Mike Dan Tony is gonna get screwed over in COY Voting

I gotta agree... Good system - at least on the offensive end... but actual in game coaching... leaves much to be desired...
Imo,
His minutes management is horrible - oftentimes leaving starters on the floor with 3-4 minutes left and a 15-20 point margin...
Doesn't seem to know how to utilize a timeout in the midst of a run by the other team to stop momentum...
Doesn't seem to utilize players outside of his system... ie Harrell - we can be getting killed on the boards, but because he's not a shooter he's stuck to the bench... meanwhile someone like Lou or Gordon can be having an 'off night' and he just leaves them in there to keep chucking...

MDA has done a better job than I expected... THUS FAR this year we are overachieving... If we make it to the WCF I will give him full props... but I think this is a house of cards that can be blown away with some cold shooting.

Conversely, Pops has built a machine. He has developed a culture that he has maintained forever. He seems to utilize every weapon in his arsenal and gets the max return from every player... Pops sways games just by his in game adjustments and strategies...

I hate the Spurs... but I give credit where credit is due...

 

If your point guard is leading your team in rebounds... are you really getting the most out of your squad or are you just relying on 1 guy, whose really good, to do it all and letting the chips fall where they may?

 

Craig Ackerman said during tonight's game that the Rockets lead the league in scoring out of timeouts.

 

For all the people using mike dantonis system as an argument for why james harden shouldn't be MVP better vote for Dantoni coach of the year.

you can't have it both ways...

 

Wouldn't it be funny if no Rocket won any award... No MVP, no 6th man, no COY. Voters just implied our whole season was a fluke. Just like 2015.

 

I will never understand this argument. A player excels in a system implemented to maximize his strengths, so that should count against him. Shaq said this at the beginning of the season. Didn't the triangle maximize his strengths?? Asterisk this fool's MVP.

Don't mind me. Just over here venting.

 

Obviously he's disqualified because he has James Harden on his team. Just like James Harden is disqualified for MVP because he is playing in D'Antoni's system.

Also, Eric Gordon can't win 6th man of the year because he's producing starters numbers. Therefore, he is disqualified as a bench player. On a related note, Lou Williams is a 7th man. Therefore, he is disqualified for 6th.

And yes, the team has exceeded expectations. But since the team was projected to be trash due to overpaying injury-prone one-way players and losing a superstar in Dwight Howard for nothing, the bar was set so low that it's virtually impossible to not exceed expectations. Therefore, Morey can't win Executive of the Year.

However, Corey Brewer has a case for most improved. He's not here anymore anyway.

 

Someone somewhere is gonna have some problems if this were to happen

 

Wouldn't surprise me at all

 

Mike shows Harden

You can win without the BEARD!

 

Media now running with the narrative that MDA is actually the reason we're this good, not Harden and one of the biggest critics of MDA in SAS actually came back on his words AND gives Harden credit. Very little people want to admit they were wrong about MDA and Harden. Personally I don't think he's worthy of COY, like plenty have said he's created a nice system and seems to be good out of time-outs, but every fear has become true: he likes short rotations, runs guys into the ground, does not really care about defense, keeps it simple and safe and does not really adapt. He has a system and he's going to stick by that, but what made Rudy T and others great was their ability to innovate and adjust. MDA was once that guy, but not anymore.

 

Was Rudy really that innovative? He had one system too. Iso'ing a star player and kicking out to open 3-point shooters. He rode Dream(and to a lesser extent Clyde) to 2 titles. He milked Barkley for one more lengthy playoff run. But he never adapted his system to take advantage of Pippen. He basically plugged him into the Robert Horry role which is one reason he wanted out after his lone season here. And he stuck with the ISO-ball with Francis and Mobley once they became the new faces of the franchise. And once the league had enough of ISO-ball and illegal defenses(remember Barkley milking those for technical fouls?) and changed the rules, Rudy couldn't adjust.

 

Like MDA, Rudy T at some point became a coach of habit and wasn't very good anymore. Yes he was definitely innovate, how can you not see that? No he didn't, he actually understood that spreading the court with shooters was the best way for Dream to be successful. He also put more responsibility on Dream to trust his teammates, just like MDA did with Nash. It's not about Horry moving to the 4 spot, which was not until 1995. Even in 92-93 he started to move towards getting shooters around him, less pick and roll with Thorpe and more room for Dream.

He saw what worked with each of his 'stars' and milked it for all its worth, that's what a good coach do. Doesn't it say something that everyone copied Rudy T's way of the inside-out game and forced the league to change rules with Cat & Steve?? At a certain point, a coach is who he is and it's not Rudy's fault he didn't get the roster and who knows what he would've done with Yao. The point is, while MDA and Rudy T were once innovative, they got stuck which is where you are right.

The difference is Rudy didn't have much to work with, while MDA has lots of weapons. Still he refuses to make it more complicated and mix things up. That's just stubborn and signs of a dinosaur. I don't have a lot of faith in MDA, just like I didn't have it in Rudy T at the end of his stint. Rudy T was actually forced, so there's a difference. MDA can still make a choice here, but I'm afraid he's set in his ways and maybe we can have Bzdilek take over at some point.

 

Rudy was innovative in the early 90's. But he never adapted after that. Once the league took away illegal defense, his coaching career was effectively over. Even when Dream was in his prime, Rudy couldn't deal with a team like Seattle that employed an effective non-man-to-man defensive strategy. And unfortunately, he didn't have Dream in his prime anymore. He had Francis, Mobley, and for one year, Yao.

As for Rudy not having much to work with, that was on him. He and CD made personnel decisions. No one put a gun to his head and told him he had to blow 3 first rounders on Eddie Griffin or draft Bryce Drew, Boki Nachbar, Rodrick Rhodes, and Mirsad Turkcan. No one said he had to hand out huge contracts to Mo Taylor, Moochie Norris, Shandon Anderson, and Kelvin Cato. And no one demanded he trade for a washed up Glen Rice.

 

Seems you are making this more about Rudy T than seeing my point...that's your view, I have a different one. I acknowledge he didn't adapt that much later, just like MDA.

 

It's not just about Rudy. I think D'Antoni gets a bad rap for being this offense-only coach from his Phoenix days. In 2007, if Nash doesn't get a gash in his nose in Game 1 that wouldn't stop bleeding and if Horry didn't hipcheck Nash into the scorers table in Game 4, the Suns easily win that series and probably the title since all that was left in their way was an underdog Utah Jazz(should've been the Rockets, damn it!) and an overachieving Cleveland Cavaliers.

 

Great post! If you kept going, using your stellar logic, I think you would have discovered that the Rockets shouldn't even be in the NBA. Disqualified.