[ESPN] 2007/08 Award Winners - Rick Adelman the only Rocket mentioned

Will say in the Memphis game Kobe was the only one doing anything worth a darn & his teammates were pitiful. It looked especially bad cuz it was right after the Rockets win streak with an equally broke body McGrady leading a Yao-less Rockets to victories, Garnett and Chris Paul the other MVP candidates beat that Rockets team, and Kobe didnt.

Add 2 losses to horrible teams (Lakers were still favored to win those games so yeah they're expected to win), and I dont see how its not a blemish. Lakers have been rolling of late so I guess that was a wake up call...

Its more how the grading measure seems to change for Kobe now. You yourself said play without his "stars", while some dont consider them stars. His team blows 2 winnable games while other candidates are handling their business, but then they bring "career achievement" back into it. Lebron is deemed out the MVP running for not winning enough with the team he has, while with Kobe its you can't discredit him for not winning with the team he has.

They're trying to not deny Kobe this year cuz they want to justify all the previous years of pumping him up as the greatest. Which is fine. Its just how ironically there's shifting in his favor that others dont seem to get

 

Lakers were 10-10 without either Bynum or Gasol. Now think of how Hornets will do if they are under that situation. Last year West played 52, Peja played 17, they won 39.

Kobe proved last 2 years he can carry a team to west playoff by himself with little help. Something nobody else can achieve in the league. Not KG, not Paul, and not LBJ!

 

Paul was definitely my MVP candidate two weeks ago...but the Lakers rose to the top and the Hornets faded just enough for me to give it to Kobe. His team has sustained injury after injury and yet his team is atop the most competitive conference in history. I think he deserves it.

 

I don't get it. Every team loses to bad teams at times, every team does.
Regular season is 82 games, so why would 2 bad games matter?

Lakers are 500 team without Gasol and Bynum, that's an achievement, not
an blemish. Name another player who can do that? Last time I checked, Paul couldn't make playoff without West and Peja healthy, KG couldn't make playoff without Cassell and Sprewell. LBJ? Yep, he has an all star center playing along him, and he barely won 45, that's not gonna work in west.

 

The Lakers have had a great season, there's no denying that. But please do not ignore what a historical season the Rockets have.

McGrady is always injured, yet he led the team to win another double digit win streak after Yao went down; ultimately carried the win streak to 22. The Rockets are still above .500 after the win streak, despite nagging injuries to Alston, Battier, Jackson, and McGrady.

A 22 game win streak is AMAZING. A big fat F U to the analysts and anyone that says the streak is not impressive because of the quality of opponents. Did they want the Rockets to ask the NBA to create a new schedule featuring the Lakers, Spurs, Celtics, etc. in a row? You can only play what you are given.

Besides that, if 22 straight was so easy, why hasn't it been done in how many years? compared to the other teams with the longest winstreaks, the Rockets didn't have dominant superstars to carry the load. Add that to the increased level of competition, and you've got GREAT TEAM basketball (credit to Adelman once again).

How many players were just flat out failures at the start of the season? a jump from 10th to 1st in the middle of the season is an amazing feat. That jump includes A LOT of shuffling of the rotation. Keeping the chemistry in tact is a great accomplishment.

The Rockets didn't put their hands in the superstar trade winds this season at the deadline. They picked up Bobby Jackson, yet they are only 2 games back of first place, without Yao.

This season belongs to the Rockets. The Rockets at full strength would be in first place. But as usual, the experts will say the Rockets will lose. And to be honests, they might be right because of the inuries. But the injuries will be overlooked, and the experts will have a "told-you-so" attitude.

Don't be ignorant to the Rockets just because they play for Houston.

 

All I'm saying is Chris Paul's fading down the stretch isnt losing to the Bobcats and Grizzlies consecutively.

.500 doesnt get it done in the West either, with an All Star caliber PF-SF and and All World coach...

Yes, years prior Paul and Garnett couldnt make the playoffs and Kobe did. But the award is (or should be) for THIS YEAR.

The best player on the best team is qualification for the MVP, so for that Kobe is deserving and congratulations to him if he wins it...

