I would love to see Snow come if Larry becomes our coach (please Dear God no Van Gumby!), but I thought of something intriguing, or at least I thought it was....Derrick Coleman coming to Houston with Snow. Now granted, I have no clue of what we would give Philly besides Mobley to get these 2 but it would be great if we can unload the fat one, Mo Taylor, to them. It seems that Larry has gotten more out of DC than anyone else and if he plays like he has in Philly, he could really help us at the 4. Getting KT back would be good again, but it would be weird to see him back in Houston this soon.
Don't expect to see Boki play next season if Brown comes in. One thing about Brown is his patience is very,very short. He wants to win now at all expense so that means no game for the youngsters. Thomas,Hughes an a couple of more were shipped out before playing 2 or 3 seasons with Brown. The talent was scaled back and they went to the finals, but since making the playoffs, he's made it to the conf 1 times and knocked out by the 2nd rd twice and the 1st rd 1 time.
I do not want snow on our team, i realy dislike that player, But i think houston wil not trade for him. I hope boki wil play some minutes. I can't wait for next season.
Well at least the arrival of Brown promisses exciting offseasons(even if it only 2 or 3 ) with all the changes he likes to make to his roster from on year to the other. ALA
Don't expect the rocket to score anymore than they did this yr either. Philly used to be offensively challenged during his tenure. Maybe it was talent or whatever, but he traded all the decent offensive players for 1 dimensional non scoring players.
Well I don't think Jeff Van Gundy could do a much better job on offense. I'd be satisfied with the same amount of points per game......just not less than last year...but we should get more assists. The good thing will be that our defense will improve greatly! And steals...
From Blineberry's article in today's Chronicle: "For Brown, this might be his best chance ever to dabble in high art with a firecracker guard in Steve Francis, another personal favorite in Cuttino Mobley and the ultimate wild card in 7-5 Yao Ming. You can almost picture him in a white lab coat, experimenting over a Bunsen burner. He might be the perfect match for Mobley, a hard-nosed, thick-skinned type who could benefit from some tough love." If Brown is as smart as everyone says he is, what makes you think he would have to use the same recipe he did in Philly? I don't think its a given that Mobley is traded if Brown comes to Houston. And I don't see how you get enough playing time for Mobley off the bench if Steve is your starting SG.
Here's the thing about Brown: He establishes a system to make the best use of his primary players' primary abilities, and then either develops the secondary players' secondary/complimentary abilities, or moves them for guys who do. And then he demands that everybody do their job. In other words, he doesn't come with a set system in mind; the systems he used in Indiana, Kansas, and Philly have little in common, for example, other than their focus on the abilites of their teams' best players. In Kansas Brown had one amazingly versatile big man, and a bunch of role players...So the team was built on interior passing, middle and in screens, and overall passing filtered through Manning, an exceptional passing big man. In Indiana their best players were a gunner from the outside and a pretty skilled center...so brown set up an offense revolving around thickets of picks for Reggie to get free in, and a middle pocket inside out game around Smits. The pfs were expected to rebound, play defense, and collect the garbage. When he got to Philly Brown had one exceptional talent and a bunch of role players...so he set up a system predicated on Iverson's ability to break his man down, and get free, or create his own passing lanes with mid to long shooters setting up in recognized pockets. Sort of like Rudy's system, but much more team oriented, and players didn't only spot up, they set staggered screens, ran routine cuts, and most importantly played to recognize the moment of Iverson's commitment, and get open or work hard to get position for the rebound of an Iverson miss. He developed the secondary skills nneded to compliment Iverson in that role: Snow to be a solid defender to compensate for Iverson, and also a sound ball carrier that wouldn't turn the ball over or take bad shots when the offense is built around the Answer, etc. So what I'm saying is really this: While we can speculate, it is really hard to predict what players Brown will want/not want because his system doesn't exist yet. It will not be a copy of Philly...we have different assets. Had he come here before Yao, it might have been real close, but as is it will be something built around Yao and Steve...and everyone else will most likely need to demonstrate complimentary abilities, or find the door. One of the reasons I so enjoy Brown is, like Whitey Herzog used to say, and pat Riley did when he went from Showtime LA to grunt and grind NY, the best coaches adapt their system to fit the abilities of the best players, if those players are worth it. He will not adapt his philosophy, or his demands that players defend and play within the system, but the system itself will be something new, and I can't think of a better coach to develop a new system around Yao and Steve...maybe Riley, but he has been going one way for so long I don't know if he still has it in him to adapt. So will he want Snow? Hard to say...will Eddie be gone, or KY return? Depends...If we do hire Brown, I will immediatley start a thread speculating of the New Offense...man, that will be a lot of fun...and I am arrogant enough to think it might be something like the kind I have been suggesting for a while, but as a basketball thinker I am to Larry Brown what an atom is to Saturn, so it'll be fun to see it unfold.
