JR was a tragic story, but it was not the medias fault that he had a stroke, it was very unfortunate, but don't blame them for speculating, it is their job. Heck, I would blame the Doctors that told him the blockage was nothing serious. As for Fran, it is his job to sell papers, and guess what...all of us have read it and had some sort of reaction, that is EXACTLY what they want. I personally don't mind him being critical, I think the organization did a SERIOUS TANK JOB this year, and anyone that has any inkling about basketball would agree with me. The Rockets tanked this year, plain and simple. Now, whether or not that works in their favor remains to be seen. DaDakota
haven't you been a big proponent of the tank this season? sometimes you get mad at mistakes for costing us but then seem to celebrate the losses. as a tanker, i figure if the season's gotta suck, go all out. lets not let a few more blinebury articles get in the way of that.
Yeah...let's just rip a guy for our paycheck because we like Nolan Ryan better and we are bigots, then let's never mention him much again. If they cared, there would be continued tributes to him. nope. that's because Fran and Dale and everyone else have sold their soul to what you call to "sell papers." Hey, I can sell papers then. Anyone can. Fran's writing sucks. He gets his clues from listening to talk shows, not watching bball. He's an idiot with no new ideas, much less thought-provoking stuff...plain and simple. If you call this thought-provoking journalism...then maybe he should add 3 exclamation points to it for more effect. He's no NBA bball fan, and likely a bigot...just like the ones who reported on JR Richard being a loafer. DaDakota....just defend your own views. Attaching them to Fran is diluted people's impression of your intelligence. Don't you see that!!!
Anyone who was in Houston at the time and more than ten years old would agree with heypartner about JR. He was being vilified in the press, and I know this is the wrong forum, but if you think Randy Johnson is great, you should have seen JR. He's trying to make a point, and it's a good one. Some sportswriters are ****ed up and for many reasons. Fran is one of those. Caveman, what did you just call Jeff? Was that a typo? How about a little civility.
i don't know which was worse. saying he wanted to follow in fran's footsteps or calling him a ****head. tough call.
HP, The reason I am defending him is that Francis cares about his image, and anything that makes him reflect on what he needs to become is good for the Rocks. The same for Rudy...I thought Rudy did one of the worst jobs of coaching I have ever seen this year. Yes, he had injuries, but he had no consistant offense, no consistant defense, did not take advantage of the new rules, and failed to get his players to buy into playing defense. I don't mind someone calling out the truth.....I am not a fan of Fran, just agree with him on these last few articles. As for J.R. I call in the radio talk shows here in Austin and Kieth Moreland is one of the announcers, and I ask him about JR all the time, and he says he was the best pitcher he ever faced. I know Vern Rhule went 12-4 in JR's place in 1980, but I think the Astros win the series with JR and Ryan going 1-2, they were more dominant then Schilling and Johnson....ah, man....it still hurts. DaDakota
cool... I really am a big fan of DaDakota! btw; my neighbor's dog is named Dakota. Everytime I talk to him I say..."So, how's DaDakota?" it is so lesdyxic and embarrassing for me. true story!
Man, that JR Richard stuff happened when I was in high school and it still hurts thinking what coulda happened. Is he still alive? Last picture I saw he was about 400 pounds.
Whats interesting now is that people see you can ahve weapons at every position and not be like the Blazers. I think moreso that earlier when I was saying the Rockets need talent upgrade, a lot of people was saying we have francis and mobley and all we need for our big guys is rebounding and blks. The truth is which is the problem with a lot of teams is overcoaching. Most people that have watched basketball understand that player have to be let free and you get players that can make good judgement. everytime Francis or someone gets a rebound, why do they look to the sidelines for an order? This is what hurt them as much as anything and that was a lack of trust from coaching. I can see when the game gets tight and the other team goes on a run, but ordinary plays are made to be so difficult. Back to what i was saying bout the lack of talent, if you ask any coach, or at least a good, they would rather have a lot of talent than minimum talent. The Rockets need as many talents on this team as possible because the lack of matured talent right now. I could go on and on about this an eventually it would turn into why we need Odom thread, but I won't, but looking at their staring 5 and looking at ours with a guy like Odom in there, we could be very similar to them even with sorry ass mo taylor starting. He could open the entire floor up for steve,cat,griffin and whoever else is in there. Does that mean we will win the ring? I don't know, because just like when mike played,until Shaq slows up or retires, i don't think anyone can beat them except maybe Dallas and thats slim.
Da: Truth is subjective. If the Rockets come back next year, go relatively injury-free and win 55 games, will you suggest that this year had nothing to do with injuries? Just one season ago, we made huge leaps and barely missed the playoffs despite having a very young team. I'm just not sure how we can blame the coach because we went from being overachievers to horrid in one season.
