My point is, if he is gonna blame tracy for that series loss, yao should get as much if not more blame for it also. tracy did everything humanly possibly to win that series. he's numbers were oustanding even in the losses. noway you can put the entier blame on him.
Jeff can not change his game plane, he want player change to fit his plan. Why not design some play for Guard to cut and panatrating? It will rich our O, we lost games not because D but our O. Stubben JVG.
You know, when coach started putting Vspan in as a 2 during the start of the season, I thought, "eh?". Before you read further, understand I'm no coach (well maybe to a bunch of 6-8 year olds chasing a soccer ball around). I can only think logically with what I have in front of me, with what I know (and that may be somewhat limited. ) Coach and this BBS knows what we have in Vspan. A player who has very intense point guard skills with huge upsides. And thats why we drafted him. Could it be that since Vspan was SO new to the NBA, coach wanted to start him out slow. Just shoot. Get acclimated to the NBA game. Let him get comfortable to our (Rockets) game. No other pressure but shoot. Learn what the floor feels like underfoot, under live NBA speed. Understand how your teammates move...etc., etc., etc. And what postion offers that freedom? The 2 guard. Come on, he has to be able to shot some, right? So it made sense to me to stick him there for awhile. Next step is at the point. I think coach has a plan for Vspan, like he had a plan for the Rockets to be the best defensive team...it didn't happen over night. Took years. If his record for our defensive power is any indication of his "planning", I'm absolutely sure Vspan will succeed here. I need to back up a bit. When Vspan did get his opportunity to play, well, he didn't surprise anybody. We weren't expected to be surprised, but we sure as heck weren't ready to be disappointed either. Again, coach has a plan for Vspan. Only Vspan can decide how quickly he moves to the next step. And I think that Vspan misunderstood how important the first step was, thus his rant, "coach trying to change me". RR
Bowen started because howard wentout with injury. in reality that was the end for us. bowen's promotion to the starting lineup was'nt by choice.
Good players adapt. If Vspan can't adapt, then he isn't good. He doesn't have the speed to penetrate on his own. He doesn't have the outside shot to burn people off the pick. He doesn't have the defense that would earn him playing time (yes yes, he's got potential and plays physical and gets up in people's grills...guess what, in the NBA that's a touch foul). He doesn't have the ballhandling or experience to limit his turnovers. I'm going to say this - it's HIS job to prove that he can do better in each of those areas. That starts in practice. Don't give me the "rockets don't practice together much during the season" crap, the players go in for individual practices daily. And you can bet JVG is there and sees them.
Yup, just more blatant lies by JVG as vspan already said he'd be ready to play for the greek national team cause he has so much time to work on his game and that's all he does now. When will the lies stop JVG?
he won the greek championship lol. tmac could play with a team of all ryan bowen's and he'd probably win it.
great players adapt. good players do one or two things really well, and then make sure they aren't complete liabilities elsewhere. The whole concept behind having good players be "role players" is that they HAVE a role, and need to fill it. In V-Span's case, we can guess that his strenghts are penetrating, creativity, and hard-nosed defense. His weakness are shooting, turnovers and over-aggresiveness. The questions here to consider: 1. Can V-Span cover up his weaknesses enough to successfully fill his role. 2. If V-Span can do #1 above, would it matter? Would JVG play him anyways - if he doesn't fit our system? If the answer to #2 is it wouldn't matter, V-Span should complain more. If not, then apparently he needs to practice his weaknesses a little more.
Maybe he was thinking of how big of a hero he'd be if he took his game to the states and ran circles around American players like no one from Greece ever did before... ever think of that. He'd be a god in Greece if he tore up the NBA.
I saw that piece on Ch 13. They had a short interview with VSpan. Looked like he had just come out of a war zone. I'm sure he messed his hair up and spent an hour in the sauna to make it look like he was really working out. (VSpan has been working out plenty.)
