Rockets seeking leaders Van Gundy says Yao, McGrady not taking charge By JONATHAN FEIGEN If the loss to the Hawks was Armageddon to Jeff Van Gundy, and Thursday's disaster against the Knicks was something worse, Friday was the Rockets' Day After Tomorrow. So the Rockets did what had to be done. They sifted through the rubble of mediocrity and started to rebuild. "How bad do we want it?" guard Jim Jackson said of Van Gundy's theme Friday. That would seem as good a place as any to start. But measuring — or even improving — that might begin for the Rockets, with the players around whom this team was built, Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady. Van Gundy has often said a team's best players must set its tone. "Your best players are always your leaders," he has said. But while it is easy to determine the team's best players, finding its leaders was far more challenging. "Do we have enough personality? Do we have enough fight?" Van Gundy said. "That's not on them. That's a team thing. Every team follows a certain personality. Who are we following? I'm not sure. "Neither of those guys has played like we need them to play to win down the stretch." There was a lot of that to go around. But assuming the Rockets would not en masse choose to take a month off to promote Ron Artest's musical career, solving that problem might move to the next foundation of everything the Rockets planned to be — defense. The Rockets are third in the NBA in field-goal percentage defense and points allowed per game. But despite those numbers, their defense has been like their games as a whole lately. There have been good moments but terrible finishes. For whatever good the Rockets have done defensively, they have allowed so many second shots and free throws that teams don't have to shoot well to outscore them. The Rockets are last in the NBA in the percentage of rebounds grabbed each game. Total rebounds might punish them for simply playing in games with fewer possessions and fewer shots, but when there are rebounds to grab, no team in the NBA gets a smaller share. "The glaring issue is the rebounding," Van Gundy said. "(The Knicks) shot 40 percent from the floor, so it's not like they were shredding us. They just outrebounded us by 18 in the second half, so that's a problem. No matter how bad our pick-and-roll defense was, and it was bad, the rebounding was much worse." From there, however, the Rockets' can move on to the other basic tenets of Van Gundy's defenses — help and rotation. Because the Rockets have trouble with quick, penetrating perimeter players, they emphasize help defense more than ever to protect the paint. But against the Knicks, the Rockets did not rotate quickly enough to get to shooters and did not close out enough to bother them. When they trap on high screens, no one was trapped enough to even have to slow down before passing to open shooters, who usually remained open. "If you look at our defense, a lot of times we're in a help position," Jackson said. "That means our recovery time has to be faster. That leads to open shots. When we have to help, that's what leaves guys open. But we have to help to cut down on penetration. "Our recovery has to start with one-on-one defense. That will stop the penetration that leads to open jump shots. The more you have to help, the deeper you have to help, the longer the recovery. That's why you have to cut off dribble-drive penetration." Jackson, however said he was certain the Rockets could be a more consistent defensive team. The problem, most agreed, was with giving consistent, all-out effort. Asked if that was all it is, Van Gundy said, "No." Asked what else needed to be corrected, he said the "short list" was too long to go into. He might have offered a hint to one of the lines on the list. Asked about Yao's comment that when the Rockets get a 10-point lead, he gets "scared," Van Gundy said, "If he rotates like he rotated last night, I'm afraid, too. "It's not a bad dream because a dream isn't real. This ... was real. All these catchy, witty things, I'd rather have guys who rotate properly, close out properly, handle the ball properly, be ruthless in their pursuit of the ball on the board, instead of having to self-evaluate after a game with the same problems. "I didn't find anything said after that game remotely interesting, and I don't find anything today I'm saying remotely interesting, either. "With us, we've done a lot of hypothesizing, self-evaluation and talking about it. We just have to start doing things that win." http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/sports/2910308
I really don't fault TMac. I think for several years now he's taken criticism for being a ball hog and not getting his teammates involved. I truely think he's trying his best to get everyone involved and not take too many shots from Yao. It must be a difficult transition. We'll be fine once the kinks get worked out. As we all know Yao needs to be more aggressive!
