About "the West is tougher this year" notion, I don't know why it's an issue. If the West is tougher, then every West team is facing tougher competition, not just the Rockets. So what's the difference? In fact, Phoenix, Seattle, Utah, and Portland are all worse this year. Only Memphis and Denver are better. These are the "bubble" teams that are fighting for the last playoff spots. So two teams better, four teams worse. The Rockets should be in the playoffs standing still. I don't see why people think making the playoffs is such a great achievement.
I also noticed something else about JVG, it seems that he is so stubborn that he rarely makes in-game adjustments. His D is based on shutting down the paint and let teams try to beat you from the outside, but when teams are on fire (e.g. Troy Murphy lastnight, Camby the other night), they get all they can eat. JVG and crew had no respect for their outside shots and they killed us. Good players or not, these are still proffesionals that can hit WIDE-OPEN shots, and they had a field day with it.
Personally, I think he is a Great defensive coach but the offense needs to be tweaked. Why do the Rockets run the same offense when Yao is on the bench??? They dump the ball into the post to Weatherspoon, who can score here and there but is not the best option. Mo T is ok but he can't carry the team and he is way too inconsistent. Why not run plays for Stevie when Yao and Cat are on the bench? This is something that drives me crazy!!! We run the same offense that is set up for Yao for mediocre players when Yao is on the bench. Steve should be the FIRST offensive option on this team when Yao isn't on the floor. I know his shooting % is off this season but I'd rather he create a shot for himself by driving it than having Spoon or Pike or Cato shoot. The other problem with Van Gundy is his constant NEGATIVITY. After awhile it gets old and played out. He complains that Steve and Cat whine about the officials so much, but he cries and complains to the media about everything that goes wrong with the team, it almost seems like he is blaming the players and avoiding any responsibility. On the other hand, he has brought a more defensive minded philosophy and has gotten the guards to dump the ball into Yao more and more. His biggest problem is that he is coaching this team as if they were the Knicks. This team isn't that veteran knick team that could grind out wins by hacking and bullying people...this team has one of the most athletic players in the league, who has been transformed into a worthless player b/c of the way he is utilized.
This is a tough question. I loved Rudy but half agreed it might be time for him to go in favor of an X's and O's guy. JVG is that and we've got the same problems we had before. Sometimes they look better, sometimes worse, but the basic problems are the same. When the team sucks the same ways under two very different coaches, it's natural to blame the players and I've been inclined to do that. But Steve's quotes from last night kind of shook me. They do look tentative. They do look like they're scared of screwing up. And that's a recipe for disaster. I direct plays sometimes and there's an agreed upon concept that at a certain point in the rehearsal process the actors have to 'kill their director.' The play has to be handed off to them in order for it to have any kind of real life. They can't be in their heads, second-guessing themselves as to whether or not they're doing it "right." And basketball's the same way. It's not pure science. It's not math. It's not pool. The players won't play their best if they're playing scared. I'm on the fence about the JVG question now, allowing for the possibility that his hiring corrected too drastically for the problems we had under Rudy. Then again, what incredibly complicated things is Van Gundy asking? And how does an edict to take care of the ball scare them into turning it over all the time? How do fast break drills result in every single fast break going wrong? Sorry codell, but what improved West? The best teams got better but other than that the conference is not improved. Phoenix dropped out, Memphis rose up. That's a wash. Denver should have improved at about the same pace we should have. No major additions aside from the rookie and on paper they're well behind us wrt talent. Utah and Portland blew up their teams. LAC and GSW underachieved badly, as always. But the overacheivements of Memphis, Utah, Portland and Denver have all been a combination of hustle, heart and coaching. There's no argument that any of them made significant changes to their rosters except by subtraction -- you can't argue that Utah's better for losing Stockton and Malone. Given the roster subtractions in Utah and Portland and Phoenix's descent, a second year Yao alone should have been enough to lock us in at 7th. Playing incrementally harder and smarter than we did last year, which we should have been able to expect, should have been enough to make us compete for 6th or higher. But we didn't do that. I'm not in the practices so I'm hard pressed to say which part of that's the team's fault and which part is JVG's, but Payton and Malone didn't sign to Utah -- they signed to LA. And they were going to be there either way. This isn't about the West.
