i agree with the suggestion made previously. it's just a ploy to motivate stromile, rather than criticize hayes. he knows hayes probably can read between the lines, and will work even harder. sadly, after so many years in the league, a player shouldn't need to have his coach play mind games to motivate and encourage him.
Most of it IS about Stro not being so bright. Howard, Hayes, Baxter, and Yao have never looked anywhere near as lost as Stro is on a consistent basis. Add to that they don't make the boneheaded plays he does either, like trying to dribble penetrate when he has the ball at the three point line. You say "fact is" that JVG runs a scientific game. Have you been to practice? Been in the huddle during a timeout? There's nothing all that scientific about basketball. He may stress certain things more than other coaches to pound it in the players heads (like transition defense), but I would hardly call that science. As far as offensively, in a half court offense you HAVE to run set plays most of the time to be successful. That doesn't mean every play run has to be difficult either...pick and roll and high/low post are simple set plays that are usually effective with the players we have. Other players may have to be in certain places on the court during these plays for them to work...which is something Stro may struggle with. Anyway, this is the NBA, not a playground. Since we don't really have an offense capable of fastbreaking all the time, like the Suns, we have to run sets, like all successful teams do (Pistons, Spurs, etc.)
You clearly know nothing about basektball if you are serious with your statement. It is ALL about basketball IQ and not so tied to athletism as most people like to think. Now having said that if you have both you are pretty special. The game is all about consitent play, smart play, knowing what your team mates are going to do (chemistry), and game planning for your opponents. In other words, the team that makes the least mistakes and scores the most points will win the game. If you need an example just look at Larry Bird. This guy would undoubtedly be picked last at a pick up game if you didn't know him and then he would just beat your a$$ with his basketball IQ on the court and leave you wondering what happened. In order to prove my point name me one championshipt team that won solely based on athletism and not IQ?
well its hard to tell who has a high IQ or who doesnt.. its IMPOSSIBLE TO MEASURE!!! Cuz great players may look like they obviously have a high IQ .. but who's to say they really do. maybe there skillz and athletism simply shadows over there dumb low IQ.. one person that comes to mind is SHAQ. i dont think he's too bright.. but HE SIMPLY dominates the game (when he was young) with his physical strength and atheletism. he doesnt have too be samrt like say Bird on the court. he could simply overpower and dunk over someone.. stro who is obviously not too bright A) has no bball IQ and b) is totally overrated when it comes to athletism.. he's small, skinny and cant post.. only thing he can do is jump.. is thats your definition of athletism then hell he's atheltic. .but i think someone say like kobe has great atheltism. .quick, can jump and more agile.. and he's pretty strong for a guard
You make a good point but a high basketball IQ does not necessarily equate to a high mental IQ as in genius. Really what it boils down to is understanding the game itself, other players tendencies, when to push it, when to slow it down, playing defense, etc.
I agree! Watching this team run through its offense is like pulling teeth. Guys are afraid to make a mistake and they are playing tight that's why our shooting % has been so low. JVG needs to ease up and give these guys some room to operate.
last season proved jvg is more than capable of running a smooth free-flowing offense but it seems like nobody watched us play last year. jon barry, one of the most free-spirited basketball players i've ever seen, personally said that jvg rejuvinated his basketball career and kept him from possibly retiring. t-mac, our best player, says that van gundy is the best coach he's ever played for. so much for him sucking the life out of the game. stromile doesn't get it because he's just not that bright. there's a reason why someone like chuck hayes can come in and immediately thrive while stromile has spent the entire season still "adjusting". van gundy isn't too restrictive and he doesn't want the rockets to slow-down the game. if you actually watch he's constantly yelling and waving his arms for the guards to push the ball. jvg has coached most of this year on the fly trying to fill in the gaps with back-ups when his two best players and a host of others have been out. watch almost any of the last 50+ games from last season to see proof of what he can do with a healthy team and guys who can make shots and be in the right position at the right time.
