chris Mills. Luther Head has the longest tenure of any Drafted player in Jeff Van Dummies career of 2 years surpassing the previous record of 1.5 years.
Our defense is overrated. It works well in the regular season when teams don't develop specific offensive strategy against the D. It works well in the regular season when teams don't always play offense to their best. Our D is regular season defense which would be crushed under the pressure of top notch offense in the post season, as we have seen in these playoffs. The Jazz walks in our house and drops 103 points, and we were blown out by the Mavs with different players two years ago. The players are different. The constant is JVG.
I think it's mostly because of style. Rockets always have trouble against pick'n roll offense because Yao is slow. And Utah is the best at running that, with big guys who can make outside shots.
Van Gundy didn't move Shane from the PF spot because of bad matchups at the 4 spot. He clearly stated that the perimeter defense was so bad that he felt he had to have Shane out there to keep too much penetration off Yao. Of course, that sat Kirk on the bench and took him completely out of the rotation. While our PG defense continued to leak like a sieve with Rafer, Luther, and Lucas.
Our defense failed against Utah because both of their bigs can shoot from the outside and can blow past Yao. Yao has to guard somebody, so you are either going to see open jumpers or easy penetrations to the basket all day. You could try to zone against them, but that will again just lead to open jumpers, which Utah was hitting way above their regular shooting. The only other option is to benchn Yao, but then, you are taking away half of the offense, and wasting one of our top two players. You just have to live with the defense that Yao played on Boozer, because he actually produced more going the other way. Teams that rely on outside shooting where the biggest matchup problem for the Rox al year, and they came damn close to overcoming that in the playoffs.
as long as tmac and yao are playing, this team is a playoff team regardless of its role players. But the lack of development from our bench is what set us back this year. of course i dont think bonzis preseason was justified. however, jvg could have def handled the situation much better in order to get something out of bonzi by the end of the season.
if we are such a great defensive team, why didnt we double boozer? or switch with hayes on boozer for different stretches during the game? We never mixed up our defense to surprise them at all! Our defense was as predictable as our offense. utah was bound to break through on offense. The rockets weren't
JVG helped Utah's offense by presenting defensive mismatchups for them. Yao is outquicked by Boozer. Okur outshoots our pfs. Yet Jeff Van Dummy had to make our defenders look bad by making them play out of position. He though it was his defensive master plan. "Watch out Boozer, Yao over shadows you. Haha." In reality it's a major brain fart that cost the Rockets the series. JVG doesn't have the balls to admit he's wrong and make adjustments. He does have the audacity to hang on to what's wrong. To have Okur shoot long jumpers against Yao is better than having Boozer murder Yao in the paint. It's OK to try different matchups to see what's the best way to go, it's gutless to stick to what's proven wrong and bury one's head in the sand. Also, JVG has not put availabe defenders out there. His reluctance to develop a bench helps Utah a lot. They don't worry about athletic and strong defenders like V-Span, Snyder, or Wells. They face unathletic defenders known as JVG pet boys. Offense is related to defense. Because JVG can't coach offense that involves athletic players, the Rockets are forced to let go of such players on defence, as a result the Rockets can't play lock down D. The players who can play lock down defense don't fit into JVG's stale and inflexible "stand and jack up a 3" offense. JVG is a regular season coach, preying on the weak, lazy and distracted teams in the regular season with great work ethic. Unfortunately, it's good enough in the regular season, but the playoffs is another league. In the playoffs work ethic is not a problem for any team. It's the basketball IQ, resourcefulness and guts that matter, none of which is strong forte for JVG.
I agree What was more important . .. WINNING or Getting Bonzi to be a good little boy and obey JVG's every command? To JVG it was getting Bonzi to be a YesMAn [See Battier, Howard and Rafer] Rocket RIver
Sorry I did not know that showing up for practice and games on time and being physically and mentally prepared to play and not quitting on your team = being a yesman.....