Feigen nailed it in his latest blog. Billy is really concerned with playing time and the pressure he is getting from his countrymen. He talks alot about what he did in Greece and the popularity and success he achieve. But, I sure don't hear him talking much about what it takes to get better. I also find it humerous that everyone thinks that practice is no indication of how good a player is. Clearly, if he just gets in a game, he'll be Steve Nash II. You guys sound like Allen Iverson. "Practice! We're talkin' about practice!"
I think we should drop the Nash and Iverson comparisons. It's not about that. It's about whether or not he can play better than Rafer and JLIII and give us a better chance of winning some games. Everybody knows once the season starts that the only guys that really get in practice is the back end of the bench. VSpan is practicing against himself most of the time. The guys in the rotation are walking through most of what few practices they have.
Sit his sorry butt on the bench. Welcome to the NBA, son. Newsflash: you're a 2nd round draft pick who can't shoot worth a lick with a penchant for firing bullet passes into Minute Maid Park. If the great Dirk Nowitzki couldn't do a damn thing for nearly 2 years, what makes you think you'll be better? Get your sorry butt to practice and learn the game, son. You're earning millions of dollars every year. Stop being a whiny little idiot and get yourself a work ethic. This ain't no expansion team you came to, and this isn't Europe. This is an elite Western conference team. You should be grateful for every second you get the privilege to wear Rocket Red. If he can't deal with it, trade his sorry butt or cut him. This is nonsense. Who the hell does he think he is?
If JVG is using real game form to decide minutes, then he should play a player, even a scrub, to find out if such player deserves to play in a particular game, to exploit a particular matchup. It is hard for anyone, particularly rookies, to maintain game form without playing real games, especially when one bad game will ensure a slew of automatic DNPs. Practice doesn't indicate if a player plays well next game, DNPs doesn't indicate if a player plays well next game, only real game time can. A player can have a bad practice and play brilliantly the next game, or he can have a good practice and stink it up the next game. It's silly to use practice to decide if a player plays the next game. It's also silly to use practice to decide the levels of players because the playing field isn't even - rotation players get to play the real games and maintain real game form, which makes them hard to beat by a rookie who's only in practice form, furthermore, lack of real game experience makes a rookie harder to improve and compete against rotation players. I can't fathom how a complete offensive liability like Rybo can be a rotation player while a superior player in V-Span can only sit on the bench every game. Can't V-Span play 5 minutes when we need some pg penetration, size , hustle and pesky defense? I can only chalk it up to personal preference or rookie hate of JVG.
Copied from my post in another thread on this same subject... As for the much-referenced 2006 World Championships in which he demonstrated to the world how NBA-ready he is, in 9 games he had 12 assists, 18 turnovers and 27 fouls (including a sterling 0 assist/5 turnover game against powerhouse Brazil). He also hit 26.2% from 3-point range and averaged a monstrous 1.8 rebounds per game. And in the final against Spain, he was 1/4 from 2-point range and 0-6 from 3-point, for a whopping total of 4 points and 2 assists in 32 minutes. That's what known as disappearing, folks. And he obviously was not picked in the all-tournament team. The game against the USA was by far his best game in the tournament, and unfortunately, that seems to be the one most VSpan supporters here saw. Sure, he played a great game that night -- but it wasn't indicative of his play in the tournament or his overall talent. It was an aberration, a single great game. In preseason here, and during his limited regular-season minutes, he's had two poor plays for every flash of possibility he's displayed. You guys can live in your fantasy world if you want, but I don't think VSpan is anywhere close to being an NBA point guard, especially for a team with championship aspirations.
http://217.13.116.51/finalfour06/noticia.jsp?temporada=E05&jornada=25&id=938 A rookie in the Euroleague top-ten and MVP candidate. How many times has a rookie done that? You can argue all you want about what Span does or does not in the NBA but you can't write out his achievements in Europe.
I don't think Rybo can play on any WC final 8 teams. I don't think any team out of those 8 would be sane to consider Rick Brunson as even a backup point guard on their team. Yet those two scrubs ate up consistent minutes while the Euro league MVP candidate who schooled Chris Paul sit on bench every game. Playing in the WC in the finals as a key player is a success never achieved by the playing time eating scrubs like Rybo and Brunson that little bald guy and his male cheerleaders coddled.
