Van Gundy stands by Rudy T By DAVID BARRON Copyright 2003 Houston Chronicle Remember when TNT analyst Jeff Van Gundy used to coach the New York Knicks? Remember what would happen when a call went against him? Remember his patented pained, petulant, disbelieving pout? If you think Rudy Tomjanovich is what's wrong with the Rockets, Van Gundy is looking at you in the same way this morning. You could practically hear the disbelief oozing through the phone line from Washington, D.C., Thursday when Van Gundy was told about the growing legion of Tomjanovich naysayers. "Have they forgotten 1994 and 1995 (the Rockets' NBA championship seasons, for those of you who have)?" he said. "I've watched the Rockets for a long time, and I know three things. They have a championship coach, which is hard to find. And they have a point guard and a center you can build around for the next decade, which is hard to find. And they have a general manager in Carroll Dawson who is astute. "So, to me, they have everything they need to rebuild. That's what they're going through, and over the next decade they're going to reap all the good things that come through rebuilding, because they're led by Rudy T and Carroll Dawson, and they've got a great point guard and a great center." And so, Van Gundy said, it is "foolish" to rail at Tomjanovich as the Rockets go through their growing pains in the first year with Yao Ming in the lineup. "You can't speed up the maturation process of players. They come at their own pace," he said. "Steve Francis has developed, and Cuttino Mobley has developed, and they now have an inside presence that will be dominant. There will be bumps in the road, but look at how much the team has improved. All I see is upside."
i agree. keep rudy, i dont see why people want him fired. i thinks its all in the players, they need to step up also. a coach can't help you make open shots or crucial shots in a game.
interesting take. maybe we crazed rox fans are so obsessed with minutia that we lose the whole picture of what we have. It is as though because we have a soon to be great team, we can't understand why it isn't great now. Yet in still, Van Gundy hasn't sat through the pain and turmoil that being a rox fan has meant over the past few seasons. I am all for giving due props, but i cannot give a lifetime of absolution for two years of glory let them eat cake
The ONLY opinion that matters is Les Alexander's. And, he has said many complimentary things about Rudy during the "rebuilding" season. Looks like Rudy will stay.
i think people hate rudy because he has had 2 losing seasons in 13 years... i mean how dare he have a losing season personaly i love the guy and i have faith in him.. and by the way people we are still rebuilding... we dont have hakeem anymore to work with and build around but at the same time i want more coaches moses come on down. hakeem stop by one and awhile... that would help develope the big man faster IMO
Great article. very nice find. THis should be a blow to all those "Fire Rudy" vermin. Rudy is a great coach. THis team is really going somewhere. It will be a great team with time. I see next year as an even greater improvement. Rocks will be good. We have our ent (big guy), our Franchise, and Our Cat. With developing players and team chemistry, this team is going to be really good.
yep, jeff van gundy says he's a good coach, so he must be. what the hell do you think he's going to say to the media? i think rudy is doing a crappy job and the rockets should can his ass ASAP? rudy is a "championship" coach. you know what? kenny smith is a championship point guard. vernon maxwell is a championship shooting guard. hakeem olajuwon is a championship center. how bout we re-sign all of them, and let them play for our team as long as they want also?? there is nobody who could be doing a worse job coaching this team than he is doing. i truly don't understand you people who STILL don't see that. nice job scouring the web to find one person who agrees with you though.
Yes, this team is rebuilding and we should have patience. But I want to see rebuilding on the right track! ISO is over! play like a team from now on! The style is the thing that needs rebuilding most. I doubt RT understands it.
I heard Rudy T once say the following, "I want to be the first coach to win NBA championships in two different eras." With the team he has in the making, I think this goal is achieveable, as long as he stresses defense. This is nothing wrong with our head coach. The Rockets are what you call a young team and it really is about the players. This team may not make the playoffs, even with Yao Ming, but guess what, even the great SHAQ did not go to the playoffs in his rookie year. By the way, the play Rudy T designed in which Mobley tied it up was great. Give him a little credit.
interesting take. maybe we crazed rox fans are so obsessed with minutia that we lose the whole picture of what we have. It is as though because we have a soon to be great team, we can't understand why it isn't great now I agree. I keep thinking over and over about the two seasons before the Rockets won the titles. (Lot of empty seats then) They were extremely frustrating and inconsistent. Having gone through the whole process is why I think Rudy's self confidence is unshakeable.
Exactly it's not about rebuilding the personnel which I think we have done now. It's about establishing an identity and a style of play. Are we a guard-oriented team or an inside-outside team or a center-oriented team? No one is sure about it which I think causes confusion among the fans or even the players and the coaches. We seem to vary our game plan from game to game which causes inconsistency. I mean look at the title contenders now. Kings are always known as a motion offensive team. Dallas are a fastbreaking, outside shooting team. Lakers are an inside-outside team. They established the style and stick with it and then bring the same type of offensive scheme to every game. They all have a very clear identity from the start. I know that those teams are together for many years. But for example Kings from the very start they already established themselves as a high-power offensive unit, then when they matured, they were starting to add rebounding and defense which made them as successful now.
The best example is from the Celtics game to the Knicks game. In the Celtics game, our offense was guard-oriented, outside shooting. Then in the Knicks game, we went to our center most of the time. How can you expect consistency when our own offensive scheme changes from game to game? I mean look at Kings and Lakers, they have the same schemes every game and establish the same type of style in the games they play. We need to start to establish an identity NOW.
"I want to be the first coach to win NBA championships in two different eras with the same team." forgot to include that in
most of the rudy t naysayers are the yao ming fan club militia who aren't happy their bigman isn't in a winning or this year's championship side. what they don't know or forget is yao didn't win a championship with the shanghai sharks in the chinese league until last season when either zhizhi wang or was it mengke bateere no longer competed for opposing teams.
