You are not the only one at all. I like him as a commentator...hated him as a coach. I found him too focused on the defensive end, not good at adjustments, and too easy to scheme against due to his dogmatic approach. I think he is a decent coach with limitations, but not a championship one....he doesn't take enough risks to win it all, and thus has a lack of trust in his players. DD
If JVG is such a great coach as someone assumed, then he should have a coach job today. Oh he wants to be a break as the report was made, so he does not want to a coach right now, that is ok, I support that, but our rockets seem to have a coach who really understand the basketball, our rockets fans should be happy at least right now.
he won the same amount of games rudy won in 01 to get back into the playoffs. that's overrated, the main thing I think he did do for this team is provide some discipline but it was trade off on offense.
check the link http://www.nba.com/playoffs2004/bracket.html hey man first we were a 7th seed that year and that series couldve been us with the 3-1 win. if i recall in game one it was a last play with francis driving to the basket and passed it out to jim jackson (who was a BALLER that season) and had the WIDE OPEN game winning 3 but it clanked off the back iron in LA and we couldve came back home with the 1-1 tie and then game 3 win to what possibly the eliminating game for the lakers in game 4 if only we were able to keep our composure in that game especially after that nachbar-malone scuffle.....that was a hard series to swallow.
OOPS forgot about that twas the year the best of seven in the first round began but yes it is stlill hard to swallow. if anything, we still couldve won that series but since i forgot it...my whole argument is thrown out.
I have to say I was screaming for a coaching change soon into JVGs tenure here in Houston, but in all fairness all coaches are limited by the players on their roster. Adleman hasn't done better than JVG yet and he has vastly superior talent to work with. This season will be very important to the Rockets to see if Rick can install the beautiful offense he ran with the Kings. I do agree with you DD that JVGs weakness as a coach was his my way or the highway attitude that he even tried to impress onto Les and that's what got him the boot.
haha. you're right. what was I thinking? Still sore about this year's loss, I guess. But the part about TMac and scrubs getting us to 52 games to be in the playoffs for Yao's return was correct. It was like a Band of Brother's holding down the fort. Many, many coaches would have been unable to rally the troops that way, especially after the "Photoshop the Pain" year just prior.
Never ceases to amaze me .. . when I bring this up as a defense for Steve Francis. . . people call me a homey . .. and SFOF . .etc but in defense of JVG . .. well it is all good? Rocket River
Thought he did a much better job here than most people give him credit for in his time here. All the playoff series he coached we were probably about 1 or 2 plays away from winning the series.
I think it would be cool if JVG is calling the Rockets 4th win in the NBA Finals this year and Yao and Mac tell him to come up and get some props.
It was 4 years and I don't know why everyone would always say it was 5. They missed the playoffs for 4 years: '99-'00, '00-'01, '01-'02, '02-'03. Yao was not a rookie that year.
As opposed to the Rudy ISO offense catered to Francis and Mobley??? Now that was horrible basketball. And it attracted the wrong kind of fans, the hype over substance fans. What JVG instilled after the RudyT era was a sense of discipline and having accountability after Francis and his merry band just did whatever they wanted under the ISO system. RudyT would have covered for Francis and protected him from scrutiny on that Super Bowl fiasco. Not JVG, he made Francis be accountable for his screw up. I friggin loved that, cause Francis always had an air about him of a privileged pro multimillionaire athlete and was above reproach. While JVG was imperfect in his own ways, he got Rockets basketball back on track after Rudy and CD screwed it up in the post Hakeem era. And players loved playing for JVG...TMac, Yao loved playing for him, his Knick players loved playing for him, even Stromile Swift had good words for him after he was traded back to Memphis. The players who clashed with JVG, well they are usually the one who put themselves above the team...Steve Francis, Mo Taylor, VSpan, Derek Anderson, Bonzi Wells...
Always nice to see TheFreak come in to do his corrections of history, especially when you defend Rudy and Hakeem. But SuperMarioBro is correct. He said we hadn't been to the playoffs in five years. That's correct. You are saying we missed the playoffs 4 years. Those are two different statements. So, if ppl say "first time in 5 yrs" that's correct. that's where it comes from. that said, I'm really weak today. Mixing Yao's first year with JVG's first year is so sad. It's equivalent to forgetting how Les screwed Rudy for not making the playoffs. Rox history is getting fuzzy for me, not living in Texas anymore. sigh.
He didn't get anything back on track. They traded for McGrady, period. According to JVG he didn't handle personnel. So that means CD or whoever did make that trade got basketball back on track.
You couldn't be anymore wrong. JVG once said about that trade is that he didn't wake up one day and discovered TMac was on the Rockets. You really think JVG had NO input on the TMac trade? Here's how it went down: Francis and JVG clashed in that season. JVG realized he can't win with Francis. Meanwhile Tmac unhappy in Orlando was brewing. TMac makes public that Houston was his preferred place to be traded. JVG sees this opportunity and huddles with Les and CD to kill 2 birds with one stone: get rid of Francis and get better player to build around Yao. And he got rid of the rest of the RudyT ISO clique also: Mobley and Cato. The End CD at that point was just the messenger boy for JVG and Les. JVG didn't mess with the smaller deals like Derek Anderson or Bonzi, otherwise he would have never signed off on those. And I disagree on the posts that said that was a bad interview.
Where's Bonzi now? I thought he was a free agent. Did he latch on with another team? And the other guys you mentioned, they've gone nowhere.