BigM, I agree with what you are saying with certain caveats. First of all, it's an 82 game season plus more games if a team gets into the playoffs. The problem that Van Gundy has is he is obsessive. He obsesses about defense from the first day of training camp, and grinds, and grinds, and grinds, and grinds on the players to get his defensive system working. What that leads to is fatigued legs early in the season, a ton of missed shots and tunovers. I'm sorry, but if you've ever played basketball, you know that when you are worn down and your legs are tired, you miss shots and you throw the ball away.........and you are susceptible to tweaks and injuries....especially foot, knee, and back injuries. And you try to recover and rest on the offensive end by walking it up slowly, dribbling too much, standing around, hands on knees, etc. etc. etc..........even though the coach is twirling his arms like a windmill trying to get his team up the floor faster. Van Gundy, for all his good traits, drives players into the ground too early and often and it takes half a season or more to get the whole ship righted because he has tore up jake during the early part of the season. This is the 3rd year in a row it's happened, with all sorts of different player combinations, and the same mad scramble towards the finish line. If he would just switch his emphasis to making sure we got offense first, early in the season, and making sure the players are in shape to get up and down the court, and play uptempo and get them playing loose and free and easy, we'd be better off in my opinion. Then as the season wears on and as we move towards the all-star break, like we are right now, start ratcheting down the defense tight, tight, tight. That way the players have gotten their confidence going and are feeling positive about their abilities and hopefully aren't all broke down, wore out, and injured before we get out of the 2nd week of the season. If you look around the league, nobody is playing a lot of defense the first month or so of the season. The vast majority of the teams use the early part of the season to get their offense working smoothly. We have enough offensive talent in Yao and McGrady and them guys creating wide open looks for our shooters that we should be able to win a good amount of games early on just because our shooters and penetrators have fresh legs and are getting the looks off the doubles of our big 2 and our big 2 are playing fresh and uninjurerd. Witness Dallas last year. They didn't play defense the whole year or at least until AJ took over. Then towards the end of the season they start turning up the heat. And come playoff time, it's on. If Van Gundy would change this one aspect of his coaching style, I think the team and he would be a lot better off and I think he'd have a lot more to work with come March, April, and May. Remember, we have basically a veteran team, with a huge huge big man lugging it up and down the floor.............who has had to basically play year round basketball for the last umpteen years before last offseason. These guys aren't a bunch of skinny 19 year olds that can just pound it up and down the floor all day and all night. Van Gundy doesn't want kids. He wants older, established vets. He should make his season plan match his players a little bit better. It's an 82 game regular season. It's an endurance contest, not a sprint. Van Gundy coaches every season like we are gonna have a player's strike shorted 50 game schedule. If he would change this one thing and then allow Yao to be creative on offense and let Yao use his God given intelligence to pick and choose his spots and where he plays on the floor, I think we can win multiple championships.
I think this is the key. Basically every season since JVG came here is a make-over for Rockets (1st season everyone is new to his system). If we at least have a stable group of starters, then the players won't have to re-learn the system, then it won't be a grind and they won't be afraid of making mistakes and they will play more loose on the offensive end. I am afraid next season will start in similar fashion, I only hope that there won't be as many injuries as this season. Who would have thought Tmac overworked himself this summer, Yao got an infected toe after much rest in the summer, and so many injuries to our role players. It's just bad luck, maybe JVG brought bad luck?
It's hard to quantify basketball IQ with a number, but it isn't hard to see when some players have very low or very high bbl IQ's. Stro has a lot of athleticism but little bbl IQ, skills or toughness. Nobody every said Shaq's bbl IQ was high. Whether it's high or low, his raw strength and (past) and agility made him a dominant player. Kobe is a freak and is way more athletic than Stro could ever be; no doubt. But if Stro brought passion every night and played hard, he could be a borderline All-Star, a poor man's Amare. It will never happen, but this is the "potential" everybody talked about before he came here. On this team, Stro could easily be 16/12 player if he was passionate and driven, but neither is his personality. He is what he is and it's not JVG's fault. Stro will never change. The bottom line with Stro: You can't make orange juice out of lemons. People need to accept that.
It would be nice if it was just bad luck, but review Van Gundy's coaching history. His Knick teams had the same problems. He wants veterans out there busting tail.........those teams were fraught with injuries as well. Veterans Van Gundy and injuries.........it all goes together. Please note, I'm not anti-Van Gundy. I don't there's a better coach available right now. I think he is a very good coach. I do think for him to be a great coach he's got to win a championship or multiple championships and I think he could better accomplish that with healthy players down the stretch, not guys worn down to a frazzled nub.
We have a lot of athletically gifted players on this team, particularly Stro, T-mac, and Rafer. I would say all 3 of those guys can run and/or jump out of the gym. However, how many fast breaks does this team successfully run? How many alley-oops has Stro received, or anyone for that matter? Not many. What I'm trying to say, through that example, is that the current system isn't fully capitalizing on our players' talents. Of course, SOME of this game has to be a science - plays need to be run, defensive schemes set - but not EVERYTIME that jvg demands. Sometimes you need to just let them play. Examples: Phoenix, though without a title, made it deep into the playoffs with this free system. Why? It capitalized the players' talents. Same with Detroit -- they're tearing it up this year under Flip's more free system! And they were already a good team! So I guess there needs to be a balance in what is set and what is free.
jopatmc: love your post! Gundy seems to want every game to be a 7th Finals game and he cannot accept imperfection esp. in defense. It does seem like last year he let Tmac begin running the offense and let it start moving more as long as he got what he wanted on defense, which is lockdown. I do agree that with Hayes/Swift he is playing Jack Nicholson, the Therapist, in Anger Management to Hayes/ Swift the Adam Sandler character. The Great Manipulator. Can you see Gundy and Swift sitting in a car parked on the top of one of the ship channel bridges singing: "I feel pretty...." ???
