Disconcerting thing about Vspan or am I worrying too much

Your playing time will probably come sooner than you are thinking, Billy.

Rafer's shooting for the last four games: 4-11, 5-13, 4-15, 4-18

 

I spoke to a Greek man at the game last Friday and he said Billy was pissed and wondering why he was here

i use to have a greek buddy with a drinking problem...maybe vspans just hung over

 

hahahaha

5 stars

 

It's called 'Jeff VanGitis' or commonly known as why am I being misused - I must have something good about me because I scored 22 points and knocked the
USA National Team out of the World Championships!!
" I know I can help the Houston Rockets beat all the Western Teams and take us to a Championship".

 

Thanks. The voice of reason. Being on the end of the bench is a new thing for V-Span and (good for him) he's not taking it well. He wants to be out on the court. His transition from major player in Europe to benchwarmer in the NBA is very tough, especially when you consider he's from another continent and just moved here 3 months ago. This is much ado about nothing. His chance will come and hopefully he will be ready at that time. And those who blame JVG for yet another non-issue need a perspective check.

 

I am not a Van Dummy fan but you know that. Of course you love Van GUndy and I know that.

As for Vspan he strikes me as a leader and a winner and yes I have followed his career since we drafted him. As for him moping you can't be for real. That is just a stupid thing to say. Put yourself in his shoes for 1 minute. He is as competitive as they come and he knows he is more talented than most of the players on the court. He has been a winner at every level. And has made his team better at every level. He has no doubt in his abilities and yet he is not given a fair opportunity to show them. Of course he is not happy about not playing who wouldn't be. He is in a new country and left his National team (not an easy decision for him) because the Rockets convinced him they desperately needed help at the point and the 2. He has shown an uncanny ability to pass and play both spots and yet he is left on the bench to rot. What do you want him to do be singing the star spangle banner.

And please don't bring up TO's. He was coming int a new league with new rules. Half of his TO's were from carries and travels and most of the rest were from needing to adjust to speed of the game. Not to mention he had to learn a whole new set of plays and defensive assignments. He had certainly had an excuse for struggling but he still showed marked improvement in the preseason and his TO's have continually gone down.

He certainly deserved to recieve some minutes at the point but JVG has seen fit to nix that and for that I think he is a r****d. JVG wants to win his way regardless. ANd fortunately the Rockets have enough talent to overcome that they can win without Vspan. But developing Vspan now could prove very valuable at the end of the season and into the playoffs when his ice veins prove most valuable and losers like Alston play even worst. He has more character and desire and passion than most but I do suspect he is a bit homesick. He misses the comraderie of his national team and the friendships of his countrymen. Are you so ignorant to think anyone else should feel anything less than this?

 

i noticed this too and i'm worried as much as you are...i really wanna see vspan play some solid minutes...in the last game someone on the rockets team made a clutch three in the 4th quarter...i wanna say head but i'm not sure...anyways after the ball swished through the net...the cameraman showed the bench and novak was enthusiastically clapping and gave vspan one of those hey-did-you-see-that slap in the chest (either that or novak was trying to get vspan more excited about the game)...and vspan was just clapping normally and looked at novak like "wtf..why you hit me?!?" did anyone catch that too?

 

Yeah I saw that too. The guy looked pretty down on himself. His facial expression during timeouts was pretty blend. He is near the end of bench now. Dont know what happened in practice. You know something is up when he got like 15min PT to 0 now.

 

I seen that

he is pretty upset, but does not want to show it, on the other hand he can't express him self on the court, JVG got him pounded

I will wear my vassilis jersey in february when the houston rockets visit the orlando magic, I will try to make a big paper board "Spanoulis over JVG!" or something similar, I will try to get seats on the the other side of the houston bench so JVG and Span can see it

 

John-John >>>>> V-span.

If you're worshiping his greekness, don't worry about Rafer... worry about JLIII taking ALL the minutes away from him.

