[Fran's Blog]What Rafer did on his summer vacation...

I swear to God, if Rafer ever gets on the floor for the Rockets again and I happen to be at the game, I will boo the living hell out of him.

 

JVG had his way the starting lineup would look like this:

Rafer Alston PG
T-Mac SG backed up by Scottie Pippen
Ryan Bowen SF backed up by Shane Battier
Charles Oakly PF
Yao in the Center being coached to become a Ewing Clone.

Yah...I think that about covers it...that's a true JVG team.

 

Oh and I forgot to add Charlie Ward backing up Rafer Alston.

 

If you give 15 milion $.

 

I appear to have missed that memo that explained that JVG was the GM responsible for trades and player acquisitions and not Carroll Dawson. Must have been traveling or something...

 

You are right. Carrol Dawson is the one that really wanted Charles Oakley, Rod Strickland, Charlie Ward, and a bunch of other Knick has beens.

CD was the GM, but if you dont think Van Gundy had a big say in the outcome of the roster then I've got $15 million dollars coming from Africa that I need your help clearing in the US.

 

o3 is a moron if he thinks jvg is a moron. how specifically was he outcoached by avery johnson or sloan...no more name calling...tell us how. and jvg played boki. look at the stats. and he won 50 plus games 2 times in the 7 times in rocket history. in the process we were able to trade for mcgrady and yao turned into a star....every coach has things that all of us would like to do better, but these posts are blatantly unfair to what was accomplished. he took over a lottery team for 4 straight years.

 

There remains hope, people. Danny Ainge is still out there with Rondo as his starting point, and he needs to win now to save his job, and he knows that if there's a gaping hole in his lineup there's probably zero chance the Celtics go far in the playoffs, and...did I mention, he's Danny Ainge? And that he has the common sense of Danny Ainge? Somewhere in the next decade, there's a first-round draft pick that he has not yet traded, so...go Morey, go into the books and find out which year it is!

Boston gives: 1st rounder from 201#
Houston gives: Alston, some salary relief somehow (Sura's expiring? may need a 3way for this)

I'll take it.

 

since the celtics are over the salary cap, like the rockets, they have to give the rockets a player whose salary is +-.125 of rafer's. just won't work unless they get another team involved that is under the cap.

 

Outside of Yao and T-Mac, the roster was pretty bad when he came here. So to sit there are act like JVG made all the roster moves is ridiculous. He probably made suggestions like any other coach, but its CD & Les who had the final say. Under JVG, I think we snagged some decent players in Luther Head, Chuck Hayes, Kirk Snyder, Shane Battier and even making use of a dinosaur, Dikembe Mutombo.

 

What? You are kidding right?

Rudy's last team barely missed the playoffs and won 43 games during Yao's rookie year and were on track to go to the playoffs before Rudy got sick.

Then JVG comes in with Yao maturing and coming into his 2nd year and wins a grand total of TWO more games than the year before......then the big McGrady trade happens Yao starts to mature and JVG gets them a big whopping 7 more wins.

Not to mention JVG had MASSIVE say over personell every year except this last one, and then failed to develop any of the young players on the team, or play any of the proven preformers (Bonzi, Snyder) that failed to fit his myopic antiquated system.

Twice he was up 2-0 in the playoffs and other teams made adjustments, Avery by going small, and Sloan by exposing the PnR with Yao at the top of the key, and JVG failed to counter either of those moves and the team blew the series.

JVG was a decent choice for the Francis/Mobley team, but as soon as McGrady got here, JVG was the wrong..wrong...WRONG choice, and was hindering the development of this franchise, he was a cancer, and deserved to be cut out.

People can continue to give him a virtual reach around, but all he deserves from the rest of us is a swift kick in the butt.

Good Riddance JVG - you are NO LONGER a Rocket and are as irrelevant as VSpan.........and JVG will be remembered as a FAILURE as a Rockets coach.

GO ROCKETS !!!

 

THANK YOU. People think JVG had a roster filled with talent each of the years he coached. Thanks to Rudy T & Co., they left us is pretty bad shape when JVG became coach. Its not like we had deep teams like the Suns or Mavs and we didn't have any cap space to sign the right players. No other coach available at the time would have done more with this team than JVG. You guys are smoking if you the coach was the only thing holding this team back. JVG made both T-Mac and YAO into better players. Stop the hate!

 

agree to a certain point because jvg certainly pushed for the signings of charlie ward, clarence weatherspoon, oakley, mark jackson, rafer, and david wesley. even if the rockets didn't trade with memphis for battier, jvg wanted thabo sefolosha instead of rudy gay. that's insance!

 

JVG did some things very well for the Rockets. I hope most the good characterstics stay (defense).

But many of his flaws as pointed out I totally agree with. Way too narrow comfort zone and too shallow of rotations. This resulted in young guys with more limited opps that probably should have been the case as well as with some problem cases vets (Wells, Snyder, Mo Tay, Stro) that we could have found usefull at times and didn't. Not to mention burning out vets and gassing out by game 3 in the playoffs. Overall too much my way or the highway attitude--got to harness the talent you got because NBA talent is such a limited supply.

 

I agree, that's his plan.

 

How specifically was he outcoached? After being down 2-0 avery johnson adjusted by focusing more on inside penetration and forcing yao to chase all of those guards from the outside. If you review the game 7 breakout loss you will see a clip where even darell armstrong drove past yao because yao was positioned outside. During the first years the illegal defense rule was abolished, JVG refused to use any type of zone because of his stubbornness. It was only recently that he tried experimenting with a zone which under a right situation is a good counter against the pick and roll. Against Jerry Sloan, the latter again made adjustments using tough physical play to discourage inside penetration from the rockets and exploiting their weakest link: rafer's three point shooting. Did you ever see rafer getting fouled shooting a three?
JVG , former division 3 college player got schooled by Avery and Sloan, both former NBA players. I'm glad we have a smart ex NBA player coach in Adelman now in charge.


