Try as I might, and I do have all the sympathy in the world for Rudy, it's growing older and older making up all kinds of excuses for him. I have followed the Rockets ever since the first championship and I have been a member of the BBS since it's early days. For too long we have complained and complained about the lack of creativity of our since departed dump it in, kick it out offense and how it was predictable and boring as hell, but the truth is, I would welcome it's predictability and boredom back with open arms as it actually worked great back in it's day. A very simple offense, designed to work to the strenghts of the most dominant player in the NBA back then, the Dream. Well, since then, we welcomed Barkley, brought Pippen (who was reduced to the role of spot up shooter), and still we were stuck with the dump it in, kick it out offense, prompting plenty of criticism. We saw the team become Francis' and Mobley's, and with that, the team adopted another simple as hell offense, the ISO so many others despise. It worked for awhile, but the zone defense took care of that, and now that we have Yao, the team needs a complex offense that fits the team we have. Well, we have no plan. Every game is a surprise, every game a different team shows up. And when the team wins, that usually happens because we have so much talent that we can sometimes overcome our lack of any plan whatsoever. Rudy is not an X's and O's guy and he will never be. His strenghts lied in the fact that he communicated well with his players, was a great motivator and all. Well, with the players we have now, that's not working either. They don't listen to him, and that's obvious. What we have that DID work this season, was a commitment to a defensive intensity unheard of before with the current team. That is no longer true. The team is in disarray. Offensively, and defensively. I'm trying REAL HARD to come up with an excuse for Rudy that would allow him to remain the Rockets head coach. The only one I can think of is respect for his history with the team and his past accomplishments. Which brings me to the point of my rant: I cannot and will not be a part of something like this, because Rudy doesn't deserve such treatment. If it has to be done, it will eventually be done, but in a honored and kind manner, and not with something like this. I'm sure that even Rudy must be frustrated by now, and the same probably holds true for Les.
if you held off on the petition till the end of the season, and we miss the playoffs, than you would have had 10 times the support. now youve blow your load so to speak, and you dont have the support that you might otherwise have had if you waited a couple months. no way rudy ever gets fired mid-season.
Thanks, Jeff, for another well thought-out an informative post. Look forward to your next 12,000. Originally posted by Verse no matter how you twist it, the fact that they did not foul is indicative of the ignorant sytle of basketball this team has played over the past few years and that WILL be factored into the decision of whether or not to keep rudy. It is true that over the past few years, the Rockets have not been a very good team. It is called “re-building” and sooner or later all teams go through the process. At least the Rocket's organization has not remained mired near the bottom of the standings year after year, as some other teams seem to do. There is much promise in the talent of the players we have now. Although we may tire of hearing that the team is young. It is still true. Our players are young in age and young in experience. Our team has been adding and subtracting players, adjusting to league wide rule changes, which have taken away our former strengths via the "iso" offense {Personally, I never liked it anyway.] and man to man defense. Which is to say, that as a "team" we are still in a development stage. It is difficult for any fan to go through the growing pains along with the team; but that is where we are at the moment. It took 20 plus years before the Rockets brought Houston it's first professional sports championships. You can be sure there was much frustration throughout those years. Rudy Tomjanovich has been through all of those years along with the fans. His loyalty to the organization should be unquestioned. He may not be the perfect coach.......but he is dedicated, hard-working, and HONEST. This board gives us all a chance to express our opinions. I don't recall who it was that said he believed Rudy lied; I have no idea how many other people share that belief. I can only say that I believe it is highly unlikely, given Rudy's track record. We can all feel free to question Rudy's line-ups, offensive or defensive strategies, we do not have to like his personality. We should feel free to voice our frustrations [ hopefully in an intelligent, perhaps in a humorous way] but in a responsible way. I cannot speak for anyone else, but I personally, would like to voice my support for Rudy, the team and the Rocket's organization: Keep on doing the best you can, don't go for the "quick fix", bring us that third championship. It will be the sweetest one yet.
Quick update: I feel the need to start a petition advocating the Rockets keep Rudy and maintain the status quo. I know of at least 10 others on here that are with me. Anyone else? Come on. We need at least 25 to counteract the "other" petition that has already been submitted.
