No way chief. It's not plainly visible to an objective person that the players are mistreated by Jeff or that Jeff runs guys off who don't deserve to be run off. In fact, most of his former players outwardly rave about what a good coach he is and how much he taught them. I only hear extremely positive praise coming from guys like T-Mac and Yao. These are the guys I care about. Also, are you telling me that ANY of the guys that he has put in the dog house did not deserve it? Cato? Francis? James? DA? Stro? All these guys deserved what they got and the fans who pay the $$$ deserved to know the reasons why in my opinion. JVG expects more out of players and doesn't dummy it down for these millionaires. I have no sympathy for them. If they didn't want to go along . . . they can hit the road. Remember that Rudy also rightly kicked off a similar player - Vernon Maxwell - in the midst of a playoff series after too many visits to his doghouse. Cato and Stro are actually classic examples of two guys who have been LET OUT of JVG's doghouse. Obviously, he allows them to redeem themselves by acting like serious professionals and upping their game. Cato was certainly not let go or traded out of spite. He was traded for value. As was Mike James. I will say that JVG is a defense first, fundamentals coach. He does not coach to have the highest score every night. Oddly, I have a hard time remembering the last time a high scoring, limited defense team won the NBA Finals.
How do you know that? Do you mean that in today's NBA, if a team wants to success the coach should NOT let the player play their flow? I disagree with that. Actually, one critical reason of why our team seems running smoothly now is that JVG gave up his stubbornness a little bit and let Alston play his flow. JVG is a good coach (of course, every coach in nba is at least a "good" one), but not a great one.
I think we've all seen a good example in what "flow" does - watching our NBA "all star" team get beat in the Olympics by teams who played better fundamentals. You have to find the right balance. This team has been way out of balance this year due to injury. I find it pretty supportive of JVG's case that we'd be one of the top teams in the NBA if we'd had our topline weapons for most of the year. Nobody would be discussing this topic at all if we'd been healthy. And I'm sorry. You take this lineup and remove 2 big $$ guys in Yao and McGrady - and from a talent perspective - you have likely the worst team in the NBA. I don't care if you have the f'n NBA coaching brain trust, you are not going to win an NBA game with a starting lineup of J-Ho, Stro, RyBo, Wesley and Head. I was amazed that we even came close on occasions. Even with half a McGrady at times we found ways to get the occasional win. And the best thing I've seen is that JVG has obviously used this time to train up some of our guys and get them prepared to be where we are rigth now - riding a very nice comeback trail. This has not been an average injury season for the Rox. It's completely plagued us all year.
Per Walkhemah "put aside whether he's over or underrated; he is definitely overanalyzed." I agree- it is not fair to any coach to second guess him this much. Especially since we fans do not really know the behind the scenes stuff. Many human factors are critical to a team's success- we do not know what JVG has to deal with on a daily basis. We do know there have been numerous devastating injuries - including to our two superstars. McGrady still has issues- his back is not 100%-see the New York game on Sunday.
Yes, but. The biggest argument against what you just said (which I happen to agree with btw) is Van Grumpy himself. Remember all of the December and January posturing on HIS part saying stuff like "these guys are nba pros and should still be able to win, no excuses." If I have one on-going compaint about the guy it is his flakiness. So did we start winning again because all of our lower tier players bought into Van Grumpy's playing your heart out philosophy? Or because Yao, Tmac and Rafer returned? So who do YOU agree with, Van Grumpy, or the sane people like yourself on this site? I think he is a good but unproven coach. No championships yet. Good stuff? Defense, fundamentals training, eventually finding the right palyers. Not so good stuff? Offense is second fiddle - he creates his own problems here - keep Ryan Bowen as a Tmac backup instead of asking Padgett to shift over and get some minutes backing up Tmac. Playing 90's ball until he is absolutely proven wrong. Bring in skads of broken down 30+ yr old role players until he creates such a big mess that he has to admit defeat and begin rotating them out for 22-28 yr olds left & right. Of course until recently there were no young players available right? Van Gundy seems to adapt very slowly. Good coach, not yet proven great. Let's wait for the trophies. In the meantime maybe Jack Nicholson can come in and do a little anger management therapy on Van Grumpy. Good/great people like players and coaches and politicians are usually not very good at recognizing their own strengths and weaknesses. They usually think they are good at everything they do.
I'm a big Van Gundy fan. I've noticed that people that don't like him tend to think he is too negative. JVG uses negativity to motivate. There is a reason for the negativity, and he uses it as a tool. It's just who he is. Much of it is an act, and I think his players know this and this is why they tend to praise him in the press. JVG also believes in his system, which is focused on fundamentals. First you get defense right, then you focus on the half-court sets, and then you focus on the fast-break. We finally have the personnel and skill-set to see the entire system. JVG believes in this system that he will not abandon it just to win a regular season game. I think the adjustments we've seen in the playoffs are a totally different ballgame. JVG rarely gets outcoached in the playoffs. But he will definately stick to his system and take a regular season loss, just so his players will learn. In the end, well-tuned systems win championships. Look at the Spurs and the Pistons. They are machines! This is what JVG is trying to create, first and foremost. We'll never be the Mavs or the Suns, a team that is built to win in the regular season, but disappears in the playoffs. However, we've got a serious chance to be the next San Antonio or Detroit.
