Reading the complaints in this forum made me think that maybe hiring Dr. Jack Ramsay as head coach and Bill Walton as assistant coach might be the solution for the Rox. The 76-77 Trailblazers, hired Ramsay as head coach, traded for enforcer PF Maurice Lucas, ran their offense thru Bill Walton and went from near worst to claim the championship. They had no other stars but just good solid role players who played as a team. They ran a devastating fast break. Their PG, SG, SF released as soon as the opponent shot the ball. There is no such thing as a PG battling his own center for rebounds (alas Stevie Francis, which kills our chances for a fast break). They got 1/3 of their shots from fast breaks. In half-court offense, there was no or minimum dribble, no standing around. The ball went in low to Walton and everyone cut. Sometimes it looked like a Harlem Globetrotters' drill except they ran it against legitimate NBA opponents and got numerous lay-ups and open shots out of it. They played tough, rugged defense. Opponents who went in for lay-ups were often flattened by Lucas. In short, they were everything the Roz are not but we have all the tools (except for the enforcer maybe).
A-Train, Another fine quality post. Thanks for gracing us with your presents (posts). Now frickin' tell me the Rockets are going to lose ALL of their remaining games and I'll get excited about the (quickly dissolving) playoff hopes. ls
Thanks for the data. Yeah, Les has already said repeatedly no changes are going to be made in the off season. So if we are mediocre for a decade, expect no coaching changes.
I don't care if he's 100. He's got to be smarter than Larry Smith. Dr. Jack Ramsay won't become a coach. But it would be good if he could do one of his prespcription cure article things on the Rockets on ESPN. And Bill Walton can't coach. Can he? Maybe he can influence some good guys to join the Rockets or something. But he can't coach. He can just talk all day.
Would you give up a million bucks to be an assistant coach of a loser team? A sportscaster earns 7-figures, while an assistant coach earns 6-figures. There is no way Bill Walton would give up his cushy job to be assistant coach.
Of course Dr. Ramsay is smarter and knows more about coaching than the whole Rox's staff. This is no more than a wishful thinking hoping for a coach, any coach, that can get the Rockets to play team ball and to maximize their talents. Walton knows the game but I don't know if he can coach either. I mentioned him only because he knows Dr. Ramsay's system and Ramsay is indeed old, maybe Walton can do all the yelling, and cracking the whip for him.
If our 7'5 center can't grab rebounds from a 6'3 point guard then how the hell is he going to get them from the big men around the league. That's very laughable. In fact EG, and all the other Rockets need to quit taking all of poor Yao's rebounds and just run up court as soon as the ball is shot knowing that now that his own team is out of the way, the opposing team is no match hor his incredible rebounding skill. He will no longer be boxed out and slow to the ball now that that damned Steve Francis is out of his way... In fact, why settle for the 77 Blazers. Let's go for the gusto. Hire Red Auerbach. He won 11 titles. And lets go back to the tiny shorts. Let's go back to the set shot. Thos guys were awesome. We will run the same offense... Oh, I forgot, that offense didn't run through the center so it wasn't a good offense. The Celtics had low BBIQ. They should have figured out in some time during that run to run the offense through Bill Russel instead of having Bob Cousy playing with the ball and dribbling out front.
Why do people run off their mouth without thinking? 1) If u ever watched a Roz game, any game at all, you would have seen Yao pulled his hands back allowing his teammates to grab the rebound. But this is not about whether Yao is a great rebounder. It is about a team with guys doing the job assigned to them. We don't need guy doing his teammate's job and fail to do his own. Yao needs help but I want it to come from the PF or sometimes SF. My PG can grab the rebound that is near him but don't go in there fighting other teammates for them. He needs to release and run the break. That is his job. 2) There are many great offensive sets. We can not run what we don't have the personels for. We don't have a Bob Cousy on our team but we do have a center that can pass and can draw the double team. Bill Russel was many things but he could not pass the ball like Walton did nor like Yao can now.
Hire Walton, if for no other reason than the fact that he just has to have some absolutely KILLER weed connections.