I really have my doubt about JVG now. He's too stubborn and narrow-minded. It's clearly Rox has most problems with rebounding and offense. Our defense is already better than most teams. Think about it, it's probably much easier to increase our score by 3 then to reduce opponent score by 1. By the way, maintaining the same defense but increasing scoring would make everyone happy . The team gets more wins, our stars get stats to show their value so we don't need intangibles to argue they are better than other players. Fact it, Gundy's system decreases our star players scoring by at least 5 pts.
What's up with JVG blaming everybody. WTF. Gumby is quickly becoming my least favorite rocket of all time. The dude is worse than Pippen.
The reason Rockets lost that game is because their guards simply are not good defenders!!! They let other guard penetrate and so that lead to wide open shots like Jim Jackson said. It's not Yao's fault that he can't rotate quicker. For a big man with that quickness..i think he did a pretty good job. But it's the other teammates that are not getting the job done IS the reason we lost this game. HOward sucks...missing 2 free throws in a row...that didn't help...and can't shoot from outside. His shots always seem a little short... If we made free-throws, we wouldn't be talking about poor rebounding and bad pick n roll. We would have secured the lead. TMAC missing free throws....always making 1 of 2...Howard missing free throws. Maybe we should start Sura when he comes back..because i don't think Charlie and Lue can guard the penetrating.
I hate being a bandwagon guy, but I never wanted JVG in the first place. My choice would have been Dunleavy. Watching this guy's offense is torture. He crippled Steve in his offense and will do the same to McGrady. In everything I'm reading from JVG he states how poor defense and rebounding are down the stretch. Somehow he forgets to mention that if the offense could score down the stretch we would have retained the lead in each of the past three games we have played. Watching JVG attempting to coach in the fourth quarter is like watching prevent defense in the closing minutes of a football game. I do have to admit that I think George Karl would be, at the very least, a marked upgrade above our system / coach now.
Van Grumpy has attacked Yao for the SECOND time!!! Poor Yao Ming can't defend himself cuz he doesn't understand Van Grumpys English and doesn't read the newspapers. Van Grumpy doesn't mind attacking Yao since he knows Yao can't defend himself. Someone needs to translate this to Chinese and give it to Yao. ITS TIME TO FIRE VAN GRUMPY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Uh, the last time JVG criticized Yao, he went of for like 17 points in the first half on 8/9 shooting. It clearly worked for at least one half.
What the heck was JVG doing? How many times has he done this? Man. Stop blaming it on everybody esle. Aslo, .... never mind.
Does anyone notice that once Rockets get into a comfortable lead, they tend to go away from Yao? The role players appear to start jacking up threes and other wild shots which they usually miss. Just my observation. -G'day-
T-Mac and Yao do need to step up in the clutch because they are our best players but our guards are responsible for turnovers and JVG not calling them out is wrong. There is no easy solution because we won't get better or more athletic players overnight to help Yao and T-Mac out. Everyone needs to play much better in order to start winning.
I like JVG blames everyone but himself this time.. that alchohol fetal sydrome baby better look at himself first. J
This is exactly why I can't stand JVG. He never sees anything wrong with himself. If the team loses, it's always the players' fault. The last two losses clearly had something to do with JVG's coaching.
even though i don't neccesarily think jvg is the right coach for this team, i'm giving him a little longer leash, he's said countless times that any lack of preparation is on him. he blames himself quite a bit.
If the team is ranked #3 in defense, sure you can still improve your defense, but in reality, the marginal benefit of spending more time on defense is quite small. JVG should spend more time on offense, and improve the teams' offensive output.
JVG pointed two things Yao did not do well: Rebounding and Defense rotation. Unfortunately both are true. Yao out rebounded by Knicks center by 8 rbs. Time and time again he was slow to rotate to defend kurt Thomas. In Chinese or English, what JVG said was cristal clear and to the point!
