i feel for rick

Feel sorry for him??? This is more or less all his doing. While some things aren't in his hand, the crappy rotations, poor effort, and losing is mostly on him.

And I find it weird how people aren't talking about how dull and predictable the offensive plays are. PG brings the ball down court tries to pass to center or pf at top of the key, then guard or small forward comes around for the ball. And if you have half a brain you could predict exactly what each player is going to do because there are no dimesions to anyones game now.

 

Please explain how to do this with all the injuries to key people. You want to bench guys who have shown in the past they can get the job done and replace them with guys who have clearly shown in the past they cannot get the job done much less execute the offense/defense. Oh, and when that blows up, it will all be Adelman's fault just like it was JVG's fault and Rudy T's fault.

With you, it's easier and more convenient to always blame the head coach instead of the people (some of whom are hailed as genius) responsible for putting this team together for the mismash of average players currently on this team. Before you embark on yet another holy crusade against a head coach, you would do well to look at the one constant over the past 15 years and that's the basketball operation put in place by Les Alexander. Who knows? You might be pleasantly surprised to learn that there's some actual incompetence there...

 

DING! DING! DING! We have a winner.

 

I don't feel sorry for him. JVG had Yao and T-Mac in their prime and they were getting injured back then too. Did anyone feel sorry for him? Nope. We just moved on and got a new coach....

 

I rarely see them getting open looks...

 

How do you not blame the head coach for predictable offense, horrible defense, and no set rotations even when players are healthy?? And by guys getting the job done are you referring to Hayes or Battier and please enlighten me on which job they have done. Les Alexander is an owner (he forks out the money) and as incompetent as you may think he is, he's rich as crap and the owner of a pro team for a reason.

 

I dont feel sorry for him. He helped turn our good team into a vanilla no defense Sacramento light version of the Webber and Peja Kings. I hated that team then. I hate this worse version of it now.

 

Well let's see: his offense wasn't so predictable last season when Yao & TMac were both out and they ended up in the NBA lotto. All of a sudden, he's forgotten how to coach. This is the same coach hailed as saviour when JVG was kicked out. Now he's become the same idiot JVG was. By all means, go ahead and rail away against Adelman and the next guy who will take his place. But in the end, years will pass and nothing will change. What you are seeing didn't just happen overnight - it's been 15 years in the making. And you can thank your "rich as crap" owner for memories.

 

Les Alexander is a great owner. Only so much an owner can do hiring a coach with experience and GM hailes so highly by everyone. I am confident Les Alexander will do what it takes to turn this team around. That keeps me warm and fuzzy. The same praise people heap on Morey they should heap on Les. Les Alexander praise is deserved and so far the praise for Morey is still being earned.

 

No the offense was predictable last season, but the team had effort, played with toughness, and executed the plays. Apparently he has forgotten how to coach just like the players forgot how to play in the 4th. I'm not saying I like Les, but what has he done wrong in the past 15 yrs that your referring to other than spend the money to put this team in the best position possible?
He isn't Jerry Jones trying to play GM as well so what fault does he have.

 

This is what I think all the time as well. It is a very predictable offense but as little that has been tweeked with the offense this year, absolutely nothing is being done from the coaching end on defense.

If you really pay attention to their positioning, they are very rarely playing defensive schemes other than man to man with the big helping on the pick and role, and having Scola play help defense does not help because he is one of the slowest players on the team and it leaves PF's like Blatche and David West wide open for jump shots galore.

Hill has alot more speed to get back to the shooter or cutoff the lane, but his lack of playing time is talked about time after time in other threads. Scola gets destroyed this way. So basically, you have the lack of rebounding from playing a 6'5" Center, and the slowest ever rotation player off the pick and role defense in Scola.

I do not feel bad for Rick because he is very set in his thinking and only really addresses the issue of "focus" or "intensity." Or making statements like "they just have to figure it out." Give me more than that Rick and take some accountability. Until he does that, I do not share in your sympathy.

 

Exactly what I was gonna say. He's already made as many like decisions this year as he did last year.

 

Temper, temper, Hillboy.

I don't make it my business to get between another man and his pie....

...but this is a pretty nice piece, all told.

The Rockets are (and have been since last season, really) in my opinion, in a no-man's land as far as team identity.

Meaning, that no one on this team wants to be the man.....
.....or that the guy everyone expects to be the man (Yao Ming) may not be able to do it.

And to a larger point...when you decide to incorporate young players and commit a lot of court time to them, your team will, by and large, struggle to form an identity for themselves....not to mention winning a game more than once a week.

Most coaches will shy away from playing young players unless there's an understanding from the first day of training camp that the team's expectations are, at best, modest. The estimates of how good or bad the Rockets would be were all over the place, but generally speaking, the Rockets would, at worst, be a lower-seeded playoff team.