 

Let's get the facts straight. Battier does NOT guard the opposing team's best player "every night". Check the upcoming playoffs. In any normal half-court set, he will NOT be guarding Boozer or Deron Williams. And he didn't guard them for VG either. Further, Battier seldom is assigned to the opponent's PG, PF or C.

I realize Battier walks on water around here but let's at least have some semblance of reality.

 

Adelman Coach of the Year? You must be joking. The Rockets added Scola, Landry, Brooks, Francis, and James while losing such luminaries as Juwan Howard, Kirk Snyder, John Lucas III, Jake Tsakalides, and Vassilis Spanoulis and yet managed to win only 3 more games than last year. If anything, they should retroactively strip whoever they gave the award to last year and pass it to JVG.

 

Haha, i'm wasted right now (mostly upon hearing the news that we are indeed playing Utah) so my sarcasm meter is pretty much laying in a ditch somewhere next to a rotting deer carcass.

These "experts" pretending like what Adelman has done is ordinary or just the bare minimum is absolutely comical. We're cursed. We're stricken with the worst luck imaginable. The fact that we've been able to muster up 55 wins and a historic 22-game winning steak is apparently normal in the eyes of the NBA script writers.

 

That wasn't sarcasm. JVG accomplished much the same with inferior players.

 

Dude, should I even need to remind you, let alone any sane Rockets fan, that we've played half of the season without our best player?

Let's establish that critical point first before we attempt to dwell into the difference between the likes of Howard, JLIII, VSpan and all that other trash compared to our rookies.

 

Francis wasn't ready to play. James hasn't been any good after Toronto. Scola, Landry, and Brooks are rookies (one late first rounder, two second rounders). Some might think that the coach would have something to do with getting so much production out of these guys.

And being able to win 10 straight games without our best player probably has nothing to do with the coach either.

 

This isn't sarcasm either: post #28 in this thread is r****ded as ****.

 

You realize of course that Yao played fewer games last year (48) than this year(55), right? To be fair, Tracy did play in 5 more games last year.

 

You realize (of course) that this year's team had to learn an entirely new offensive system on the fly and therefore dug themselves a big hole in the first 2 months of the season - a season in which we saw the most difficult and competetive conference race for playoff seedings basically since you have been alive...

 

If your opinion is that JVG should have won Coach of the Year last year then you might as well just change your stance now and agree with me on my feelings that Adelman deserves it.

The fact that he was able to win 55 games all while installing a new system. A new system, Princeton-esque, which is predicated on the key component of having an All-Star level post player. Taking that system, modifying and adjusting it to compensate for our multitude of injuries and only adjusting but succeeding too. Beating out JVG's Rocket best total of 52 games and did I mention, did so while playing in the most competitive conference in NBA history?

If that isn't Coach of the Year worthy than I don't know what is. Why don't you try taking away Chris Paul from the Hornets and seeing if that team finishes above .500. See if David West magically goes back to averaging 4 PPG pre-CP3. Yeah, let Peja fricken Stojakovic be your leader. Byron Scott would love life if this happened.

 

You still haven't answer the question how a coach could get not one, not two, but THREE rookies to produce. And of those were lottery picks. Two of them were second rounder.

 

Because Luis Scola is 27 and has been the best player in Europe, Landry and Brooks both played all four years of college, Landry supposedly only fell because there were concerns about his injury, so you would expect him to produce like a higher pick, and at the very least in the case of Brooks your definition of production is very lenient (about half of what Bouncy Whales provided last year in what was considered a failed experiment).

 

You do realize that McGrady had probably his worst season since he became a go-to player in the league right? McGrady missing 5 extra games last year most likely meant an 0-5 record during that time, btw.

What is your stance? That Van Gundy should be coach of the year this year? Who deserves it more than Adelman?

 

1. Ginobili was 25 when he entered NBA and he (not Scola) was considered the best Argentine player. His rookie production? 20 mpg, 7.6 ppg, 2.0 apg. Scola? 25 mpg, 10.3 ppg, 6.4 rpg

2. How high do you think Landry (many considered a tweener) would get pick without the injury stigma? Low first round? Is getting THAT kind of rookie to produce worth something?

3. If Bonzi was a failed experiment last year, why did you include Francis and James as roster upgrade this year to down play Adelman's coaching?