I'm with you codell! Just a little something I read on the espn web page today: "Oh, yeah: Hard to see how the Rockets' fade from a surprising 23-15 start can put Rudy Tomjanovich on the hot seat. Tough to blame Rudy T for not maintaining that pace with a team this young, in the West, and with everything extra asked of the coach as part of the arrival and incorporation of Yao Ming. Question to disgruntled Houstonians: Is a coaching change something you really want to throw at Yao now? Or even this offseason?" -Marc Stein I believe this speaks for itself. Go Rox!
unreal! on the way home from work im listening to 610 (i live in austin, but am here for the week on biz-ness) and sure enough, rich and charlie mention the petition! was that you rockets r us? you have a very radio friendly voice! rich and charlie are right though, rudy will never get fired mid season. wait till the season is over and see if we make the playoffs. something interesting they mentioned was the fact that no coach has ever maintained his job thru FOUR straight lottery seasons. would rudy be the exception? me thinks not. also mentioned was in regards to phoenix and their youth. they are even less experienced and younger than us (stud-a-mire, matrix and $tarbury), yet they are faring better. if they can do it with their youth, than we should be able to as well. no excuses.
The following websites are all available: saveourrudy.com saveourrudy.net saveourrudy.org Jeff????????????
R-R-U, Caught your call in to Rich and Charlie this evening. I have to say I agree in not making a move at this time. That being said, you make a compelling argument. I just question the timing. I vehemently disagree with anyone who is blindly allegiant to Rudy because of past glory. If that was all it took, Popovich would be teflon for the next 7 years and K.C. Jones would have remained in Boston longer. There are things I really like about Rudy as our coach. It just 'feels' right that he is a life-long Rocket. I like the fact players enjoy playing for him. I get the feeling that if a free-agent is on the bubble as to what team he wants to sign with, maybe Rudy's rapport and reputation will sway them our way. There is a part of me that takes solace in knowing that players aren't disgruntled or itching to leave the team because everyone seems to like playing for Rudy. There are things I'm starting to dislike, as well. Ya know how sometimes when you think about where to place responsibility for poor play we debate whether it's the coach's fault or the players' fault, or a mixture of both? I sometimes find myself thinking 'Rudy isn't the one missing defensive assignments, or, Rudy isn't missing those free throws, etc... so my mindset is to hold the players more accountable. Seems kinda obvious, but then I start thinking 'Wait, at the end of the day, who is ultimately responsible for the mental discipline of the team'. That, in the end, is always the head coach. A head coach wears many hats. Not only must he be tactically sound, but he must also motivate, cajole, and spearhead what type of offensive and defensive system will be utilized to win games. I've loved Rudy since he took over for Don Cheney. He seemed to push the right buttons fairly quickly to help bring both championships. We ran high for a while till Seattle took us out quickly. We brought in Barkley in late August of 96', and, whether you loved it or hated it, breathed new life into our playoff aspirations. The Pippen acquisition a couple/three years later did the same. We felt somewhat rejuvinated when we got Franchise. Point being, it seems that at each 'lull' we've brought in a dynamic player that seems to pacify us for a while. Our franchise has been a perennial playoff team, save for the last 4 years. At what point do we stop pointing to externalities like our youth to somewhat justify standing pat on the coaching front? Do we give Rudy till after next year? Do we wait 2 more years so the team can 'really gel'? I don't know. I guess we all draw our lines at different points in the sand. I am going to withhold judgment on Rudy till after the season. I really hope things turn around. If they don't, and we end up something like 38-44, I would definitely entertain talks of making a move.
I'd love to see Rudy stays as the head coach. Yes he doesn't have great 'O' & 'X' ability, but could we get a great assistant coach like Winter to work on that? We know Phil Jackson is also not a OX guy but look at Bulls' and Lakers' offense... Based on my observation, Rudy is taking control of this team. One obvious sign is that Mobley is passing to Ming, a lot. Yes he's still kind 'dumb' at court, but that's not the thing you can change immediately. He starts to realize when he has an off game, he needs to make it up at defensive end, not keeping jacking off shots. You have to give some credits to Rudy for Mobley's mental change. The work on Francis is probably the biggest chanllenge Rudy faces. Steve is too talented and stubborn to be coached, with a hard style. Let's see how Rudy deal with it... BTW: I don't think making playoff or not should be a bar to judge Rudy's coaching job. Sometimes you see a team making playoffs every year but you know they will never get out to the title battle. Like Magic, Timberwolves, Hornets... if your heart is really big... playoff is not just satisfying... I mean, with Francis, Mobley ISO game, we may manage to get to the playoff, but that's not our future way to go and we should not ever build our confidence and hope on that type of game.
