Rumor:JVG has one more year to right the ship with the Rockets

i always want the Rocks to succeed.

just don't think they have the right coach. anyways, go ROCKETS!

 

My bet is 10 games. If the Rockets suck in the first 10, JVG is toast.

Undeserving or not, that is the situation as I see it.

 

I think November will be the test, and November hasn't been friendly to us in our short Ming/McGrady era.

I won't always agree with some of his subsitution patterns, player preferences and defensive schemes, but he is what we have so i hope he does well.

In the event he does get the boot, Rick Adelman (if he's still available--plenty of off-season left to go) would be a great upgrade.

 

Good idea, then we can grab Greg Oden/Noah in 2007 draft!

Houston is world Championship in 2007-8!

 

I am not a huge fan of the Van Gundy approach either, but it's not like the guy has taken a championship contender and driven it in the ground. I think people are so enamored with Pheonix and Dallas that they actually believe a coach can overcome serious talent deficiencies.

We had a young Yao and selfish backcourt two years ago, but still made the playoffs.

We still had a fairly young and inexperienced Yao, plus tried combining him with a new star in McGrady which caused a slow start, then had massive turnover throughout the year to put together an older, slower, and shorter, but more exprienced ball club that wound up as the leagues best team over the last two months of the season, won 52 regular season games (the same as this year's league champion), and lost in seven to a younger, deeper Dallas team who had home court advantage and did that despite playing with an injured Sura, no Howard, and Bowen defending Nowitzki.

Last year, we had the most player-game injuries of any team in the league, our two stars were on the floor together a third of the season, and our new additions turned out to be duds. I guess you can blame Van Gundy for Swift bombing last year, but I sure didn't see Hubie Brown or Mike Fratello getting much out of him either.

I grant that it's human nature to blame the coach, but you also have to give the man a chance to succeed using his system. He did just fine his first year, the second year we were poised for some big things, and then the third year everything went wrong, but you can hardly say it was Van Gundy's fault. Van Gundy will not be gone during the season--he will get a full year to see what can be accomplished with this team and whether or not McGrady's back will hold up. If we are not succesful this year (50+) wins and McGrady remains healthy, then you will get your wish and have coaching turnover. If not, then we'll see what happens, but I believe 2006-2007 is the target year right now for a really big run because there are just too many holes to fix this season with no cap space and few tradeable players.

 

JVG should be held accountable for last year. The team we had last year was handpicked by Van Gundy. And excluding Yao and Tmac, when all of his old veterans started breaking down it proved to be a poor choice in picks. Even with only healthy Yao or Tmac we still should have won more. Look at the Hornets they outplayed us every step of the way and their best player was a Rookie. We were terrible last year and yes injuries were a part of that but I would also say coaching was too.

I am not totally bashing the man. I think he is a good x's and O's coach not great but good but where he fails is in his ability to get the most out of his players. He doesn't seem to have the ability to develop players or motivate them, in fact many of his players seem to digress under his tutelage. The exception being self motivated professionals like Yao. Now one may say these athletes or paid large amounts to be professional, but the fact is many of them are not and need to be motivated and proded and sometimes praised to do their best. Whether you like it or not that is the way of the NBA. Of course you can try to acquire a bunch of vetran pros and that's what he did getting rid of all of the old rockets and replacing with really old Rockets and that actually worked for 1 year but then everyone broke down. So now for the 2nd time in his short Rocket career they have to clean house. And he is going after vetrans over youth. As shown in the acquisiton of Battier. I think Battier will help this team so I am not totally against that move but I believe a big part of that decision was Van Gundys impatience with Rookie mistakes.

So this is bed and he has made it so he has 1 year to make it work. That's more than enough time for a team with 2 superstars and a very solid role player in Battier... And if we do acquire James than he should be on notice anything less than the 2nd round is a failure. And that's my thoughts on the matter.

 

didnt need this thread to figure that out

 

Old Man Rock,
But here's the question: What would have been a succesful season last year with Yao and McGrady on the court together only 1/3 of the season? Would 40 wins have been a decent job? Or should we go by winning percentage in games where Yao and T-Mac were healthy? Or maybe grade on a sliding scale with a fully healthy Yao and T-Mac requring, say, a winning % of 65, a healthy T-Mac winning 55%, a healthy Yao winning 45%, and a neither winning 20%?

