I sat in row 17 tonight. I couldnt help but notice a few things. I made a list in my head of what I wanted to discuss with you guys. 1) During the 81 finals team presentation, Del Harris was giving a speach. I was just in awe of being in the same arena as Rudy, Malone, Calvin, Sampson, as was the rest of the city. Made me incredibly proud to be a Rockets fan. Out of nowhere Lampe comes out and starts shooting around while Del Harris was giving a speech. It was incredibly rude and disrespectful. The crowd all urged him to please get off the court because it was a very sentimental moment. Instead of doing so he yelled back at the crowd with hand gestures "sit your ass down" and continued being a distraction and shooting. Who the hell does this kid think he is. Rudy looked over in disgust. 2)Yao is shaping up to be a hell of a leader. Even in moments when we were down and shots were being missed. The rest of the team always had their heads down. Yao would slap the back of their heads and say keep your head up. He was always a motivater. You could tell Head, Swift, and Bogans were terrified of making mistakes at all times, and everytime they made a mistake theyd get down on themselves. Yao would let the team know to keep playing. He also laughed in the face of double teams. He'd kind of just look down and smile and then pop in a jumper. Automatic. 3)Van Gundy is an awful motivator. Simply awful. Swift had a few nice buckets, but every so often when his guy would score on him. Van gundy would swing his arms and call for Howard immediatly. Same thing with Head. I am sick of how he handles this team. Our team has not played much together, which was definitly evident when Bogans would make passes in the lane to Yao. Nice passes by the way, but Yao didnt see them coming. Our players always look over their shoulders, how can you play when youre a nervous wreck. "If i make a mistake im getting taken out of the game", you dont have Mcgrady, your players are all young and new to eachother. Just sit down, shut up, and let them play. 4)Confidence. Again this is partly due to Van Gundy. I see a team like the Suns where every player is not affraid to shoot, simply because theyre not affraid to miss. Our team is affraid to miss. Pump fake after pump fake, all for nothing. Our shooting percentage is awful because of hesitation. They need a new mind set of just letting the ball go. We think WAYYY too much. Even if our team aquired some dead eye shooters this off season like Peja, i still guarentee you that Van Gundy would find a way to make him think so much that he wouldnt be able to shoot worth squat. Thats what makes McGrady shoot so well, he doesnt give a $#it if he misses, cause he knows hes staying on the floor no matter what. Our guys need that freedom. Theres a reason Head was a dead eye shooter in college, and theres a reason when were down 18 and Rafer doesnt really give a $#it and drills 3 after 3.
Yao must feel like leading the Rox like the Chinese National Team right now. Wish Del Harris is our head coach now like he was with CNT in the Olympics. Maybe then Yao can create his magic and sneak us into the playoff.
I don't like or hate JVG, I just want this team to win, but.. I happen to agree with the above two statements.
Great observations. I've noticed some of the same things. Our guys are playing scared. They need to loosen up, relax and just play the game.
Finally, a sensible rational view. I fully agree. JVG just needs to let the players play for the rest of the season. We are not going to make the playoffs, so why not just let them go out and play some ball. See how it goes. As long as we stick to our gameplan of feeding Yao the rock, JVG should just let the role players play without having to worry about his post game negative criticism. I bet it is a royal pain in the rear to have to listen to crap about what you are doing wrong all the time. JVG's personality nd demeanor is to blame for this. He is a good coach with good intentions, but he is not a people perosn when it comes to coaching. You have to learn how to motivate your players and give them constructive criticism in a way that they repsond to, in a way that gives them confidence, and in a way that doesnt make them feel like they suck (even though they do). That is how you bring the best out of people. He needs to learn to be a better leader. If he was leading a team of people at say a engineering firm, he would have been fired a long time ago for this kind of behavior. It doesnt matter how good his basketball mind is if he cant effictively lead the team. That is why you see some semi-intelligent managers in the corporate world. They may not be the smartest people, but they have leadership and can bring out the best in others. In contrast, you see smart as hell people that never move up the corporate chain because they lack the leadership skills necessary for success!
I thought the "part 4" makes a lot sense, players r getting extremly machanic (not in a good way) under JVG.
Del Harris would make a TERRIFIC head coach for the Rockets. Too bad he's so darned loyal to the Mavs and that gimp Avery Johnson.
I'm not really sure that this team has the personnal to play loose relaxed ball. What we saw in the third quarter of tonight's game was indicative of this. Unstructured and undisciplined play where our guards just started jacking up threes. All this after they had made a couple of threes during their mini-run. Having said that, what I do believe is that JVG must spend more time on the offense during practice. I remember Matt J saying last year that the rockets would never practice or run any offensive plays during practices. Well, if this is true, then it is easy to see why we struggle so much on the offensive end when either Tracy or Yao is out. Yao and Tracy are arguably two of the most talented offensive players in the NBA. Yet even when both are in the game together, we still have problems scoring and have to rely on our defense to bail us out often. Many of you will say that the system in place gets the players open shots, but the players are just missing, so you can't really blame the coach. I don't buy that. Our offense is very predictible. For example, the reason why JHO plays so many minutes is because our pathetic offense relies on him as a major offensive contributor. Every game we run about 10 plays where we isolate Howard along the baseline so he can shoot an uncontested 15-18 footer. Problem with Howard is that there is no middle ground. That is all the offense he brings to the table, and he is either totally on or totally off. If he is hitting, everything is smooth. When he is off, our offense goes to ____ (fill in the blank) Aside from that Clippers game this season, I can't think of one other game where our offense looked smooth and fluid. One other game out of the whole season!
I dont hate him or love him also. It is what it is. Hes used to winning with veteran teams, our team is not a veteran team... you have to accept that but hope to build for the future. Lakers, Knicks, Warriors are all young teams with a ton of talent, but you just have to be patient. Dunlevy came to the clippers, they were awful. But with patience, and a little luck. I think the same goes for Nate at the blazers, sloan and the jazz. Yes van gundy does have a lot of pressure with our two stars. But under his circumstances, Yao, Barry, Tmac, Wesley, Sura, DA... our team has been desimated this year. Why go out and rip Yao for his D. Now is not the time for ripping, its the time to learn...
We need this! http://sports.people.com.cn/mediafile/200408/24/F2004082400510300000.jpg http://img1.qq.com/olympic/20040824/653779.jpg
Lampe probably shot during the ceremony because he knew that was the only time he would be on the court last night. BTW I hear he can shoot 3's but he's not much on defense. I hope he doesn;t catch any infections from Ryan Bowen.
These observations do make a lot of sense. As another observation, I find that most NBA coaches are more likely to motivate or yell at their players when the game is on, wouldn't this sometimes distract the players or sth?
If Lampe was shooting during the Ceremony JVG should have RIP HIM A NEW ONE That was totally disrespectful At this point. . . if this is true. . get this *ssclown OUT OF HOUSTON! Rocket RIver