Jo Mama - Yep, that was me. I had some extra time around 6 and decided to see if I could get in. Thanks for the compliment. I've done a few radio things and I'm flirting with doing more. Anyway, the response I thought was a little stronger than I expected from the Host station of the Rudy T show. Still it was measured, and pragmatic, like many of the responses on both sides of the "Rudy must go" debate. Also of interest that I did not know was that Phoenix has a worse road record than the Rox! I haven't checked to see how many road games they have left. That might leave use room to sneak into the playoffs after all.
Rudy has had time to develop talent like Griffin. Griffin is capable of so much, yet he's still at the same place he was when he played his first game... no evolution. We can't afford to have the same thing happen to Yao. Example: Since day 1 Yao has bobbled the ball on rebounds. He does the whole Pete Chilcutt tap-the-ball-to-yourself instead of trying to control the ball first. Yao could do this in China because he's so much taller than those players; in the NBA, a ball over his head is still within the reach of most athletes. Even a YMCA basketball coach would have had him doing rebounding drills (slap the ball, come down with two hands on the ball and elbows out) since day one.... look at him two months later, same style rebounding. HE HAS TO TOUGHEN UP. I really hate to see Rudy fired, but at this point he is no longer what is best for this team. What about the Kenny Thomas/James Posey trade? What was that about? We need rebounding and a forward that can guard guys like Karl Malone, not another scorer. While Kenny was in the last year of his contract and Posey is guaranteed to stay in Houston... we still don't have one tough forward. Mo Taylor has size, but he's soft and is nowhere close to the player we brought him here to be. Rudy is just holding the team back; these kids must have proper guidance and restraint to mature. Maybe it's Larry Smith's turn.
Brent, great way to start your Clutch BBS career, with a post asking for the head of Rudy. So 1.5 years should be enough time to develop? Tell that to Kobe, J.O'Neal, or even T-Mac. The guy would be a junior in college right now, so another 2 years of development should be EXPECTED before Eddie comes around big time. You think that was a bad trade? Posey has been one of our better players since he came over. He does 10x as much for the Rox than Rice did, and it frees up Eddie and Mo to get more PT. A great trade in my book. You really think Larry knows anything about hoops besides rebounding? Or was this a joke? What's funny is how after 2 or 3 wins, this type of talk suddenly dies down...
Friends, I kindly reply to each of these points with another angle (as usual), just to show that this is another knee-jerk reaction to a situation that isn't as bad as it seems...
Kiki - You're honestly going to hang your hat on that logic about Rudy? I can think of a long and distinguished list of Rookies who came in and exceeded expectations in both their first and second years. Kobe is just one example!! Look at Koby from year 1-2: G FG% 3P% FT% OFF DEF RPG APG SPG BPG TO PPG 96-97 .417 .375 .819 .70 1.20 1.90 1.3 .69 .32 1.58 7.6 97-98 .428 .341 .794 1.00 2.10 3.10 2.5 .94 .51 1.99 15.4 (Kobe came from High School - No college at all!!) Oh, and btw... we USED 3 FIRST ROUND PICKS TO GET E.G.!!!
I'd only replace Rudy if we could get someone better. With that said, who's available? Donn Nelson? Possibly, but that'll be at year's end. Larry Bird? Some people on the board mentioned him, but I thought that the word was he wasn't much of a coach, but he had great people working for him. Larry Brown? Yeah, he moves around a lot, but that move would be at year's end also and I don't think he's leaving Philly yet. Van Gundy? Well, he's in the broadcast booth and the guy did an amazing job with the Knicks and is regarded as a top notch coach. However, he would demand a lot of money and I'm not sure he'd even want to get back into coaching. So, right now the only coach I'd take over Rudy that we have even a remote chance of getting now is Van Gundy. The key word is remote. With that said, I'll stick with Rudy unless it becomes apparent we can get Van Gundy, Larry Brown or Donn Nelson.
Rudy T is a professional Basketball Coach,he is hired and paid by Les Alexander Owner of the Houston Rockets. We as fans can rant and rave all we want on the BBS Clutch Forum but to have a Petition to oust the Head Coach is trying to put us in a position where we dont belong. The Houston Rockets is not a Democracy but more like a Principality with a King, who has the power of Life and Death. We as Fans are going outside of our place, when we think our heads are so big and our demands so great that we crudely think of interfering in the business of Les Alexander! Les won't loose face just because of your efforts, infact you will be politely ignored until Les Alexander, in his own time and place finds the need to adjust the Coaching Staff. I refuse to be part of this stupid Petition and urge others to come to their senses. I might add that I see a need for a Coaching Change but wont presume to tell Les Alexander his business, nor will I try to embarrass Rudy T. by this public condemnation!