Here are some factors for the Rockets condition Steve and Jeff VG do not see eye to eye, but Steve has tried to adjust, somewhat. Steve is having a poor season, partly because he is being asked by JVG to improve areas he can't or doesn't want to improve at the expense of what he likes to do. For example. Steve has said he is going to keep doing what he does (well) no matter. I assume he means iso, slash and shoot ridiculous off balanced shots. Jeff Van Gundy has said he wants good looks at the basket, good passes/decisions and smart offensive execution not points off offensive breakdowns. I think Van Gundy is a good coach, but he is in a clash with his team's best talent, leader and #1 scoring option. Steve and Jeff may have put on their best fronts as often as possible but there is alot said around the league about they're not being on the same page. Yao Ming is not developed enough to lead this team. Steve's performance this year is far below being able to carry the team. So we do not have any #1 tier star level player that can carry the team and be the difference maker. We are and we are playing like a team that doesn't have a go to force. I don't blame Van Gundy for this. Steve is our Shaq, he is our Duncan, he is our Garnett. Don't blame Van Gundy for the rift or Steve's performance. The two fo them are oil and water. I don't expect Van Gundy to change and I don't think Steve will. So we are playing up to our current talent level. And Jeff Van Gundy is doing a good job of trying to get this team to overachieve. Unless Yao makes great strides this offseason (huge improvement) he will not be enough of a force next year to move us to equal the top 4 teams in the west. Answer- 1. Steve must radically improve to fit the Van Gundy system (no way) 2. Van Gundy must change his core philosophy (no way) 3. Fire Van Gundy and find a coach who will build the team around what Steve can do (iso, dribble dribble, slash/wild athletic shots) (( and pander up to Steve)) - hope Les doesn't see it this way. 4. Move Steve I don't like the answers, but I would sacrifice Van Gundy for a player with Steve's talent. Shaq- yes, Garnett- yes, Duncan- yes Steve Francis - NO Steve is alot like Marbury but makes more mistakes and doesn't have the handles Stephon does. I would take M. Bibbey, S. Nash over Steve. Which saddens me because my expectations for him were far higher. I had Steve becoming a star on the level of Duncan and Garnett when he was a rookie, I thought he would become a dominator, a MVP type. No one in the NBA sees him that way. Give Van Gundy more time... I don't know what to do about Steve????????????
To JVG's credit he did turn an aweful defensive teams into one of the best in the league. Rudy never accomplished that with this group of players. He eliminated those stupid ISOs, got rid of Moochie, the dribbling expeditions, and brought tem play and ball movement back.
I think this point of view is a bunch of crap. The TOP of the Western Conference is as strong as ever, but past the 6th seed you really have some mediocre teams this year where last year you had some pretty good teams miss the playoffs in the west. And I'm not even sure we should be calling Dallas at the 6th seed anything more than a disappointment. Phoenix was a very good team as the 8th seed last year and the Warriors were playing some of the best ball in the league when the playoffs started. This year Phoenix, Golden State, Portland, Utah, and Seattle are way down from last year with only Memphis stepping up in their place.
JVG was my fourth preference when the Rox were Head Coach hunting last year. If I had to rate it today, he would be ranked third. Larry Brown and Rick Carlisle have proven this season that they were the top 2 available from last year. JVG is the only other coach that has shown the ability to bring structure to a bad team while most all the others are sucking exhaust pipes as the post season nears. The fact that they are in position to finally make the playoffs is already a huge plus. Granted the team is currently playing like women with freshly done manicures, JVG is not making excuses and acknowledges that they are performing under his expectations. But at least he still maintains high expectations and that will be the difference going into next season. I agree with most in that an overhaul of the players must precede JVG leading this team to the big show.
You know, this subject cracks me up. So if Steve can't hit a layup, Yao gets owned by Dampier, Cat jacks up 100 3pters making 3 of them, Mo never passes and the whole damn team turns the ball over 50 million times, it's the coaches fault? Give me a freakin' break. You know, it's one thing to have 1 reputable coach that can't win and got ran out of town (you can say maybe he lost the ability to coach, yada yada). It's another to have 2 reputable coaches both sucking with THE SAME TEAM. Sure JVG's TO management could be better, sure he could be a better offensive coach, but he's not the reason this team blows. He didn't build this team and he can't change this team. I hear things about his short rotation, ignoring the fact that we already have a 39 yr old Mark Jackson to sub @ the 1, Pike subbing at the 2 andBoki subbing at the 3. Which one of them do you want to give more mins to? I hear things like why Padgett is all hustle but gets no mins. Hey, there's that one thing, you might have heard of it, called talent. Otherwise we can just sign Pig Miller and play him all game long. There are also people saying why JVG doesn't b*tches about calls. Well he spoke out in the media. Did it help? Yao's getting even worse calls. Before, if you slap big guy on the face it's a no call. Now it's an offensive foul or a travel.
