I've been really impressed with Yao this year. His timing is much better in many areas of his game: 1:1 defense, rebounding, offensive post. He still picks up the cheap foul here an there, but I think (now more than ever) that a good portion of the blame belongs to the refs.
Rudy was ready to come back but not to a pressure cooker NBA coaching grind. He found that out fairly quickly and stepped down while he still had his sanity. Good for him. I mean that sincerely. Winning does depend on players, but it also depends on coaches. Kobe and Shaq didn't win it all before Phil Jackson. Maybe I'm in the minority, but I believe coaches have a huge impact on winning. You need both talent and a solid coach to win a championship. A weak coach can do OK in the regular season with good talent, but the playoffs will unmask him.
TheFreak, Coaches can lose touch with their players, which is the consequence of a message to the players or a methodology to coaching not being received well by the players. In the case of Stan Van Gundy, coaches don't get stupid over night, they just lose Shaq and are expected to win with a shoot-first guard that turns the ball over almost as much as he passes it. Hey, Dwayne Wade (like Steve Francis) is a stud, but you don't win NBA titles with a one dimensional guard (you can argue this, but Dwayne Wade is useless unless he's attacking the basket). In the case of JVG, injuries to six injured players definately have a role in how fans should evaluate his performance. We still have pretty good defensive team, and if we are lucky enough to get some players healthly, we'll be able to put some points on the board, too. -P1st, S2nd
You "BELIVE" wrong. Against their immediate competitors, the two seasons were a draw. Down the stretch, the 2000-2001 team did slightly better (with one fewer games against a team the Rockets were "racing against") 2003-2004 Western Conference 6-9 seeds Memphis 50-32, Houston 45-37, Denver 43-39, Utah 42-40 3/13 W Mem 3/26 L Mem 4/2 L Den 4/9 W Den 4/10 L Utah 2000-2001 Western Conference 6-9 seeds Phoenix 51-31, Portland 50-32, Minnesota 47-35, Houston 45-37 3/11 L Pho 3/29 L Pho 4/13 W Port 4/17 W Minn
I love this team. Before we became an HMO, there was a lot of hope for the year. Now I look forward to seeing what this team can do when we get our guys back. I feel no need to fret over the past or what could have been. This is our team and we're lucky to have these guys, just unlucky about injuries. It happens.
"It's the coach's job to look at the personnel that you have and then design and tailor an offense to those guys' strengths." --Rudy Perhaps you can tell me how what you described, as simplistic and inaccurate as it is, DOESN'T tailor to those players' strengths? I'd like to see you come up with a better offense than getting the ball to your best players, coach cab. Every coach does it, some go about it differently.
Just a heads up - I saw Rudy T today in the Galleria Area driving down Post Oak in a dark blue Lexus SUV with his wife. it had Cali plates still - guess its a perk of the LA LA crowd.
We play the same teams each year and play them about the same amount. Anyway the 2002-2003 team that didn't make it into the playoffs would've finished a game better than the 8th seed in 2004 playoffs. We got a little better under JVG (1 game) but the West was weaker.
This just came in, Going for Broke by theSAGE It is in this sports analyst's opinion that the trade for T-Mac was an unambiguously good one and not a loss for the Rockets per the above mentioned author. What haunts the folks in upper level management for the Rockets though is their player personnel strategy post the T-Mac trade in filling in the roster with role models. The reality of the matter is JVG blew up the entire roster sans Yao after JVG's arrival in Houston. So not only was the opportunity for changes there but that changes clearly HAVE been made. However the quality of those changes is a different story. In the humble opinion of this analyst, JVG and CD made a serious error in overlooking the "durability" factor of our team In talking championship '06, I think the thinking was "go for broke." I mean, even our older veterans stuck around one extra year thinking it was the "go for broke" year. But to what avail? T-Mac, at 26 is an OLD man. One can read it in his comments after losses and the soreness of fighting an aging body. With 8+ years in the league, that's a grueling toll on any body let alone a superstar who was asked to do more for this team in Orlando. Steve Francis on the other hand is arguably a young man - in both mind and body. A bout with an ear disorder correctable though diet, yet never having suffered anything chronic per se, Francis was also arguably the healthier of the two in the blockbuster deal. So how much is health worth? Or when measured against talent? Hedging their Bets The real answer is none of the above but merely the foresight by management to have hedged their bets by surrounding Yao and T-Mac with younger more athletic players from the get-go. Although the professionalism of veterans is always a plus for JVG, sometimes even here, one needs to compromise, if youth and health are a much needed commodity. And the irony is that youth and health are actually in ample supply in the league. Plenty of unsigned former players, plenty of second-rounders sitting on the bench, and plenty of foreign players still looking for a job. Thus, the loss suffered by the Rockets isn't for McGrady per se, but in management falling for the same error as Orlando -- getting seduced into thinking McGrady is superman in health and strength And sure it's easy to get seduced given how talented and how superb an athlete McGrady is. But, in the very end, the people to have suffered the greatest loss are the Rocket fans who came into this year with high expectations.