 

In situations when Lutha was backed down and abused by opposing bigger guards, I really wish Gundy could've sent in Vspan to see if he could help.
But it's also up to Vspan to prove he's able to contribute like the beginning of the season. Say what you want to say about Van Gundy, he doesnt hold grudge against on any player on personal basis. He sees what's the best fit for the team and play it that way. Case in point, Bonzi Wells.

 

Also Synder is about to return to lineup. Things are not looking good for Vspan. He absolutely needs to turn up a notch in competition for PT. I think he will get one more chance before season ends.

 

This is your misconception. You, edc, et. al have gotten this attitude of "with us or against us". I don't love Van Gundy. I don't fully understand why he plays Spanoulis at the 2, why he hasn't strangled Rafer yet, or a lot of other things. But you seem to get this idea that anyone who doesn't want to get rid of him is either kin, stupid, or in love.

Most of us have kept tabs on him. There just isn't that much film on him from his Euro days - so when you make a statement like he was a cheerleader, I haven't seen the proof. And you didn't answer that question.

Face it, he's played downright BAD in the minutes he's gotten. He had a couple good stints, JVG praised him, and gave him minutes the following games because he earned them...but then he played badly, and he's back on the bench.

The Rockets need help at the 2? Seriously? McGrady is back, and he's playing heavy minutes. Meanwhile, Head is just lighting it up right now and is his primary backup. Never mind the return of Bonzi and Snyder. The minutes are not there at the 2 for Spanoulis and for good reason.

The point is a different question. Spanoulis has had some opportunities and he failed. JL3 beat him out in the rotation, and his minutes have slowly been picking up as JVG finally starts to get fed up with Rafer. Given JVG's preseason statements about wanting 3 point guards, he clearly did not intend to give Rafer this much time. It's sadly an indictment of JL3 and VSpan. As well as JL3 has started to play on the offensive end, he was being dominated by Atkins on the other end against Memphis, which is why he didn't really see minutes in the 2nd half.

Umm, why? Because he's horribly turnover prone at this point? Why do you think they've gone down?

You mentioned some of the key points on why he hasn't played. He hasn't learned the plays and defensive assignments. Plus he has a cultural learning curve. To me, his struggles aren't a surprise, and I'm not down on him on a player...he's just not going to log minutes until those things happen. Turnovers per 48 minutes

Spanoulis is 19th. Here is the list of players averaging more TO/48 minutes than him and play more than 12 mpg: Bonzi Wells, Shaquille O'Neal, Yao Ming, Allen Iverson, Dwyane Wade, TJ Ford, Steve Nash, Monta Ellis.

Bonzi's thoroughly out of shape and his prior history says this is hardly the norm. He's also been really the #2 scoring option with first TMac and now Yao out. Shaq, Yao, Wade, and Iverson are scoring superstars who have their offenses run through them. Ford and Nash run their offenses superbly and are among the league leaders in assists. Ellis is 21 and having a breakout season.

Other than Bonzi, all of those players average at least 16 ppg. Excusing Yao and Shaq (big men), all have better AST/TO ratios than VSpan except Bonzi. You can accept high turnovers from your go to options on offense or guys that touch the ball a lot, but for a guy's whose job would be to defer to Mac/Yao.

So you can maybe make a case that Bonzi shouldn't have been getting the minutes he got at the expense of Spanoulis...but many of Bonzi's minutes came at the 3.

What's the point of this? There is not a coach in the league playing someone as turnover prone as VSpan for the 15+ mpg you seem to be clamoring for him to get. This doesn't even take into consideration his complete lack of an outside jumper.

Why does he deserve minutes? Because of his European play? Because you want to see him on the court? Fact is, he's been among the most turnover prone players in the league, and if that's not bad enough, he's shot from the field at 31%, and from the arc at 20%. And he doesn't understand the defensive schemes.

Again, I have high hopes for Spanoulis in the future, but his future is not now.

Further, free throw hiccups against Memphis aside, Alston has been nails behind the arc in the 4th quarter. Make an argument, but don't pull stuff out of your ass.

Here we go again with OMR going to attack people. The national team doesn't compete year round. I've said it already, he's going through an expected adjustment period (part of the reason I was glad to get him over here this year, because I think he would've gone through a similar thing even if had another year overseas).