The point is last year has to be a mulligan because no one can predict some of those injuries. Injuries to Sura, Alston, Swift, Barry, and Anderson excepted, injuries to two legitimate All-Stars for significant portions of the season (let alone All-Stars who are still in their 20s) cannot be the fault of the coaching staff.

I'd have to go back and check, but I believe we were 20-9 with both McGrady and Yao starting games, regardless of whether or not they finished them. Thats roughly a 56-57 win season and says nothing else of any other injuries. Would a 56-57 win season have been insufficient? So far as I can tell, we would have been a #5 seed again and, while that is not great, it would have not been deemed a bad job by Van Gundy.

 

Woah this is major news!!

 

I'll say this for the umpteenth time: You should separate JVG the coach from JVG the GM. As a GM, he has no defenders on this forum. As a coach, he did very well his first 2 years here. Last season's crash and burn was unavoidable because of injuries to Yao & Tracy (and others). I don't blame JVG the coach for that. I blame JVG the GM for the incredibly dumb mistake of signing Stro, for signing DA, trading Mike James, etc, etc. As it turns out, a good offseason last summer wouldn't have turned us into contenders because our star players missed so many games.

 

That’s a hard one to answer or quantify because judging a coaches performance is a very subjective matter much of which is based on conjecture and hunches. Should he had 5 more wins 10 more wins who's to say. Should players like Head and Swift improved more. Should he not have understood how ineffective JHO was and how effective Hayes was. We could argue these forever and never agree. But there is one way statistically that 82games.com has formulated that might shed more light on JVG's coaching ability and that is the direct results following your teams timeouts. Read the following excerpt from 82 games to understand better...

An obvious statistical area to look at where a coach might be believed to have strong influence is in the possessions following a timeout. With time to draw up a play (or draw up the defense) and substitute in and out the desired players for maximum effect, the ‘first possession’ following the timeout can be viewed as a mini-test of the coach’s in game strategies.

JVG ranked 28 overall among all coaches which means he was outcoached by 27 coaches after every timeout. Now granted because of injuries we at times had a very poor offensive team which would account for some of his poor offensive timeout results... But we were one of the top defensive teams last year and yet JVG ranked only 16th in defensive stops after a timeout. This is were you would think he would excel, having time to setup the defense coming back from a timeout -- being able to predict his opponent’s moves and ready the countering defensive strategy to stop them and yet 15 teams faired better.

Does that mean he is lousy defensive coach. No he has always had strong defensive teams but what it might mean is he is good at preparing his team but his in the game strategy is not as good meaning he doesn’t think on his feet so quickly. I have no doubt he has a good basketball mind but that does not always translate into wins and just maybe that's because his players or not motivated by him to hustle after a timeout as much as the opposing teams coach. Of course I will be the first to admit that even this is my interpretation and you may interpret it differently but IMO it does point a finger at JVG and perhaps some more investigation into whether or not he should be the coach of this team.

 

MandM's, you makes me wants ta' snicker.

 

You know, I was ready to hang JVG out to dry last week after the gay debacle, but your shopworn and one-dimensional criticisms of him are pushing me back into his corner.

 

Actually, I wouldn't say JVG is even a good X and O coach. You can claim his defensive schemes are great, and I'll give him that, BUT he absolutely needs "his" type of players to make them work. That is where is limitations falls. AND even if you give him a pass for last season's injury bad luck, don't forget the offensive was not very creative. Everyone knows Yao's game has changed since he first started. Yes he's gotten better, but gone are also all the flashy passes and occasional 18 footer. I think a lot of the success was that Tmac was allowed to do what he wanted and became the playmaker. I agree with JVG the GM driving all of us crazy with the player selections. Not to make this a total JVG, I will give him his discipline and preparation. Look at the bags under his eyes. You know he spends nights watching films to prep the team.

 

Please Sam don't let my shopworn talk influence you. I am just one of many opinions on this board and you know what they say about them. Go with your gut feeling as will I. In the end whoever the Rockets coach is I will root for him to win.

Unless of course we are in the lottery again.

 

the first 3 game losing streak call up Adelman