Lopez Opening Fire on Les for Wanting a Better Coach

The only coaches I would rather have than Van Gundy are Rudy Tomjanovich or Phil Jackson. If you can't get them, then stay with Van Gundy. There is no sense trying to totally "rebuild" a team that was two rebounds away from going into the second round.

 

I disagree. Look at Bonzi.......look at Swift (dumb as a box of rocks) but he could rebound and dunk. Dont forget Anderson.

None of these guys are All-stars, but EVERY one of them were complimenting their teams when they signed with us and then.....NOTHING.

You will never, ever, never convince me that was all their fault alone.

JVG had something to do with it.

I am a fair man, so I will add it was'nt all JVG but he had something to do with it.

 

swift put up numbers but the guy just didnt play good basketball.
bonzi - cant force a lazyass malcontent to change his stripes.
anderson - never sure what happened there. but he didnt have much left in his tank.

all 3 of those could be considered crap.

but for every bonzi there are a dozen guys who love jvg and would walk through fire for him. every coach has run-ins.

 

i dont agree on coach selection but i agree with the rest

 

bottom line: there's not another coach that could've gotten more from this group we had this year.

don't think JVG couldn't be alot more nifty on offense (adelman or whatever) if he had the choice. some of you are saying he did.

coaches will play the style that best suits the players they've got. JVG did that. and it's the best we could do. if luck bounced our way we beat utah. it was a very close series except for game 4.

don't blame JVG for gm issues/roster issues. that's BS. that's CD. don't get it twisted: JVG ain't the coach, gm, owner ($$$), judge, and the jury. HE's the COACH. period. he'd coach the hell out of whatever squad is put in front of him. and don't tell me he had some great ROSTER. he didn't.

he did a helluva job. the players say they love him and you think you know better?

 

He coached the hell out of Novak, Snyder, Bonzi, Span, and Jake.

 

ok i'll give you bonzi. nobody's perfect.

i woulda liked to see him in a 20 game stretch where he played 20 plus minutes a night. and see if he could really play. and that never happened.

but jake played behind deke and i'll take deke. novak got outhustled in practice by hayes with howard as backup. howard is a better 4 than novak. and we needed more defense and rebouding next to yao. with novak on the court who would rebound? our 7' 6" center? i think not! novak wasn't getting it done. snyder plays the same position as head and tmac. so minutes weren't going to be there without hitting the 3. he had a shot though.

vspan? MAYBE we coulda played him more, but he coughed the ball up every GD time he touched it.

 

Rudy T got the same treatment (some moron even tried to start a petition to remove him!), and he was a Houston legend. JVG comes in and takes over a playoff-ready team, and doesn't win a series in 4 years - why should he expect any different? He did NOT do a better job than his predecessor - should all those yelling for Rudy to go be held accountable? Hell yes they should. I guess I agree with you then.

 

I don't know who's right, but if we really want a fast team, we can have it---but you would have to trade Yao Ming, so sorry. But if we did, we better fetch a dear price for him.

I'm not saying it's the answer, but the refs allow Yao to get prison-raped out there on the floor. He's slow-footed and holds onto the ball too long (too bad we don't have the former great-passing Yao; JVG and Ewing turned him into Yinka Dare).

 

Bonzi was contributing for Sacramento when he was healthy and in shape. He screwed up his contract situation and everything was downhill from there. It affected him mentally (he even admitted as much and said he thought about it every day) and it affected him physically when he balooned up to about 60 pounds overweight. He missed all of the preseason stuff and JVG still gave him a chance, and he was terrible.

Slomile's production with the Rockets was similar to what he did in the rest of his career. The Rockets were foolishly hoping that given more of an opportunity that Slomile would break out. It was not to be. Slomile had basically zero value when we traded him and was used to match salaries so we could get Battier for Gay.

Derek Anderson was done when he came here. He was moved on to Miami where he did nothing. His production was actually higher in Houston that it was the year before in Portland, and it went back down in Miami and then in Charlotte.

If those guys failing is the problem someone has with JVG, they might want to reexamine their reasoning.

 

Thank you. I was wondering when someone would point out that there's no reason to believe anything Lopez wrote. What does he cover, golf??

 

Isnt that what we are looking at right now.

 

20-12 without yao is pretty good no?

 

0-3 in the first round is not so good.......

2 of those loses after being up 2-0 in both series.

In playoff series as teams get comfortable against Houston's vaunted defense it is up to JVG to mix it up....HE NEVER DOES !!!

And it ultimatly costs the Rockets.....

JVG must go....HE HAS TO GO for the Rockets to reach their potential.

DD

 

I reserve judgment on Les until he actually makes a decision about the coach.

He better not chose some ass clown.

 

There Fixed it for you.

DD

 

One could argue your point here Dakota. But on the same subject one could argue that JVG took over a team full of NBA nobodies and spent the first year or two evaluating and dumping the trash he inherited.

Lets look logically at the timeline:

Year 1 - 2004; he takes over the Steve Francis era team with guys like Mo Taylor, Moochie Norris, Kelvin Cato (need I go on). Did anyone really expect them to win a championship with this lineup? I was shocked he actually got them to play defense and make it to the playoffs. It was clear that this experiment had failed and it was time to clean house.

Year 2 - 2005; trade for T-Mac and lose our backcourt in the process. Along the way we also managed to dump a lot of the baggage albeit for ageing players. We ended up having our best year since god knows when by winning 51 games. Somehow pulling off the upset against Dallas in the first two games resulting in our team taking them lightly. JVG warned the team about the three finger gesturing and not taking them seriously; turns out he knew what he was talking about.

Year 3 - 2006; injuries, injuries, injuries.....did I mention injuries? lets just forget about this year.

Year 4 - 2007; yet again a retooled roster with only four players left over from the 2005 playoff roster (Yao, Mac, Juwan, Mutumbo). The year was going quite well after a very busy offseason. I actually bought season tickets I was so pumped about the potential. When Yao went down nobody can honestly say they thought we would make the playoffs. Amazingly we played just as well with T-Mac playing out of his mind. Yao returns and everyone has high hopes. We manage to win 52 games and secure home court advantage thanks to one heck of a coaching job by JVG and a resurgance of T-Mac. But yet again we get knocked out in the first round. My opinion is that we over-achieved as a team. This is evident based on the fact that our team played scared against the Jazz. Luther head looked lost, Yao looked a step slow the whole series, T-Mac played good but I can't for the life of me figure out why he stopped driving to the basket in the 4th quarter in game 7 after we got them into the bonus with over six minutes left to play.

Bottom line is we did well, got our feet wet with this new lineup and now we tweak the roster slightly based on need (PG and PF) and go on from here.

The coach in my opinion was not the reason we lost this series but rather the players. T-Mac is not a leader, a great player but not a leader. If he was he would have called his team out like Steve Nash did for not playing with heart and passion. Maybe Yao can be that guy, I don't know. I am not sure you can learn that trait.

 

Why were you shocked? They should've made the playoffs the previous year.

In retrospect, that experiment didn't fail any more than the current one has.