I get the feeling on the board that Larry Brown is considered a very good coach but he is sure stinking it up in NY. You can only do so much with injuries and the personnel that you have which is a combonation of GM skills and other things. Players should be held accountable more, JVG is a hard worker and demands that from his players even if they may not be as talented as other players. RIght now we are almost unstoppable just like around last year at this time and I feel like we can beat anyone and I think that has plenty to do with the coach as well as the GM. Its a question of staying healthy and hungry. Last year with Jho and if our gaurds were fresh ie suras back, wesleys bunk knee we could have gone very far past dallas. So yes Jvg is underrated
Isn't that kind of a given? We mortgaged this team *big time* to get TMac. The idea was that we could build a championship team over the years. Of course, you conveniently left out the fact that other players were injured at the time too. Perhaps it was an inadvertent acknowledgment that we need Yao and TMac to win games consistently? Or maybe you were just playing the state-the-obvious game. If that's the case, let me take my turn: Zero wins when we score fewer points than our opponent.
0 win<---------------------------------------------------> Win consistently They are so far apart. First of all, we need to know where is he currently rated in order to know if he is uner/over rated. Secondly, there were too many painfull and frustrating games, even with both Tmac and Yao for us to say he is underrated just after a couple of good wins.
I'm not dogging Van Gundy, nor did I like his hiring. I do support him now, without the crowing support heard from some here. I thought the team did remain competitve in many games without TMac and Yao. Game outcomes were decided in the 4th Q or late in the 4th Q. These scrubs did play hard and competitive. Juwan lifted himself up and became our primary scorer. Luther came up big and played well. I even saw Moochie playing smart with limited minutes. I will never endorse RYBO having any minutes-sorry. Much of the competitve play should be credited to Van Gundy. Those losses are just that - losses, but JVG brought his team well prepared and ready like lambs to slaughter against much better -talented teams.
And that's not 100% Isiah Thomas' fault how? Isiah (not Larry) traded for MoTay. Larry's in his first year coaching in NY. Trust me that if they give him full control, he'll have them winning and in the playoffs as always. He also has a very recent NBA title. Hard to discount the career success of Larry Brown.
Novel. So who's your frontline scorer with those two out? J-Ho. Maybe RYBO can pull a bucket or two. This team was built around giving touches to our money guys. You can disagree with that philosophy if you like. But you can't disagree that when the $$$ isn't out there performing, we basically got nothin. I personally think it's hard to keep 2 max dollar first team ALLSTARS on the same team and limits you too much cap-wize to expect a good all-around team. Something to churn over folks. That's all I'm saying. Either way when you commit to 2 max dollar guys then you have to find the right fillers around them (and you have to hope that both stay healthy).
Let me ask you something, what was he supposed to say while his main guns were out? Was he supposed to say that there was no chance to win, that he didn't have a real NBA team???
A coach like Rudy would have said, "Hey, we have all the injuries this season. But that doesn't mean we can't have fun and play hard every night. Man, we owe it to the fans to give 100% every night no matter who are on the floor." See, a players coach would not blame the players for losing as a motivational tool. JVG's motivational skill is just too negative for my taste. But it just a matter of taste. I wouldn't say that he is a bad coach. He can win with the "right kind of players." But then, what coach can't win with that? To me, coaches are overrated in their importance for a team's success or failure.
It's not just 0 games won without Yao and T-Mac. It's also 0 games won without T-Mac. JVG will be judged in the coming playoffs, as he was last year. We thought we were the sh$t last year before we ran into the Mavs and found out the slowness of our supporting cast. JHo's absence was a downer, but our lack of speed killed us. That has to lower JVG's grade by 1 or 2, since he put the team together. That 40 points loss to the Mavs was also beyond disgusting. I can't believe they just gave up and folded like a cheap w****. JVG needs to take some blame as the commander of ship. The bottomline is, playoffs is what really matters. If we can make it, it'll show what kind of coach JVG really is.
Per Panda: "The bottomline is, playoffs is what really matters. If we can make it, it'll show what kind of coach JVG really is." I did not like Van Gundy's hiring. That said, IMHO it is unfair and unrealistic to gauge his "grade " on our making the playoffs. That is tough. A step hill to climb. We could have a very good to near excellent remaining season and still miss the playoffs. I support my team. I support Mr. Van Gundy as my team's coach. IMHO-- he gets a free pass this year because of all the injuries.
