Mr. Van Gundy has always been the wrong coach for the Rockets. He never should've darkened the doorstep of this fine organization.
As per Hven " "Here's the most I can say about JVG given the # of injuries: very few people still contend that JVG is a great coach. The debate has shifted to whether he should be fired or whether he's a "good enough" coach. That shift is significant." This is a fair and balanced observation I think. It is significant. There are still a very few with zealous support / loyalty for Van Gundy (some of whom have a blind hatred for Rudy), but support for Van Gundy does seem to be "just good enough". in my opinion. __________________
The support for JVG shifts like the wind. When the Rockets started slow, his support diminished. When they went 5-1 on the west coast road trip, his supported skyrocketed. We are now 15-27, so of course his support is down and the "debate has shifted". If we get our players back and go on a major tear, the "debate" will shift again, this time in JVG's favor. A "fair and balanced observation" huh? Duh! Whatever you want to call it. JVG haters are having their heyday right now because the season has been pathetic. If we start winning, the JVG haters will shut up and JVG's supporters will starting chiming in again. That is my "fair and balanced observation" on the JVG debate in this forum. LOL. Another observation, that applies as a general rule to most everything, is that JVG haters are more passionate, hopelessly biased and less reasonable than his supporters. One major exception I can think of to this are the YOFs. It probably will be true also for VY fans when he plays in the NFL.
Eh? I'm the source of the original comment, and do not think JVG should be fired. It's hard to be a potbanger when you don't even want the subject of your "hate" to be fired. I think that there are few people who still think that JVG is a great coach. I know that I do not. When he came here, I thought he might be. Right now, I think that JVG is (a) a terrific defensive coach, (b) a poor offensive coach, and (c) overly reliant on aging veterans. Essentially, I think he's a fairly good coach in the right situation. Right now, he gets a C- for this season in my book. Nobody could make the current Rockets team a title contender. And I doubt anybody could make the current Rockets team a playoff team. But the 0-13 record without McGrady is embarrassing. I mean - you could probably pick the worst NBA starting player at every position - put them all on the same team - and win at least 1 game out of 13 on blind luck. JVG is also slightly to blame for the injuries, given that he did gamble on some older players. On the other hand, winning 51 games last year was a good achievement. And I think this team could be a Top 4 seed w/o all the injuries. The juries still out - but I think it's tough to argue that (a) his personnel decisions have been great or (b) that the team should not have at least 3-5 more wins this season.
Here is why Van Gundy is not a bad offensive coach: the Rockets pretty consistantly get open shots. That is all that you design an offense for, to get open shots. The coach cannot shoot the ball for his players. The coach cannot make 3s. That is on the players and is certainly affected by players being out (Jon Barry and Derek Anderson are much better shooters than Bowen, for example). This team was built around McGrady and Yao drawing double teams and good shooters getting open looks. When your guys that are supposed to be drawing double teams miss a significant number of games, and on top of that, your good shooters are also missing a significant number of games, you are not going to be a successful team. Other strategies may not be as sensitive to injuries, but I think that ours is a solid gameplan considering our personnel (Yao and TMac). As far as holding Van Gundy responsible for the injuries because he brought in old players, Yao is injured and in his mid 20s, McGrady has missed a lot of time, and is in his mid 20s, Swift was out for a long time, mid 20s. Derek Anderson is 31, not a young player, but hardly an old man. Alston missed quite a bit of time, he's 29. The only old guya that have been out a lot are Barry and Sura. Deke and Wesley have been in there all season. If our problem was the old guys getting injured, then you might have a point, and the team would be doing a lot better because our young guys missing time are better players. Unless Van Gundy was the one that infected Yao's toe, poked Stro in the eye, messed up McGrady's back, and took a crowbar to Anderson's leg, the injury problems have nothing to do with the coach.
Are older players more likely to get injured than younger ones? That's the only question. The fact that some younger players are also injured is irrelevant. The only question is: if you consistently rely on older veterans for production, are you more likely to suffer more injuries? The answer is yes, but the consistent red herrings thrown in by people like StupidMoniker are amusing. They do have a point, in that JVG is completely not to blame for Yao and Tracy's injuries. But for the injuries of older players? You play the odds. With regard to injuries, playing older players is not playing the odds in your favor. Oh, don't get me wrong - there are some advantages. But when you play and lose - don't blame the dealer when your luck runs out.
JVG probably gets annoyed easily bu just playing stro 8 minutes or is it a wake up call fro him and will probably play him more minutes on the next game.if JVG is going to be a good coach,he needs to create an offense similar to Utah or the triangle offense.
After watching the Rox for the last two years I think JVG's is cruising on the reputation of being a great D coach and a poor O coach. If you look at the past two seasons the Rox haven't been shutting other teams down and teams are routinely scoring over 90 vs the Rox. These days when the Rox win it seems like they are scoring up in the 90's or 100's themselves as opposed to 2 years ago when the Rox would win games scoring in the 80's while keeping opponents in the 70's. I think JVG can coach O but its a matter of him trusting his players. I think if he trusts his players he will let them play freer. The problem is that many of the players I think are better at a more uptempo game, especially with Yao out. I just don't know how much he trust them to do so.
Irrelevent. The Rockets are not suffering a rash of injuries to older players. The young players getting injured is the problem we are having. Sure older players are more likely to get injured, but pressing our luck in that area has not substantially hurt us.
I wholeheartedly agree. I wanted the Rox to hire Mike Dunleavy instead of Gundy in the first place. Our defense in Rudy's last season was good already. Our defense wasn't the problem. The problem was (and is) our offense.
I can't believe this, but I'm starting to wonder if I've been wrong all this time about JVG being the right coach for this team. I agree that it's not JVG's fault that we are missing wide open shots. Under his offensive scheme, we do get lot's of wide open shots and that's great, but we also don't seem to get any layups or easy baskets. Strictly jumpers. We have nothing resembling a fast break. We had a total of 3 fast break points against Miami. I don't care who you have out there, we should get more than that just by accident. Also on defense, I see us really working hard on D but still giving up way too many WIDE OPEN looks. We do so much rotating and trapping that if the other team just makes one extra pass, they have about 5 minutes to line up the jumper. That makes me wonder if we're not working TOO hard on defense with all of our aggressive rotating. We seem to always be out of position. I also wonder if all that running around on D doesn't affect our (lack of) offense on the other end. I think our good opponents scoring average has more to do with us using the whole shot clock on every offensive possession than it does with our great defense. I'm not saying he should be fired, I just wonder if we need to take a long look at his offensive and defensive schemes and how they match up with our roster.
The new rule changes make JVG's defensive scheme less effective. I am sure that as a result, we are more likely to lose. I think JVG's offensive scheme needs a spark plug to be effective. Last year we had Sura but this year we don't. Back in the Knick's days, he had Sprewell. I was thinking if we can get Artest, we will have that spark plug to make JVG's O works again. But of course, getting Artest was a pipe dream even at the start.
Sura. Barry. Mutombo. Alston. Anderson. All players on the wrong side of 30 who have been injured this year. So not irrelevant.