MacBeth - great post! This offseason is fun, afterall! It will be fun to see how effective this team can be, given a system predicated on its numerous strengths. I love Rudy, would go to war to defend him, but with the winds of change, there is a new smell in the air. And I don't think it's because the wind is blowing to the SouthEast today (in other words, Pasadena is down wind from H-town). Patiently waiting for Doc Rocket's insightful words, even if he is quoting his favorite songs...
About keeping Eddie, isn't Brown known as hypercritical, ala Bob Knight. I remember him having a rep of constantly harping on young players, rather than coddling them. With someone as fragile mentally as Eddie, this could be disaster. The last thing he needs is someone constantly pointing out all of his mistakes. If Brown comes, I'd love to see us pick up: P.J. Brown and BBarry while losing: Cat, Griffin, Rice leaves us with: Yao Cato PJ MoT Morris Posey Nachbar Morris Barry Posey Francis Francis Mooch (hopefully we can upgrade backup PG too, but with Barry, not such a priority)
I agree. I don't think it's a given that Brown trades away our strengths...the backcourt. What makes us think his ego isn't big enough to think he can't take 2 of the 3 best players on the team and improve them like presumably Rudy couldn't, as the theory goes. Maybe later, but I don't see Brown trading one of his best players without first coaching him. As for you PT quandary JBC, I see Brown having the ability to convince Mobley that we right now have a depth problem in the backcourt, and Mobley is just now starting to realize that his ankles need rest and he has shown liking the challenge of being more a defensive force. Him changing his summer regimen to rest his ankles, and showing a likeness to defense, kinda goes hand in hand with lower minutes off the ridiculous 41 mpg he gets. I don't see it hard for Brown to convince him to play in the 32mpg range, and focus on defense. If you move SF down to 38 mpg (which is also advisable, imo), and bring in a vet PG or vet SG to be the 3rd guard, and that player gets 30 mpg, that right there is 28mpg for Mobley when one of those two is off the court. Then he could easily get 5 more minutes in a 3 guard lineup if the vet pickup we get is a big-type SG or big PG. Hell, running a lot of guards with Ming is not a bad idea in itself. I don't see Brown playing Griffin as much while he remains a weak (and clueless) player, and I don't see Nachbar getting minutes if he's not good, either. Brown will go with who deserves it. Think about it...right now, we only have 2 guards to speak of. If we get one more, do you expect that pickup to really be a 38mpg quality guy. I see it as a solid vet who should get around 30mpg, maybe less. <b>bottomline</b>: why would Brown's massive ego trade the team's strengths before he has a shot at coaching them...and we indeed have a depth problem at guards to begin with.
