JVG on this morning Spoiler How are you doing coach? Getting ready to go over and play a little 3 on 3 basketball. Take advantage of Mark Jackson again. Use my quickness to blow by him. We beat him yesterday so you know. Rumor is Mullen is crushing you. No Mullen is on my team. Believe me, I know who I am. Im a ballmover, a screener, get the ball to the franchise, and let him do his work. Oh you're LeBron? Ohhh, nice cheap shot. (laughing)Mama, there goes that Granato cheap shot. ... I do find the LeBron discussion to be...I'm still not tired of it. I find it to be interesting. Hes in an unenvienable spot of being compared to Jordan because its impossible to win any battle against a guy with six titles when you have none. At the same time, LeBron is an unselfish player, I think there's nothing wrong with that, but, the facts still remain no matter what anyone wants to say, we all know LeBron has scored 9 points in the 4th quarter in a series that is tied two a piece. Where do you come down on LeBron's play so far in the NBA finals and specifically in that game four. I thought the first three games he played well. Game four, I dont think he did enough with the talent he has. People talk about he doesnt have a post game but hes being guarded by a 38 year old Jason Kidd. He can definitely get into the post and the paint. Maybe he still wont get shots off down there because they'll double, so you still wants James to make the right play but there are opportunites he can take advantage of. The thing I think that would concern me if I was Miami going into the game is, are they going to make such a concerted effort to get James going that it takes away from what Wade's doing. Everyone has to remember, there is only one ball. All three wont have the same number of opportunites on any given night. Someone is going to have to sacrifice every night, but it shouldnt be James. What do you think of the coaches so far? Coaching in this series has been fantastic. Both teams have great habits. I think thats how you can tell coaching. Its not some miracle adjustment in a game, although you do need to make the proper adjustments game to game and in game but I think the habits both teams have are spectacular. They play hard, they play smart, they share the ball, championship elite coaches in Spoelstra and Carlisle. How come the Heat cant finish? Its not cant, its hasnt. Up fifteen game two, no one was saying they cant finish because they had just come off finishing their own miracle comeback against Chicago, they're up fifteen game two, ready to go up 2-0, and then they get hit with maybe a little bit of lackidasical play, or maybe you give the credit to Dallas for playing exceptionally well, either way, they had their opportunities and didnt finish it out. Now they're sitting here 2-2, I still think they obviously have the best chance winning, but they're putting themselves in an uncomfortable position. Absolutely. The winner of this game wins the series? No. I think Dallas has to win tonight to win the series. Just like last year, dont think Miami needs to win tonight to win the series. They could go home and win 2 games without question. The bigs, I heard your comment, at points you didnt understand what they were doing. Playing great D but not putting bodies on people at times. To start the game, I thought it was really bad. Seemed like they gave up 8-9 second shots in the first seven minutes. The start of your D is so criticial, getting back, getting your D set, and then finishing your D has to be done to be considered a good defensive possession. They're halfcourt and transition D were superior to game three but their rebounding, they took a step back. This is not a natural thing for Dallas. They arent a natural rebounding team. They've gotten hammered rebounding wise at times in the playoffs and still won the game. When you get away with doing the wrong thing and still winning, sometimes you develop a bad habit. Many times, they're ballwatching when the shot is going up instead of finding a body and putting the full body on a blockout and then go finding the ball. You talked about that on the broadcast. I wanna ask your thoughts on this: I believe one of the guys that I'd like to see in the series for Spoelstra/Heat is Eddie House. If it doesnt work for 4-6 minutes, pull him out. I wanna see if his ability to bust the zone, hit from three, if thats something that can get the Miami Heat a little bit of momentum. We saw Carlisle willing to shuffle the deck, Id like to see Spoelstra let that veteran see if he can a little bit hot from the perimeter. If Spoelstra does put him in the game, I know three things: 1. He'll be ready to play, 2. He'll play exceptionally hard, 3. He wont be bashful. If he's open, he'll let it fly. I think they like they're rotation right now. The eight guys they got to in the Chicago series with Haslem and Miller playing a little better, I dont think they'll deviate from that. I think Rick because of the tough matchups when they were playing Terry and Barea together, that is one of the reasons he put Barea in the starting lineup is so then Stevenson could then play behind Marion, and they'd always have someone of a D presence on Wade or James. We know you gotta go. I find it funny that now Mark is a coach, and you always have a coach perspective, he seems to be agreeing with you now and is a ref suckup. Oh yeah. Lets face it now, its all different once you start coaching. I told him on air the other day when Dirk hit his first three shots, I told him to get his schemes ready baby because thats a hard thing to handle. I think he'll do a great job and am proud of him that he's getting a good opporunity. We never asked you about the McHale hire. I thought it was good. They had really good choices. I know Lawrence Frank very well. Think he is beyond outstanding coach, and same with Casey. You see what he is able to do with Dallas. I thought he did a good job...funny he did it for Kevin in Minnesota. They pulled the trigger on him far too early. I like Kevin. I think he's smart, he's engaging, I think he did a good job in his two interm stints and think its an interesting hire that has a chance to really go well for the Rockets. I hope so. I think Daryl has done a really good job there. Its hard to get enough talent when you lose so many guys to injuries like the Rockets have, inparticular to Yao and Tracy. I dont think people understand how hard it is to stay relevant and the Rockets have been relevant fighting through these really crippling injuries. How points are you gonna score? I'm all about winning. Guess what, I'm gonna hitch my wagon to the Chris Mullen train and if he pulls me through, I'm gonna go with it. If not, thats fine too. Thats the Dallas mentality: this is our pecking order, its Chris Mullen in there and I guess Mark's team is the Miami Heat where they're not sure who's going to get the basket at different times. Jeff Van Gundy is Jason Terry apparently. I'll say this too, Mullen is unbelievable shape. I see a Brent Barry sighting right now, Jon Barry sleeping in, not getting up to play. Doesnt surprise me. He wouldnt get up for us when he was in South Beach. He was like "You're kidding right?" It's 11 o'clock, you can get up Barry! No thats a joke. Really, thats a joke. Well, he was crushing you too when he came on. He took his shots. You know how Jon Barry is. Brent Barry isnt playing is he? Yeah, hes playing. By the way, SMU practice court is incredible. Is it really? What a campus. Have you guys been up here ever? They got some money there at SMU. ... Who's gonna check Barry though? Ehhh well, we'll see. Not me, I'll tell you that. I gotta get my game face on guys. See you coach. Alright, take care. http://www.1560thegame.com/media/?p=4237
Apparently, things didn't turn out so well for JVG in his pick-up game. http://twitter.com/#!/FisolaNYDN/status/78913877647175680
http://www.1560thegame.com/media/podpress_trac/web/4573/0/JVG 7-11b.mp3 Van Gundy on Yao, Dikembe, Rockets and the lockout (and other stuff). Worth a listen.
