We never had an offense to begin with. I wouldn't call ISO's and 2 plays an offense with Rudy. JVG has never shown to have a high scoring team. Ask Detroit how being a "defensive minded" team is faring. And they have more talent than us and a better coach. Unless JVG tries out some different looks on offense, we'll be #5-8 for awhile.
Also, with the offensive options Rudy had and him not concentrating on defense, he really should have had this team scoring way more.
3.9 ppg may not seem like that much, but in the NBA, it is. That 3.9ppg difference can be the difference from being a 7th seed to a 4-5th seed. Look at most of the games we lost, our defense was there, but it was our offense that lost most of these games. We held the other teams to low shooting %, low scoring, and the defensive #s show that it we should have won and won by a lot, but our offense is now our achilles heel, which isn't good. I'm not putting all the blame on JVG, because I would be wrong to. But I'm looking for some adjustin this offseason by JVG to try to put some more points on the board.
Another example of leaving out parts of the story to help make your point. try our offence went down a whopping 4.28. But our defence ppg which JVG was brought in for went down a amazing 4.12. So you are trying to make it sound like our offence did not go down that much, but our opp ppg went down even less Year 02 03 03 04 Offence 93.76 89.48 Defence 92.28 88.16
"Win and win now" is shorthand, of course, but JVG used those exact words fairly early on in an interview. The gist can be seen in the the following quotes from his introductory press conference. == http://www.nba.com/rockets/news/vangundy_pc_030611.html Les Alexander: Winning, winning, winning [...] is what motivates the Rockets. JVG: But I think the only goal that is worthwhile in this league is to pursue a championship. You may not reach that every year, obviously, but you need to strive each year to be a championship-caliber team with championship-caliber players. That is what we will try to do here from Day 1. (most Ironic comment) JVG: I always find it very difficult to describe myself. It seems like I’m in therapy when I do that. I want to win. I’m going to do whatever it takes to try to win and maximize the potential of the players - play to their strengths, stay away from their weaknesses. == For my definition of success, one only need look across state to Bill Parcells. THAT was a coaching job. If the team scored, were consistently competitive against the West, and gained momentum as the season continued, 45 wins might be considered successful. However, the no-scoring, terribly inconsistent play, topped by 7-11 over the last eighteen games (including the playoff series) cannot be considered anything better than average.
Really...all the way to 4th or 5th? You mean up there with the Nuggets who averaged 97.2 and MEM at 96.7? Or maybe even the Clipps at 94.8 or the Suns 94.2? Now in case you hadn't noticed, the entire league was down this season by -49 points. IOW, if you add up all of the differentials from 2002-03 and compare them to 2003-04, the 29 teams scores 49 fewer ppg this season. That number would have been a lot higher had DEN not improved by 13 ppg. Here's the elite playoff team differentials: SAS > -4.32 MIN > -3.55 LAL > -2.20 SAC > +1.14 DAL > +2.20 You can bring your D every night. Excuse me? Our offense went down 4.28? When I went to college, 93.76 and 89.78 had a delta of 3.92. Further, my "point" had nothing to do with differential. It is just flat out false that we "lost all of our offense". The Rockets were marginally less efficient on offense and substantially more efficient on D. Excluding the fact they they are expending more energy on defense, those are mutally exclusive events.
I mean up there with the Lakers, Kings, Wolves, and Mavs. I'm not saying we need to score 105ppg, but being 4th to last in scoring isn't going to get us where we want to be. Do you think our lack of offensive capability had nothing to do with our problems? Do you think scoring 4 less ppg isn't important? 4ppg can move you from being the 20th worst team in offense all the way to the 8th. It doesn't seem like you think offensive output is important. Ask any coach, gm, owner, player, and they will tell you different. I'm not saying we need to be the best scoring team in the league, I just want JVG to TRY adjusting the team so we have more of a balance of offense and defense.
I have all along been responding to your "We didn't improve much this season, only on the defensive side, but we lost all offensive ability" comment. As stated earlier, this is flat out not the case unless you think dribble-mania is some sort of efficient offensive scheme. Whatever offense Van Gundy has installed is more than sufficient to win if the Rockets wouldn't have been the leagues' 2nd worst at commiting TO's and drop dead last in fastbreak points. IOW, it wouldn't matter if Kings assistant and motion offense guru Pete Carill was coaching the Rockets, they (lead by Francis) are a collection of the leagues' most inefficient offensive players. If you want to hold the Nuggets' 97 ppg up as some sort of pinnacle, at least acknowledge that they committed 100 fewer TO's and had nearly 1,000 more FB points. The FB pts alone amount to 12.2 more ppg than the Rockets. Again, this isn't about Van Gundy who prodes at the team every possession to get the ball up court quicker and into the offense sooner.