wasn't Bird the coach of Indiana when they went to the Finals? Brown's Pacers always got eliminated by the Bulls I believe.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Denver, LAC, San Antonio, and now Philly... all of these teams made the same mistake of trying to impliment a quick fix by making larry brown the head coach, and sure he drastically improved them ....but 2 things were fairly certain with the teams mentioned above... 1. he stays for figuratively and sometimes literally no longer than a blink of an eye... 2. when he leaves, he leaves his team so scourched and burned out that it takes them years and sometimes decades (denver, LAC) to recover... the pacers were the only team to seemingly survive this curse...but then again they are in the nba's junior varsity (eastern conf)... brown is also a guy that rumors to retire each year so that receive the begging and pleading from his owner and gm that gives him a seemingly false sense of fulfilment that he truly will not receive until he is named the coach of his beloved UNC tarheels...u think its a coincidense that unc picked matt doherty over him a few years back??????? dean smith aint no fool... that being said, brown is a great x and o coach...but i feel that his philosophy of getting his marquee players that ball at the end of a posetion rather than at the begining will greatly negate yao's great passing ability... we as rocket fans have been spoiled by the lack of drama in the front office throughout the rudy t administration...i for one do not want to see the front office headlines that were prevelant when the oilers were in town... memo to les: save yourself and your fans 3 wasted years which may or may not result in playoff appearances and a great many years of problems thereafter and dump this guy off of your list..... MIKE DUNLEVY IS THE WAY TO GO ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ The above post (from a now dead thread) seems to be a concern of many Rockets fans. I could not disagree more. While I admittedly don't remember Larry Brown's Denver years (was he the head coach??), I remember his Kansas, San Antonio, Clippers, Pacers, and Sixers years well. The above poster fails to acknowledge that the Spurs did not collapse at all when Brown left. The above poster all ready recognized Indiana's continued success after Brown's departure (and I always thought Brown and not Larry bird should have been given credit for that). It remains to be seen what happens in Philly. So the only franchise I see that went into disarray after Brown's departure is the Clippers and any body who follows basketball knows that the Clippers organization is the worst in sports. If anything, Brown should be heaped with praise for taking that sory franchise to the playoffs twice. I see the Clippers collapse following Brown's departure as the Clippers just being the Clippers without the best coach in the NBA. Critics of Larry brown are reaching right now. Personally, I can not think of another coach in the NBA that has a track record as impressive as Brown's nor can I think of a more perfect coach for the Rockets given the current state of the franchise. So what if Brown leaves in 3 years......all I wanted from him anyways was his ability to get through to our troubled, immature players and that's not going to take three years. Once he does that, his job is done and anything after that is gravy. Steve Francis and Yao Ming need to be shown the light and no one does that better in the NBA than Larry Brown.
JBC, oops, no edit. I placed your quote over the wrong paragraph. I meant "I agree" that it's not a given that Brown breaks up his strength before coaching it. Secondly, I see a fairly easy way to lower Mobley's minutes, with the one assumption that it is fairly unlikely we land a PG worth more than 30mpg...in the scenario where Brown chooses to give the two only guards he has a year with him before trading one of them. I hate SFs inability to run a fastbreak, but I'd still play him at PG a lot, even if we got a vet PG to play with him. Wouldn't you?
Good analysis Mc Beth. I sure do hope we can get Larry. I can see his system already with Steve at the 2, Cat at the 1 (if Cat would follow the rules and we can't get someone like Snow). 1) Steve starts with the ball on the wing and gets a pick from a big man and plays a pick and roll. (The same play we have now except a little more emphasis on the roll to keep the defense honest). 2a) Steve can run thru multiple picks on either side of the box by C, PF and SF and receives the pass on the wing or on the base line with the defender chasing him (this gives him a huge advantage he never had before in Rudy's system). Steve can shoot a J or fake and drive. (The AI play). 2b) The Small Forward sets and runs thru the same picks to the opposite wing. 3) To run play 2, if we don't get a PG like Snow, we can use Mobley in that role. If Cat can not get the ball to Steve or the SF and the clock is down to under 8 secs, Cat can go 1 on 1. I am OK with this but not if he jacks up the 1st shot he sees before looking for other options. 4) Yao or another big man can be the picker in play 1 and 2. If defense switches or doubles Steve or the SF, get the ball to the big man rolling to the basket. With the offense on the move, we always have an advantage on the defender. 5) Pure low-post play with Yao but with more cuts like the old Walton's Blazers. Our current play only has 1 cutter: the passer and the wrong man at that. It was very predictable. The defense knows whom to stop and what happens before the play is run. With more cuts from multiple positions, the defense has to follow the cutters. If Yao can not pass to the cutter, it is easier for him to go 1 on 1 with less worry about the double team from the blind side. Currently we don't have Cat feeding the post but he actually is a good option to do so. The defender can't back off cause they know he will jack it up. After he feeds, he can cut hard to the basket. He is a strong finisher at the basket, a zillion times better than Mooch. I never understood why Mooch had this job and not Cat.
I agree with your assessment. But it assumes (probably correctly) that Steve will play half of his minutes at the PG. But this way, we can bring Mobley off the bench, as a Vinnie Johnson-type fire plug. As to the starting PG, I would love to see Payton come here. However, I don't know if we have the trade assets to lure him on a sign and trade from Milwaukee if we are not trading Mobley. Perhaps Griffin plus cap fodder - but it is questionable if Milwaukee would take our fodder.
the bruiser were looking for. dale davis? hear me out... this guy was larrys muscle in indy. hes a solid mean veteran. he'll probably get something in the MLE range, would this be a good option at the 4? start davis at the 4, and let larry have the time to mentor Eddie... ???