JVG on 610: Spoiler On with Josh and Rich, you on Twitter? No, not at all. My life is so boring that if I said I am watching The Closer, that won't do a lot for people. You watch that? I love it. Good show? Great show. What else do you watch? USA has the best shows. Covert Affairs and White Collar. I'm an old school guy. Any guilty pleasures? Ill go back and watch the Sopranos. Im getting old. I'll go back and watch that every once in awhile. Did you watch the White Shadow or Fish That Saved PIttsburgh? I watched White Shadow. Jay Bilas told me he was on an episode of White Shadow. Coach, you coached Yao. Announced he was going to retire. Tell us why you think he is a HOFer. In his age group, best at his position in 4 year period. Dominant at times. Health impacted his length of career but also spent a lot of time coming back from injury. Factor his career and the opening up of China and carrying his country, coming here as first pick. That seemed like an easy pick/decision but when the pick was made, speculation that it was a bad pick, should have traded the pick, or drafted Jay Williams. He handled all that well. Opening up the country to basketball. So many exposed to basketball now due to his greatness as player and person. No brainer he should be HOFer. Don't think I've seen someone get iconic status and remain so humble. Only hard thing about coaching him was getting him to be harder to coach. He was so agreeable and did whatever asked. Always tried to get him to develop that stubborness every great player has. Ideal player to coach. He enjoyed others success as much as his own. Hard to find that in the general population let alone in sports. People, because he didnt flash it often, but the humor, wit, it made it fun to be around him. He was the same player every day, win or loss, good day or bad day. Dedicated athlete and team oriented person/player. Identified at a young age as a prospect. Has logged a lot of court time-- in the NBA and for his hometown team. Workload a factor in him breaking down? Hard to determine. Hard to point to that workload. Maybe it was his work ethic. Maybe just that he had a bad body for basketball and the pounding his body took. I'm not sure what casued the repeated injuries, so I wont assign blame. Yao took great pride [in playing for his National team]. I wont begrudge his national team experience. Possible to quantify, people said he meant so much, what he meant to the game globally? Sure, dollar and sense wise if NBA opened up their books. Im certain his coming over, and not just coming over, because there were Chinese players before, but coming over and playing well and being the person he was, he made people a lot of money. You see how many guys are so popular in China. Without Yao, opportunities dont exist. More than just his dominating low post game or D, you can point to him and say this is how its supposed to be done as a star player. This is the role model to strive for. He did it so very well. Durant in China. Heard word Williams is going to play in Turkey. Durant said he could play abroad next year. Is that where we're heading? Heck no. A lot of this on both sides is rhetoric. If you tell me Durant is playing next year in China, I dont believe it. These are obviously, everyone has to go to their tactics to come out favorible for their side. Outside of money, what would they gather playing against inferior competition? Not sure why they would consider it. Over last 6 years, reported league has lost one and half billion dollars. Game has been better over the last decade, how is league losing this much money? Thats whats under dispute. Players dont buy the numbers. NBA says they opened the books and its true. I would say that from owners POV, I understand this, if you are well managed, a big IF, are well managed, every team should be able to make a profit and win a championship. Right now, players are saying its not on us to manage the team and accept hard cap. I can see both sides but I'll be honest, other than watching the NBA, I'm not interested in the economics. I want it to be fair so everyone has a chance. How long will this lockout go on? They're saying January at the earliest. Thats too bad. I coached in last lockout. Basketball was bad the first couple months of that shortened season. People working out in normal right now, that wore off as lockout dragged on. People were overweight. Injuries seemingly hitting every team. No practice time. Basketball and the product wasnt that good. There will be ramifications for extended lockout. You done with coaching? Sure hope not. Always other factors to getting back in. Certainly would love to coach again in the NBA. You cant replace competition and camaraderie you get. Broadcasting great secondary career but it doesnt produce the highs or lows the coaching does. I'd like to someday. Appreciate it. Take care guys.