Your were unhappy with Van gundy way before the "meltdown". It has nothign to do with the end of the season. We score less, that's fine, but we defend more. It balances out. As for inconsistency, I'd argue that we were one of the most consistent teams in the league last year. We lost to the good teams, we beat the easy teams, we looked bad when playing bad teams (end of season) and looked great playing against poor teams. We played substantially better at home than we did on the road, and we went out of the playoffs in 5 close games against the Lakers, who just knocked out the Spurs. We simple don't have the tools (skill, experience, discipline) to win consistently the way YOU are asking, while also avoiding the statistical eventuality of a similar losing streak. We took big steps towards the championship this year. We established a system, we perfected defense, and instilled some discipline. Not after any of their seasons did I consider Mobley or Francis more experienced than the previous season. After a while, I was wondering when we'd stop calling these 28 year olds "young" players, and start calling them vets. JVG pushed them in that direction - clearly clearly, Mobley and Francis matured over this past season more than they did over their entire careers.
Makes you wonder how good this team could be if they were able to get a few more fastbreak points and turn it over a bit less. I really believe that this squad, untouched, could win 50 next season. However, this squad will never be able to win a championship, which is why I'd like to see semi-major changes.
why are the lack of fastbreak points and increased turnovers not jvg's fault? i mean we didn't turn it over this much last season? and we didn't score as few fastbreak points? could jvg's system have something to do with the increased turnovers? could having everyone go after the defensive glass not have something to do with the lack of turnovers? while these were never strong suits they did get worse under jvg. better defense=jvg worse offense=players?
Incredible stat! Clearly the FB points are huge. If we could just fix that one area alone we would be over 50 wins. This has very little to do with coaching and more with the onus on the players to get it done. Francis' inability to effectively run a fast break is a killer for us. We dont get the easy transition points and dont get the ball up quick enough so we have a lot of time on the shot clock to run our offense. If there is one image of JVG I will have over the offseason it will be him always franticly waving his arm to urge the team to PUSH the ball up court after rebounds. I am surprised after a while he didnt just run on the court take the ball from Steve and run it up himself!
I agree that the jury is still out on JVG. However, I do like his candor - when the Rockets stink, he says so. There's none of the mealy-mouthed excuses and spin we used to get from these guys when they failed to do their jobs on the court. I suppose it's the nature of the beast: Rudy got ripped for being too "soft" and "nice" - JVG gets ripped for being a "hard ass". Going back over his post game comments during the Rockets' playoffs, I'm convinced that he, in the very least, has stopped this team's downward drift toward permanent mediocrity. The problem they face is that they play in a division with Dallas, LA, Sac, Minn and SA and that's going to be a tough hill to climb. The major problem facing this team is not the coach but the GM. You have a A-list coach and a F-list GM.
The Rockets won exactly 1 more game than they did last season. Memphis improved their record from 28-54 to 50-32, a 12 game improvement. I just don't think that you can explain away 12 games by saying they "overachieved". Saying that Memphis is not good or better than the Rox is practicing self-delusion. Results say that Memphis is the better team. I feel that at this point in time when you compare the two teams, organizations and coaches, Memphis comes out on top. They have better personnel and hands down a MUCH better GM. They are about even in coaching - both coaches are very very good. The primary reason that they vaulted past the Rockets is simple: They run a smarter basketball operation than does Houston. Recall that at the beginning of the season, an awful lot of folks here were ODing on that Rockets Red Koolaid. Far too many predicted 50 wins and when that did not come to pass, they were sorely disappointed and that's why many here still refuse to give Memphis their due. To be honest though, I'm more worried about Denver than I am about Memphis in the future.
When a theory is based on bad logic, bad stats, what you have is bad conclusion. Regular season 98-99, The East top teams got 33 wins, a 66% W per. New York, the 8th seed 27 wins, 54% W per. Regular season 03-04, The West 1st seed, 70%, 8th seed 52%. I don't see a big dis-parity to conclude that the East in 99 was a big pile of mediocrity while saying the West of 04 is dominant. In fact, you need to compare the East record vs the West in 1999 to add to your theory. In 99, the intra Division record was: ---------- Midwest Pac Atl Cen Midwest ---------- ---- 9-10 10-13 Pacific ----------- ----- 12-9 7-14 Atlantic - 10-9 --- 9-12 Central - 13-10 -- 14-7 My conclusion: in 1999, the East was as strong as the West. JVG 's accomplishment that year was tremendous and deserved all the praises.
I can guarantee you <i>ANY STRUCTURED SYSTEM</i> will increase our turnovers last year, not just JVG's. It will take our guys some time to get used to it like anything in real life. It's like a worker with their own inefficient methods and procedures for years and years. New management takes over and enforces strict more efficient procedures but the worker keeps on reverting back to their old ways. Imagine that. As for the lack of fast breaks this year, it's partially JVG's fault just for not practicing it enough, BUT it's the player's fault for not passing the damn ball to the open guy on the break. Coaches have no control over player's decisions, they can only guide them.... We score 4 points less a game, so what? Does that mean that we have a worst offense than the year before? I will argue that our player/ball movement has improved quite a bit. We are a lot more willing to pass. There is a greater trust between the star and role players because of that. IMO, thinking <b>longterm</b>, JVG has instilled discipline and hardwork when this team desperately needed it and have improved our offense quite a bit. Just wait and see next year...you just wait...
Wow...there's actually a thread that is NOT bashing Steve? WOW!!!! I never thought I would see the day