Of course he's going to miss things, but that doesn't give him a free pass from the realities of the NBA. If he's not performing, no matter the reason, he's not gonna play. In the meantime, he can get his life in order so can perform like you and I both think he can.

Point is, JL3 beat him for the backup PG slot, even though I think VSpan came into the season with the edge. And as crappy as Rafer has been, Spanoulis has been worse. You don't perform well, you don't get to play. He'll get another chance later this season.

 

That's why you put him on ignore so he doesn't make you angry.

To hop back on topic...

I think maybe yall are over-scrutinizing the guy. Yes, he is probably upset because he isn't playing, yes he is still adjusting to the US much less the NBA, and yes eventually he will get another chance to play.

It's not like the guy is 35 and going down the home stretch of what playing years he has left.

It doesn't seem to me, via the press that he has gotten, that the guy has an attitude issue. Maybe he just isn't a cheerleader... doesn't mean he isn't rooting for his team to do well.

 

NIKE, You sure made lots of valid points concerning VSpan. But I strongly disagree with you on using the per 48-minute data (this is one of those massaged stats I have been vehemently opposing all along) to evaluate a bench player, especially by comparing to starters. This approach is simplistic and simply flawed. You can't just extrapolate a bench player's stats in proportion to his minutes. It doesn't work that way. For instance, if a bench player averages 3 points in 4 minutes of playing time, can you say with a straight face that he is a 36-points-per-48-minutes player? If the answer is no, then there is no "point" of doing it for turnovers, either.

 

But Spanoulis doesn't have that problem. He got pretty significant and consistent minutes from his stretch in the rotation (Nov 20 -Dec 13) in which he averaged 10-15 minutes per night - not to mention the preseason (in which he also showed he couldn't shoot and had TO issues) His sample size is not as tiny as you think.

Plus, in this instance the stats only confirm what we see: A guy who can't shoot, throws the ball away, looks lost and generally appears to be having trouble adjusting to the NBA.

 

Three things, Sammy:

1) Preseason stats mean jack -- otherwise Novak will be a lock for the participant to have some fun in the upcoming All-Star 3-point shooting contest.

2) Larger sample size only gives you more confidence on the validity or the significance of the original data themselves. It does not automatically grant you the liberty to manipulate the data beyond which they were originated, without relevant domain knowledge and prudent application of such.

3) As to VSpan, he has 18 turnovers in 17 games he has played, in two of which he registered 3 and 5 turnovers (which together account for nearly half of his grand total), both are Rockets wins (hence the rationale that he might have tried a little too much in order to entertain the crowd). In other words, they are the exceptions, not the rule. If one plots turnovers vs the games played, one can see these two data points are the outliers that deviate significantly from the bulk of the rest of the data, but contribute to the overall quantity nonetheless.

When you look at the stats, you need to use a little more of your analytical power, Sam.

 

How did this Greek man know how Billy feels? Being Greek doesn't mean anything. Now if he is a personal friend of Billy that would have been more significant information to add, than being Greek.

All them Greeks look the same and think the same, don't they?

 

im kindof hoping rafer gets hurt for a month....

 

I'm not saying preseason stats mean jack as far as being the definitive evaluation- I'm saying his preseason play confirmed what the regular season play (and stats) showed us: the guy cannot yet shoot, has ball security issues, and is havign troulbe adjusting.

The fact that he's not much of a shooter is further confirmed by his international/professional play prior to this year. His 4-20 from long range is par for the course.

Acknowledge - but we're not manipulating - this just augments the fact that it's glaringly apparent: Spanoulis has sucked when he's played, which has not been for an insignificant amount of time when he got his try-out last month.

Why are you ready to assume these nights are "the exception"? In preseason (where scrubs like NOvak look like all-stars) he forked over something like 30 turnovers in 6 games. The guy is turnover prone, plain and simple. I bet he turns it over like crazy in practice too. I don't know why this is shocking to people. He didn't have that many assists in international play so I'd be shocked if his A/TO ratio was much to brag about.

Your argument might have some weight if we were only loooking at stats in a vaccuum, but we aren't.