Yes, he won 52 games last season but this he accomplished without recognizing , albeit even the slightest identification of the rockets' weak link that could potentially blow up in the playoffs and that teams will inevitably exploit: rafer's three point shooting.

Not once did he recognize that rafer's shooting was a problem and as we all know the first step in the scientific method of solving a problem is to recognize that a problem exists. Again, you cannot separate rafer alston from JVG ... rafer is the agent and JVG is the principal.

How did the Spurs beat the Utah jazz the same opponent that beat us in seven games? was it with three point shooting ala rafer alston and JVG approach ?

here is a recap of game 4 of the Western Conference Finals:


" With each drive to the basket and each fall to the floor - flop or not - Manu Ginobili made the Utah Jazz and their fans angrier and angrier.

Players and coaches complained to the refs. Fans booed, threw things and popped balloons.

All Ginobili did was keep hitting his free throws, pushing the San Antonio Spurs to a 91-79 victory Monday night and a 3-1 lead in the Western Conference finals.

Ginobili scored 22 points, 15 coming in the fourth quarter and 11 of those coming from the foul line. San Antonio was 19-of-25 on free throws in the final period, with four of the attempts courtesy of technical fouls.

"I'm very proud of what we did in the fourth quarter because it was looking ugly for us,'' Ginobili said. "We stepped up and did a really good job.''

Some of the calls Ginobili got were questionable, but the key was he forced the action after not doing "too much to get under their skin the first three quarters.'' The Jazz weren't about to let him get to the rim easily and wound up losing their temper as the foul calls mounted.

Utah drew four technicals fouls down the stretch, leading to the ejection of coach Jerry Sloan and usually mild-mannered Derek Fisher. Jazz fans saw their team lose at home for the first time in eight games this postseason.

Of all the blows landed in this game, the most severe is to Utah's comeback hopes. After a 26-point win in Game 3, the Jazz felt good about their chances to pull off a historic comeback but now will have to win Game 5 in San Antonio on Wednesday night just to bring the series back to Salt Lake City. Utah has lost 18 straight games in San Antonio dating to 1999."


Notice the emphasis on inside penetration that was apparently lacking in our tactical coaching .


As to personnel decisions, it is illogical for an organization not to give the Coach a major say in personnel decisions because in order to determine whether a particular player will fit into the system , you have to consult the chief architect of the system which is the coach.

Essentially , JVG had good theoretical basketball knowledge but he lacked the practical knowledge to make adjustments and adopt to adverse situations. Granting that he was a good defensive coach, the analogy would be akin to Ben Wallace the player. Does his defensive abilities really outweigh his offensive ineptitude?



I'm glad Adelman is now our coach, and I can't wait until the season starts when he exposes the disparity between him and JVG. GO ROCKETS !!!!

 

Not to me. If Yao lives up to his potential, I'll remember JVG as the coach whose stubborness helped develop the big fella into a dominant low-post presence.

I'll also remember JVG for taking a roster with several limitations and getting a hell of a lot out of them in the regular season.

On the other hand, I'll remember JVG for gambling on that same roster's superb regular season chemistry to take them far into the playoffs...and losing that bet. Badly.

He definitely had his flaws as the Rockets coach, but I wouldn't call him a failure by any means.

Sorry for rambling about JVG. Now back to our regularly scheduled thread.

 

I don't care if you are an insider or even Stan Freaking Van Gundy - you need to quit riding Gumby's jock so much. As others have mentioned, your boy Gumby got outcoached badly by a rookie coach (at the time) and then blew another 2-0 lead to one of the best coaches in the NBA. Wow, he won 50 plus games 2 times...hooray! Well, I should hope he could accomplish that when he has the #1 center in the league and one of the league's best swingmen. But thanks to his heavy handed influence on the front office, the rest of the team was woefully inadequate and thus exposed in the playoffs. The NBA is a funny league, denniscd. You can hide marginal and fringe players during the regular season if you have 2 superstars that can carry the team. But in the playoffs, those players get exposed rather badly and it is up to who makes the better adjustments and essentially who is the better coach. We saw 2 separate times the Rockets up 2-0 in a playoff series and the other teams make adjustments. Your boy Gumby never was able to counter those adjustments. The reason being is that he is a stubborn obnoxious bald-headed mule. As pointed out, his rotations were incredibly shallow and lacked the proper depth that was needed. His attitude of "we'll just sign an ex-Knick" instead of developing young players like Snyder, Novak or a player that might not be a "gumby" player like Wells was sickening and revolting to the least. Every time I read that we had signed some former Knick slug, I threw up in my mouth a little bit.

I am SOOOO glad that he is gone and that we will finally have a coach that can make adjustments and coach the talent of the players we have. It is amazing that with Gumby being gone, that our overall talent has increased tenfold. Maybe it is because players actually want to play in Houston again, you think?

So lay off 03 and quit riding your bald-headed hero's jock. Other than taking a #8 seed in the Leastern conference to the Finals during the Lockout-shortened season, Gumby has never done anything remarkable as a coach. All he has done for the most part is alienate players and fans with his boring dumbass style of play and thinking. Thank goodness his reign of insanity and terror is over!

 

Take the tired old Van Gundy bickering to a different thread. My question is, if Rafer is convicted, then what does that do to his contract?

 

he didn't kill the guy, so his contract cannot be voided.