Coach RA is definitely a very good coach. He is just not a WC coach. Rockets don't lack talents now. It's coach's job to assembly them to a championship team. ESPN's analysts kept saying that they couldn't believe that Yao's on bench at the last 3 minutes of the game. They kept saying that You have to use Yao's strength, Yao should keep shoting under single coverage, let others adjust to him, not put Yao on bench. If the Coach doesn't trust your franchise player, how else players will? If your coach doesn't show respect to your best player, why the referees and other teams do? In 1994 WC series, John starks went to something like 1-17 in the last game. Pat raley still let him do the last shot. Starks failed again, but Raley not. He made Heat a contender for many years and finally win another WC in 2005 and he had two very successful desciples JVG and SVG. Coach JVG never gives up even his starters were Rynbow and elder Juwan Howard. This current Rockets team are largely underachieved. Even without both Tmac and RonRon, this is a 55+ win team. I don't care how many line-up you had, you should not lose about 15 games to the bottom teams. Coach JVG would not let this happened and not make such excuse. That's the toughness. Finding excuses is loser mentality and coach RA has a lot of excuses. Trading away your starter PG for a young backup is another way to give in the season. For sure Rafer is below-average pg (top 15 pgs in the league are all stars), but he is very good role player and a fighter who never gives in. Last season he burned Lakers with 31 points in the 22th win and helped Rockets won in Utah's court in playoff. I missed JVG and Rafer. and I believe that Rockets will miss Rafer in playoff.
game was already over, yao was tired and you want him to continue out there with risk of getting injury? it was one game, although its important for seeding.. i prefer to have yao for the remainder of the season and playoffs vs 1 game that slipped away due to poor decisions by our guards.
We definitely lack a clutch scorer on the perimeter - a guy we can go to down the stretch when Yao is taken out of a play. Almost every playoff team has at least one of those wing scorers. When McGrady went down, and even before that given his knee issue, we had to turn to guys like Artest, Wafer and Brooks to generate offense from the perimeter. So, yes, we are lacking talent. We have to win by playing tremendous team ball with everybody chipping in. So far, that hasn't happened consistently enough. This situation isn't Adelman's fault.
yao wasting all his energy posting up and get into a position to receive the ball, only to watch as brooks and artest dribble it away to a missed fg pro ball skillzzzzzzzzzzzz
You sound exactly like a Jeff only fan. Not think about the future, and just think about win now. Just like how Jeff won that stupid game against Denver which caused us Brandon Roy. Great! Not to mention we got a serviceman young (only 23!) point guard for Rafer. Did you know, the GM is responsible for the trades. So you are suppose to blame Morey for trading Rafer. So, from your posts, it seems like you dislike Rick and Morey. Also, let's mention Popovich. Great coach right? He trusted in a young point guard even though he was a big question mark in leading a team. Brooks will get better, he too is under 25. And if he doesn't turn out to be a Parker, we always have another potentially dangerous point guard in Lowry. Did you say that this team without both Ron and Tracy are a 55 win team? HAHA! PG: Brooks/Lowry SG: Wafer/Barry SF: Battier/White PF: Scola/Landry/Hayes C: Yao/Mutombo
You can't be serious. I hope you didn't mean that when you said even without McGrady and Artest this team is a 55+ winning team. Without those 2 I don't think this team is capable of even qualifying for the playoffs. The pieces are still not put together for us to win it all. We have a scoring 2 guard that's playing point and still no back up center. We are too small and thats just that. This offseason we really need to fill in the holes. Seriously think about resigning Ron. With his money coming off the books think about if we should resign him or use his expiring to get a pg and back up center. Or resign him and continue to develop Brooks and Lowry and hope that McGrady comes back next year.
I dont know if I agree with all that but I will say if JVG was coaching this team they would be the best defensive team in the league.
The past two teams have been far more talented offensively than any of the teams JVG had. He was working with Ryan Bowen and Chuck Hayes for god sakes. Bob Sura and David Wesley? Juwan Howard. They are 8th in ppg allowed. Thats sad.
The best defense is just a good offense. JVG just reversed the relation of the two things and led us to a terrible lose in the first round of 06-07 season. Chuck Hayes has awesome skills for laying ups but he has not other way to score, though he can hit some fluke shots sometimes. No dribble no shot, Bowen is even worse than hayes, he doesn't even can't make some layups. Juwan's midrange jumpers used to be excellent in the old years but he had never shown anything to deserve his 6m salary during the 3 yrs when he was playing for the rockets. and his defense was absolutely worse than Bowen and Chuck, which made him lose his minutes in his last season with the rockets.
but RA is also not very good. as a coach famous for offense, he still doesn't make the team play well at the offensive end and he always react slowly to the changes on the court.
Who has ever said RA is good? he is just a little bit better than those scrub coaches like JVG and Terry Porter. JVG is a maestro on strategy of defense but he is not a good commander than can make good decisions when he is needed to. A job as the assistant coach seems ideal for JVG, especially for the "no-defense" teams like suns and warriors.
Rick used to be good both on court and off court, he is still pretty good at organizing the players in the locker room espeically at controlling those bad-tempered players like Ron, but his on-court decisions are actually not much better than JVGs due to his age. His decisions are still good but his reactions are too slow for today's NBA.
Look at Ron. He did something like 5-22 in the Salty Lake City, and he had kept on shooting until the game came to the end. It's just the result of Rick's no-descipine couching style. Those bad-tempered players just like these coaches who are easy to get along with like our RA and Don Nelson. Can't imagine what will happen if Ron Artest plays for the Jazz.
You have to accept the fact that no one can keep his hands hot through the whole season, Ron is still above 40% at 3 pointers. at some point, a beast is just like a flexible spring, the harder you press it the stronger it will repel against you. Rick's brother-like coaching style is just an ideal medicine for the bad tempers of those guys IMHO. Bonzi was nearly wasted under JVG's pressing dictatorship but he did contributed something to Rick's systerm last season, though he got traded to NO midway. Ron doesn't play good all the time but he does try his best every game, so it's not a problem of Ron's attitude at all.
Yeah I believe he is responsible and does his best every night. However, he does need to control himself on the court for Yao has been complaining about his fewer and fewer shots.Definitely, he should stop shooting when he is 0-5 and such. I think he'd better post up and break through more. It's the most effective way he helps us win. The rox/hornets game a few weeks ago should be the best evidence.
We just don't have a pass-first PG that can deliver the damn ball to yao, it's a long-time problem and has been aggravated by T-Mac and Rafer's leave. with T-Mac out for the season, Ron has to be our commander that takes control of the ball on the front court. sometimes our offense runs well so the ball can always be sent to the guy who is wide open, but it doesn't run well all the time. Our players just refuse to make fade-away shots, which are pretty common when we face tough defense like Jazz's and Lakers'. our role players just leave Ron those unfinishable shots, which even the prime Michael Jordan can hardly make.
Nothing wrong with the coach. He's working miracles with rookies, young projects, undersized role players, and probably the slowest and least athletic big man in the game. In spite of all this, the Rockets are still in the hunt for a top four seed.
