To my opnion, JVG may not be a great coach, but he is at least a good one. But why every Rocket player other than Yao and TM seems to lose himself under JVG's system? And why JVG can achieve sucess in New York, but not here? We may be able to find the answer by comparing the two teams (i.e., current ROX and the Knicks in 90s). Actually, the answer is obvious: we lack the players that can play harsh and ignite by themselve. With the players like Ewing, Starks, what JVG needs to do is just to displine and organize players and fuse all the excitement toward the right direction, victory. With the current players in ROX, however, JVG can't guide the because there is no fire. Our players are talented, but they are just too clean and silent on the court. And they are already displained enough. What they need is a coach that can help to establish confidence and teach them to read the game and play in their own way, which, unfortunately, is beyond JVG's caliber. So, I think there are two solutions for our current situation and neither one of them is easy : 1. Fire JVG and bring in some coach that can allow players play their own game. This is the way that Spurs go. 2. Get some players that can show some fire. This is the old Knicks way.
Fire huh? Fire is the least of this teams problems. IF JVG doesnt understand he doesnt have allan houston, (psycho-spreewell) and other players who arent knicks, then he has a serious brain problem. As a matter of fact, he quit even with those guys, so what does it matter. If a coach wont use a player to his strengths, what good is he doing for his players?
Why is JVG able to win about 80% of the games this season when Yao and Tracy play? Do Yao and Tracy combine to create fire, like sodium and water? Maybe the problem is that the team is built around TMac and Yao and that when one or both is missing, it throughs everything off. Maybe the team has so many players out that the remaining players just are not enough to compete at the NBA level. There are only 2 players on this team that have a shot at playing 70 games this season: Juwan Howard (a mediocre at best power forward) and Luther Head (a late first round rookie who hit the wall about a third of the way into the season). John Wooden, Phil Jackson, and Red Auerbach couldn't combine to coach this team to success.
Pop is a grade-A ***hole. He fired Hill, essentially brought on the tank, and claimed credit for the teams success. Any team would have a major improvement after adding David Robinson AND Tim Duncan to the lineup. He also dicked over a lot of the employees salaries in this change.
What strength he failed to use? Howard's rebounding or Alston's shooting? We definitely need tons of strength from all players. What strength did he miss? Where is the shooting strength he could use? Where is the strength of attacking the rim, and the strength of playing some lockdown periemeter defense he could use but didn't? Whose strength he failed to use? Stro's dunking ability? Unless you can sub him in for the dunk and sub him right out before the next defensive rotation. Does it occur to you, that our players don't have those strength to be used?
If there were a perfect day when all the rockets players did exactly what JVG asked of them, played his style of ball to perfection, what would we have? We would possably make it to the second or third round of the playoffs in a year when all his players stayed healthy. We would have the most boring team in the NBA, they would score about an average of 70 points. There would be balanced scoring except for one or two superstars and everyone else would be perfect little role players. As to staying healthy, Im not sure that could hppen under JVG in that the way he demands they play defense might preclude avoiding injurys. There has to be a reason why the Rockets shoot so poorly. Is it possible that good offensive players lose their shooting touch because they are not allowed to play their game? I propose that no JVG team will ever suceed, I propose that player after player will be destroyed by his system. I propose that players like Head, Swift Anderson (departed) and others will fall victom to this system. We need a new coach. We can take a page from the Texans book, if the team is sick, fix it.
Before I answer this, who is it again that picked the role players we have? And who is it that refuses to sit Ryan Bowen?
Was the first game of the season boring? Were they boring in those nice wins when both Yao and TMac on the court? Were they boring last 1/3 of previous season? Did our players do exactly what JVG asked them to? Not perfectly, but close. They protected the ball well, seeked better opportunity, trusted in Yao and TMac, stayed disciplined on defense. When everything was in a flow, their shots started to fall. When they won, the players played well; when they lost, the coach sucks? It's just like saying, when one's doing well, he's smart and working hard; when one's doing poorly, the society sucks, failed to utilize his strength.
JVG took a knicks team that didn't have nearly the talent that this team has from the 8th seed to the NBA finals. Is that not success?
