http://www.chron.com/cs/CDA/ssistory.mpl/sports/2960914 "It's got nothing to do with offensive, defensive, X's and O's, coaching," Sura said. "We're just not willing to pay the price. It's got nothing to do with anything else. It's desire and will. If you're not going to play with that consistency and will, then you're going to lose to expansion teams." ------------------------------------------------------------ Okay except JVG sucks, Yao sucks and Tmac sucks, is it the real problem? We dont have the desire and will to win? How many times did JVG criticise the players "quit", "give up" or "uninspired". Is that our true problem? Who are they? I think Yao's a laid back person and I dont know his effort at the practices, but he seems to try hard at the court but everyone call him "soft" here so I suspect he's one of those who lack desire and will to win? How about T-mac? He's very laid back as well. What do u guys think?
Well, we have 3 starters from the worst NBA team last year. There is a reason they were the worst team!
Honestly, I have to agree. JVG is definitely a problem at times, but I have always questioned MoT, Juwan, Ward, forget the list, our whole team's passion and desire to throw everything + the kitchen sink into winning. In their defense, I don't believe that you always need that "fire in the eyes" to win a ballgame, however, you do need a good balance of it, and we simply don't have very much of it. Tmac/Yao are great at what they do, but I rarely see this team get FIRED UP at anything and I believe that this is due to the make up of our team. Last year, you had emotion and energy from stevie and cuttino + cato at times and that would ignite our offense (albeit sporadic at times). Tmac is excellent, and has an unquestionable desire to win, but the fire up the team aspect is seemingly lacking comparatively to last year (not to be blamed on him). What I think we need is what everyone is saying, something to compensate for our weaknesses (at PG and PF) to simply become too good for everyone else, or to start a fire somewhere (which I think can only happen via personnel changes, but perhaps from within) to allow us to will some victories. I think the game is as much mental as it is physical, and I simply have a hard time seeing this group "will" any victories with its current crop. We need the ying to the yang here, a balancing factor to Yao/Tmac, aggressive firestarters on the Rockets or better talent (preferably both - Lee Benson?).
Not only we dont have an emotional leader, we dont even have a good cheerleader at the bench. Maybe we should consider to sign Mark Madsen during the off season. Maybe his hustle would spark some fire on our team.
Chucky Atkins dropped 30 for the Lakers. Rudy seems to have the Lakers playing with desire. I'm feeling its the combination of bad players and JVG.
Sura plays hard all the time. In fact, he is the ONLY player who plays hard all the time in the rotation now. DD
After the game in the press conference JVG said something to the effect that effort is always a problem and last season it was hardly ever a problem though last season's team didn't always play intelligently.
If we could only find that happy middle ground… Aside from Jim Jackson Deke, and Bob Sura, I just don’t see any effort from the other role players. Oh yeah, and having someone outside of T-mac and Yao put the ball in the basket would be nice too.
I have watched every game this year. The Rockets have no one on the team that has fire. They go about their jobs in a very ho-hum manner: no chest bumping; high fiving; general excitement. Yao is the most animated person on the team if that tells you anything. Stevie may not have been the answer for the team, but we need someone with fire and someone to rally the team around. They have all adopted the hang-dog, sad-sack attitude of their coach. That is a personnel and management issue. However, any personnel issue is by default a management issue and our management did not address the issue in the off season and so far during the season. Les did not get where he is being stupid, but being good at one endeavor does not necessarily successful in every endeavor. That means if Les can't see the handwirting on the wall he may not be the right owner. Dawson hasn't done anything lately to garner my admiration. He had little to do with getting TMac and he gave away more than he should have (3/5 of our starting line-up). JVG does not have the same personnel that he did in NY and has failed to organise the team in a winning manner. He had his choice of people and skipped alot of good talent to get what we got. Guys that are having good seasons but, maybe wouldn't be doing so well under JVG's system, who knows. At least JVG has proved he can't get it done. CD has proved he can't get it done. I really don't care who is the coach is ( except Ewing ), but we need to get any new interim coach, NOW !!!
That's what I miss the most about Rudy T. He would get excited when the players do something great. He was like one of the players. He gets mad enough at terrible calls to get technicals, unlike JVG.
I checked the teams website....shoot there is not even a captain of the team selected......WHO IS OUR LEADER??? WHO IS OUR LARRY BIRD OR MICHAEL JORDAN TO SMACK HIS TEAMMATES AROUND WHEN THEY ARE NOT CARRYING THEIR PART OF THE LOAD???
