Nonsense. Give me some good reasons to support your opinion. JVG is good at calling timeouts at the right times to prevent runs from oponents and such. Could it be that the players aren't executing his plays down the stretch? How many times have you seen steve jogging down the stretch with 5 seconds left on the clock even though you see JVG adamently waiving his arms for steve to run on the sidelines? How about tournovers down the stetch? Is it JVG's fault or the players? You think JVG tells the guards to dribble the ball out the last seconds and end up throwing some crazy shot?
How about last night's game as an example. You are down by 3 with 9 secs left and you don't have a timeout. That's what I called a bad management of timeout. Remember this is not the first time Rockets runs out of timeouts in a close game (it happened sometime ago as well on national TV) and I even don't watch them playing so often.
he is a little TOO heavy on the the defensive side - the Rox have some good offensive weapons (better than the Knicks of the JVG era) perhaps an offensive coordinatortype might be helpful ..but again - the timeouts usually follow lapses in defense - so until those stop I am afriad we will always be going into the final minute of a close game with only ONE time out
You know what I hate about JVG? The fact that he never seems to stand up for his players. To him, they are a bunch of underachieving brats. At some point, this act is going to wear thin. Shaq was absolutely mauling Yao in the 4th, hit his arm on virtually every shot and it was clear the refs didn't want to foul him out of the game. JVG should have gotten off his arse, made a bee line to the officials and stand up for his star players. Those no calls cost us the game. This tough love crap is getting old and he's got to defend his guys.
Thats the same exact thing that I was thinking. Yao was pratically fouled by Shaq on every shot attempt. After watching the replay, I dont even think the block on Yao in the 1st QT was legit. Shaq Cearly fouled Yao on the Arm.
Spoon has been instant energy off the bench...At one point, people on this board were pulling for this guy to start for the rocks at PF...He's an efficient player that can score if he needs to - especially when the biggest guys the Lakers had on the court (other than Shaq) were rookies Cook and Walton. Why was JVG content with the play of Cato/MoT??? This baffles me...They were horrific last night...As I posted in another thread, they played a combined 57 minutes to only get a total of 7 rebounds...BRUTAL!
We got a very good look at a 3, that's the bottom line that I'm happy with. It's an improvement compared to turnovers and dribblemanias in the past. How many time this year did we run out of timeouts down the stretch? Give me a number. The reason why we might have burned time outs more compared to other teams in the league is because our players cannot coach themselves. There is no true leader on the court to settle them down when they are being run on. Most of the time there is a timeout called, it's because of lack of poise or focus by the players, agree? One of the primary reasons why a time outs is called by JVG is to restore poise and focus of the players, and it HAPPENS A LOT TO THIS TEAM I TELL YOU! If he didn't call any timeouts earlier, we would have been blown out.
I didn't like JVG's timeout and substitution pattern. In the first half Shaq had picked up 3 fouls and the Rockets had I believe a 15 point lead cut down to 9. Instead of going for the throat and keeping our starters in there to extend the lead even further, he benches both Francis and Yao and the Lakers manage to cut the lead to 7 before it was extended to 10 points by halftime. So instead of blowing this team out of the water when we had the perfect opportunity to, he sends our bench out there instead. Then the lousy timeout usage late in the game, and the last play for Yao to take a 20 footer for a game winner. Yao can and was hitting those shots last night but when you waste a full timeout and that's the best you can come up with it's rather dissapointing. I would of preferred a Yao-JJ combination where JJ makes the low post pass into Yao, either force the double team to leave an open JJ who was clutch late in the game take the shot or let Yao back Shaq in like he was doing all night and do his thing at a much closer range.
yeah that was weak taking out Yao when he was hot and Shaq had to sit with 3 fouls.. I kept yelling go for the throat! go for the throat! but some of the timeout mismanagement needs to be blamed on the players too.. all of them not just the guards.. I agree they cant seem to settle themselves and keep their poise in which JVG needs to burn a timeout to settle things down. overall I was happy with the game except for the last 4 minutes or so. J
We were leading and on a run . .and he called a time out after one basket. I was at a loss. . . Rocket River
I have also been wondering why JVG doesnt allow our team to run more fast breaks? Do you think its something he doesnt want us to do? Our team cant run it properly? (coaching needs some blame here) or the players decide not to do it? it seems like easy points for us.. we should take advantage of it? J
Not to nit-pick, but, statistically, the odds of winning at blackjack are independent of any winning hands you might have had before. (Unless you're counting cards at a single deck table). It's like if you flip a coin ten times in a row. Even if you have a spectacular streak of 10 heads in a row, the odds of your 11th flip being heads is still 50/50. That said, interesting post and thread. I've wondered the same thing myself.
This is his first season. His true test will come in the playoffs. They're playing slow and plodding half court ball against the best teams. And with a fixed rotation, he's training them to become a dangerous playoff team. Sure, it's not always exciting or great to watch. Probably not fun for the players either, but his style worked in NY with the talent they had, and might help us sneak out of the first round.