i am thoroughly enjoying TheFreak's responses. hey, duncan and shaq are my type of players also. i'm not sure why i voted "mediocre" last night instead of "more bad than good". wish i could change it. did you tune out the rest of the thread or something? we were 5th in fg% and 8th in ppg last year, now we're 1st and 4th (though our adjusted fg% probably wouldn't be first b/c jvg allows teams to have whatever wide open 3's they like). hardly awful to great. a lot of the defensive improvement has come from starting cato (as we can now see). i remember rudy saying playing yao and cato wouldn't be a great idea b/c it would hurt spacing and teams could double yao and leave cato open. man, what was he thinking, that never happens. and Panda, 0.4 points better? wow, color me impressed. that's the equivalent of 1.08 wins. so we're going to win a whole extra game this year with more talent. sounds super. jvg always talked about how great it was to have steve and yao, steve and yao are the core, we've got steve and yao, but all he really meant was we have yao and i can just try to dump it in every time and screw steve's offense. how he took a 21/6/6 guy and turned him into this i don't know. how he took an improved team and a much improved yao and made us worse offensively i don't know. how he blows all of our timeouts before the end of games, i don't know. how he couldn't figure out that we should rest some guys some more, i don't know. if Les' pocketbook could handle paying 2 fired coaches on top of a new one, i wouldn't be sad to see jvg leave. oh, and the whole 8th seed to the finals thing. the 1 seed that year won 33 games and the knicks won 27 and were injured and underperformed to do that. the only team that could be said to have more talent may have been the pacers (but the refs corrected that) and maybe, maybe, the heat but that would be close. the east was a big pile of mediocre (whoever out of det/atl that faced ny in the 2nd round may have been the worst second round team i've ever seen) and the knicks came out on top. credit is due for actually being the team to come out of the east but it isn't like he was overmatched along the way. once they stepped to the west they got smacked 4-1 by the spurs. true, the spurs were rolling but it wouldn't have really made a difference.
i think he has done no wrong,...i mean look at all the stuff he is preaching..do you really disagree with any of it he actually had our beloved rockets playing some nasty defense for more than half the season,,,we at one point were chasing a record that hasnt even been close to being broken in years he wants the ball go inside out, he wants to play d, and he wants to win, why should he be happy with a win..when most of them are losing doublt digit leads and come back to win in overtime or to 30 turnover games.... its not jvg...none of the players,,,ie mobley, francis,cato , and taylor have never had someone on their ass bc they werent playing good enough,,,jim jackson has done his job all year, so has Yao, although he can have many off nights and still dealing with decison making. turnover prone as well. jackson, weatherspoon, even padgett are playing their roles JVG has already proven himself in the nba,,none of the aforementioned players have...hence another borderline lottery season i mean look at the jazz's roster., filled with mostly no names listening to their coach playing hard night in night out..thats all jvg is trying to teach
In all fairness, I know that it's not all JVG's fault. I was also all for him coming here, but there are some flaws in his style that are pretty glaring. For one the offensive structure, as some have mentioned before it clogs the lane to have Cato in the middle, granted we need him badly on defense. Also agreed that Ming should be the first option, baskets closer to the basket are usually higher percentage. Those things being said, why not let some plays start from the perimeter to ease the middle? Before you say that we don't have jump shooters, we do JJ and Mobes have been just fine from outside. They are using our defensive philosophy against us and not giving us the paint, why keep pounding it in? He has the right logic obviously, his track record speaks for itself. We need to be more flexible though, I think that that's the point that some are trying to make, myself included, it's been a less that spectacular coaching job. When managers are hired in the real world, the good ones will listen to feedback from their employees, and it the job's worth anything it requires alittle something from said employees. That's what makes a productive environment, and I still can't explain to myself why JVG can't adjust just a little to a 21/6/6 guy like francis4prez said earlier. Just a little is that such a reach? I like to think that it will all work out next year with SF still in a Rockets uniform, for it to work out however we will need cooperation from coach and players.
I think he's ok, but he still has a lot to learn. The biggest flaw I see in him is that he isnt very malleable and he is very set in his ways. I think that there are merits to that approach, but it limits his growth as coach.
Francis' take on the matter: "Of course our coach is very intense," Francis said. "Nobody wants to be wrong. That's where you get a lot of mistakes. Sometimes guys that don't normally play 40 minutes play real tentative. For us as starters it's important that we at least come out and set a tone. Tonight, the tone wasn't set. They were getting a lot of easy shots. "Everybody is pretty much on edge and anxious, playing not to make a mistake."