Jeff, Truth is not subjective, opinions are. I certainly concede the injury issue, but Rudy still could have gotten an offense in, or gotten the guys to play defense. I think the organization knew early on this was a lost year and tanked on purpose. DaDakota
why is it so hard for people to see that injuries are exactly what rob a team [and its coach] of installing a consistent offense or a consistent defense or taking advantage of new rules or player development?
I was talking to a friend of mine who works in the media the other day who said that he thought it was really a combination of three things (and this about sums it up for me too): 1. Injuries - he said you could not measure the loss of Francis not just for those 22+ games but also the games when he was only half a player because he was on the floor with a bad foot or migraines. He ignored the Rice/Taylor situation saying that KT made up for the absence and that Rice probably wouldn't have added much anyway. 2. Failure to adjust - he thought that the Rockets were simply unable to adjust to not only the injuries but also to the changes by other teams. He blamed this partly on Rudy not reacting quickly enough to the problems and partly to the fact that the Rockets were only able to practice 5 on 5 twice during the season and one of those times was in training camp. As he put it to me, if you can't practice your offense and defense, you can't put it on the floor. This required them to be overly reliant on offensive systems that didn't work. However, he thought Rudy had opportunities to make changes and just didn't respond quick enough for them to make a difference. 3. A lack of real talent. He said that while Francis was a star (if healthy) and Mobley is a quality two guard (though not one he would compare with Kobe, McGrady or Ray Allen), that was the end of their real talent. KT is an average and undersized four. They had really no legitimate three and their center, while improving, still wasn't where it needs to be. He said that Griffin has talent but the Rockets utilized him poorly They didn't even expect him to be playing this much but were forced to because of injuries and they didn't have the time available to work on his game as a result of all the injury issues but he thought they could have handled him better. He said EG seemed to float a little to much on the floor and seem uncomfortable. He said that it wasn't really possible to place all the blame on Rudy because you don't go from being a great coach to a horrible coach in one offseason but that he deserves his share. He said that CD is probably more suspect simply because of some of the contracts handed out and that he would imagine both he and Rudy have one season to come back and be successful. He also said he could see CD "retiring" after next season if they get somewhat better so they could bring in a different GM as opposed to replacing the coach. This is pretty much how I've felt this year. You really have to blame everybody when something happens like this. No one is safe and if they are healthy next season but have a similar outcome, it will be time to go in a different direction.
Jeff, Somewhat agree, now who is it that is responsible for getting talent in here? I rest my case. DaDakota
Not so fast. According to Jonathan Feigen, Les Alexander has as much to do with personnel decisions as Rudy and CD. They have to present their case to him and they all have to agree before he'll allow them to pull the trigger. In addition, all the scouts and assistant coaches are in on the decision. Until all three of them are in agreement, no deals get done including contracts. So, if you want to blame them, you have to blame the scouts, the assitant coaches, the head coach, the GM and the owner. Good luck getting rid of all of them.
Whomever gav you that info, i agree Jeff. In fact ,its what i've said the entire season. Really, I thought this team didn't take advantage of the preseason. I watched Francis and company throw ally's into the third row, I saw rudy running the same iso's as he did in preseason. I can understand not wanting to tip your hand in preseason, but thats mostly true with a veteran team. A team like the Rockets who had so much to improve on with the new players and style of game and they messed it off. Even in the preseason they were without Rice and some of these other players ,so why not prepare not to have these guys. All the talk in preseason was about last yrs 45 wins and i guess everyone thought its natural progression to improve upon that without improving your talent. I agree and i think most will that injuries has a lot to do with the poor season, but almost every team has injuries. McDyess played what 10 games, Odom played 30,Mashburn played about 40, but yet, those teams were missing their best players and played about on par with the Rockets. In fact LA had a better record and so did the Hornets, but some people try to make this team out to be so talented. This team needs as many good players as they can get and then its up to the coach to define roles and input a player friendly system. People on this board are sometimes blinded by the 45 wins and the star quality players on this team. Even with that said, I still think we're 1 good player away from being pretty good. Right now we have 1 star, 1 good player, and everyone else is role players. Its nothing wrong with role players, its just if you're star isn't dominant(hakeem in his earlier career), then your margin of error is very low. I will not start this Odom thing again because he's not the messiah, but he's the kind of talent we need. If they don't make a play for him or another impact player, we'll be in the lotto again next yr talking about the same thing.
Don't forget about Eddie. He was not very good this year, but if he develops as expected, he give us another star caliber player. If we get another good player in the offseason, we should have a pretty good team eventually.
