http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=jackson/neel/050421&num=0 Before this year, I thought JVG's rep is that he's a great defensive, rigid offensive coach who works harder than anyone and sticks up for his players. Oh and he led an 8th seed to the finals so you can say he's a proven playoff coach. After watching him this year, I think his offensive coaching is underrated, at least his philosophy is flexible enough to take advantage of Mcgrady's strengths. I also appreciate his in game adjustments and substitutions, I think he's top 5 in both those categories. These page2 guys haven't watched the rockets in 2005.
Yea... preaching defense really is dumb. What is the one thing Avery added to the Mavs (supposedly)... DEFENSE. Why is there a freaking cliche out there that says "defense wins championships." Also, lets consider the source: A D'Antoni fan (btw, Mike still thinks he'll be able to outscore teams in the playoffs, and get away w/ no defense whatsoever.. shh... don't tell him)., and a quote from Doug Moe who's teams NEVER played defense.
They aren't the only ones...All I'm hearing up here is how they (Rockets) have no PF and how the can't defend the pick-and-roll and how Dirk will single-handedly win this series all by himself. Oh, and folks here are already pencilling the Mavericks in for the Conference and NBA Finals.
This is the time of year when national writers who've seen about as much of the Rockets this season as most of us have seen of the Milwaukee Bucks will come out of the woodwork with the same quotes they pulled out about JVG, McGrady and Yao at the beginning of the season. If we win the first series, they'll be a lot of "the Rockets surpised us all" kinda **** flowing from their word processors. Typical.
scoop jackson usually has good stuff, but this is straight up garbage. avery johnson will not know how to make the right adjustments in the playoffs... and how can jvg's rep be hurt if most everyone is predicting us to lose anyway????
Avery won't be alone. He's got Del Harris sitting next to him to help him out. This series is JVG's chance to show what he's made of. He gets the Rockets to Round Two and he'll be well on his way to being considered one of the league's elite coaches.
lol thats classic. D'Anotni is gonna have a better rep than JVG who's been in how many playoffs?? BTW, Scoop was hired after Screaming A came on board. Its all about appealing to a certain demographic, not that there's anything wrong with that of course
Hillboy, Have you been living in a cave for past years? JVG is ALREADY an elite coach in the league. Among the current active coaches, only Popvich, L.Brown, and G.Karl are considered in the same class. (I might be forgetting someone, but those are the ones I remember off the top of my head) IMO, I would put Carlisle up there on that list as well, he has been the most underrated coach in the NBA the past 3 seasons or so.
Couldn't agree more Jeff. Those qoutes seemed based on the play of the Rockets 4 months ago, not now. Our team has a pretty damn good offensive ability now.
Sloan is in that class too. A couple more things about JVG: his teams always play hard, and he's really good with volatile players. This guy had Sprewell, Mason, Camby and that group in NY and they never complained about him. Steve Francis didn't like JVG much, but he played hard for the coach
is it just me? do you ever notice Mike D'Antoni whenever he complains to the refs, his teeth look freakishly too big and bright man..
if you read all five pages, they only used a few sentences to talk about the Mav-Rockets series. They spent a good 2-3 paragraphs talking about the Bulls-Wizards series. In all honesty, i know it's hard to follow all these teams throughout an 82 game span...but at least do your homework. Spitting out beaten-horse gems like "Van Gundy ball is slow down, Patrick-in-the-post offense" just makes you look not only bad but ignorant. I really hope that the Rockets advance to the WCF just to make ESPN look even more stupid. Saying that the Nuggets are better than we are? "Analyzing" our team based on how we played months ago? Sports journalism has seriously gone from decent writing to a bunch of bandwagoners with access to the internet.