This mentality (of lowered expectations)...commonly understood to be an "underdog" mindset...served the Rockets well for the most part last season. Lot easier to set your own expectations than to have others set them for you.

My case study for this would be the Rockets after the 1992-1993 season. That team had an opportunity (once Hakeem Olajuwon suffered an eye injury and was out a significant part of time), for other players to grow and establish themselves individually. Going forward, that made a big difference as far as TEAM identity was concerned. As good as Olajuwon was (and for the following two seasons, even better), the Rockets knew how good they were....who they could count on....and that they could win.

But the interesting thing is that the Rockets drafted two rookies (Sam Cassell and Robert Horry) who were not only big parts of the Rockets' subsequent championship runs, but certainly by the time the second title was won, the Rockets could not have won without them.

Cassell and Horry came into an ideal situation of continuity and stability for rookies. The expectations for them both were much larger because their contributions would make the difference between winning and losing a CHAMPIONSHIP (Horry's reluctance offensively almost got him traded as a rookie....and gave him his "Big Shot Rob" swagger, too). Their jobs were large, no doubt—but they were still relatively simple jobs to do.

No such thing has happened for the Rockets.

This is what happened last season, to me:

The Rockets, as young as the team was, did have some veteran leadership (particularly from young players who had had some success), so it stood to reason from casual observation that a returning Yao Ming would be enough to legitimize the Rockets again. There was never a "learning curve" or "adjustment period" that you normally go through with young teams trying to learn how to win, that usually takes a few seasons to build (see Oklahoma City).

There's a difference between surviving (as the Rockets did last season) and rebuilding (as the Rockets may be forced to seriously consider, whatever happens with Yao), Hillboy.

I agree that it's difficult to blame the coach with uncertainty and injury on the roster, and expect to win. But that's where Adelman is.

Despite what we all thought we saw from the Rockets last season, what was apparent was that the team was not a playoff team. Only a tremendous start to that season even kept the issue alive as long as it did.

Trust me, if Adelman commits to playing younger players, like Jordan Hill or Chase Budinger or even Patrick Patterson extended minutes, that will most surely signify rebuilding. Not winning, at least in the short-term future.

The Rockets are struggling to make that determination. They shouldn't be, because that determination should have been made before the season started.

Once it was determined that Yao was available only in a limited capacity, he had to be factored out of the Rockets' plans, as opposed to factored in. If he could not be counted upon or relied upon, then it made no sense to figure you could just plug him in and out like an extension cord, and expect to compete...let alone win enough games to entertain thoughts of postseason play.

Usually, what a GM and head coach should be doing is deciding what players work well with what the coaching philosophy is. But a GM's basic job is to manage the fortunes of the team as far as quality players and flexible finances. A coach's job is to win with the players he has.

The Rockets are still gambling on Yao being healthy. Not wrong with the gamble, except that you've gotten a lot of other people into the pot that might not otherwise have been there.

Let's all just be fans. Some of us have a bit more of a feeling of being right more often than others, but I think it's still far to early to call it a season, personally.

Just got to figure out WHAT to call this season....

 

Exactly. It's almost as if he's too stubborn to make adjustments because he thinks his system will ultimately win out. I like Scola but you said it best watching him on D esp. in pick and roll situations is like watching a car wreck, you know it's going to be bad you just hope not that bad. And I like Hayes, correction I don't mind him in the right situations such as off the bench when a star pf needs to be pushed off the block for awhile.

 

Stubborn old man, I don't feel sorry for him one bit. He gets paid well to do his job but somtimes I scratch my head thinking if he's really doing anything. Does he actually observe actual game situtations? Is he noticing improvements in other players to utilize them effectively? Rick has built quite a reputation for his long tenure in the nba and this could be a bad thing. Is he letting his seniority and ego get the best of him? It looks like Rick has a set rotation and he's sticking with it NO MATTER WHAT happens during a game. He uses the "teachers pet" players and refuses to explore his other options that Morey has assembled for him. Rick fails to realize the best options differs thoughout a game and he must make timely adjustments to counter or give him an advantage. He does not play to his strengths and his methods are exposing our players weakness. Rick keeps ordering the same item off the menu and its hurting us. If he refuses to change his way of coaching and the orginization keeps losing, it may be time for a new direction.

An example would be Alvin Gentry with the Phoenix Suns. He dug futher into his bench and started trusting his younger players. He discovered 2-3 guys that could play defense and be rely on that eventually led them to the WCF. He gave the new players a chance to prove themselves. Coaching matters, Terry Porter had 2 all stars in Nash/Staudemire, same roster, and they were stinking. Porter fired, Gentry in. They instanty found their mojo and go on a massive streak. They merely miss the playoffs because Gentry stepped in too late before they could turn it around.