In a fifty game season, in the eastern conference. I'm not a JVG basher, I see both sides of this debate. JVG is a good coach no doubt, but he has not done anything spectacular. He didn't improve Rudy's Rockets that much, but because 45 games got them into the playoffs his first year here as opposed to it not being enough the previous few seasons, everyone acts like he came in here and worked a miracle. For as well as the Rockets played last season at the end they were still bounced by a team that got bounced the next round who got bounced by a team that was bounced the next round. He has been okay here, not great, and he's had an okay career.
You are wack! Step away from the keyboard my friend. JVG should be coach of the year. Have seen the players the Rox are using every night. I'll bet they'd have hard time getting to the sweet 16 with this line up of scrubs, but JVG has them in evety game, playing hard, playing defense. It seems like half the rotation wasn't even on the team...they were in the developmental league, and now he's got to use them everynight. If I'm the Rox...I sign JVG to a 10 year deal to keep guys like you off his ass!
real_egal I think I praised one of your posts as recently as yesterday - and if I disagree with a few, that's cool. This one I think may be slightly out of line partly because you could refute everything you just said if you thought someone was going off the deep end in the other direction. cwaynemiller has posted only 10 times in almost 3 years and more eloquently laid out general JVG criticism here than I've seen in a single post since MacBeth left this forum's plane. I don't agree with him about JVG not ever being able to succeed. I don't agree with you about last year's run being anything more than a temporary high (it was fun), but almost everything needs to change now with Yao emerging as he has and our roster (and T-Mac's health) dubious at best. I think JVG can change along with what's in our best interests, but there's a real conflict here about where this franchise is and the only thing I don't understand about that conflict is JVG's hyper-defense by some here. If Les feels that way I think we're in trouble. The truth is somewhere between criticism and praise and JVG's willingness to notice that everything's different now. I hope he's up for it.
Are you crazy? JVG for the coach of the year!??? What a joke as you are! Now shutup your f**king mouth!
A BBS is about agreeing and disagreeing. I certainly learned a lot about basketball here on this very board. Insulting people with different views is not my style, real life or cyber world. With my limited lanugage skills, and sometimes under emotional influences, I might sound in different tones unintentionally. If that particular post you mentioned insulted or offended cwaynemiller, I apologize. But I didn't feel I did that, certainly not intentionally. I was simplying asking questions and giving examples to the root conclusion in the post I replied to. I do not agree with the notion that if players do exactly what JVG asked them to, they will play a semi-successful and very boring game. The examples I gave were the games they played following JVG's instruction, and executed it well, and end results are entertaining wins. With Yao's newly found confidence, obviously there should be changes in game plan, when TMac comes back. But there is no fact to pre-prove that JVG wouldn't change a bit, because he simply didn't have a chance to play a healthy TMac and dominating Yao together.
Is it the system or is it the players? Either way, I'm coming to the belief that a major root of the problems is JVG. Here's why: (1) Injuries aren't the problem. If you look at player efficiency rating (PER) indicators the Rockets have a problem. A healthy TMac and Yao together are just masking the lack of production from our other players. Compare the 05-06 & 04-05 Rockets PER chart: The 04-05 Rockets had 2 other players with above a 15.0 PER (NBA average) last year. They were Mutombo & Mike James. So the PER pattern is pretty much the same injury or not. (2) Defense isn't the issue. Lack of offense & lack of higher contribution from our role players is. The top 5 defensive teams in the NBA - Spurs, Griz, Pistons, Pacers, Rockets in that order. I graphed their PER charts in another thread (except the Pacers). Just for grins here are two of them: Notice a difference between the graphs? They are getting more contribution from their role players than the Rockets. We talk about defense winning games. Really what wins games is having a system that maximizes the differential between the points you score vs. the points the opposition scores. Who are the top 5 in the NBA? Pistons 97.6(own) 90.4(opp) +7.2(dif) Spurs 95.4(own) 88.2(opp) +7.2(dif) Suns 108.3(own) 101.6(opp) +6.7(dif) Dallas 99.3 (own) 92.8(opp) +6.5(dif) Heat 101.2(own) 96.5(opp) +4.7(dif) Where are the Rockets? #19 of 30 at 90.4(own) 91.7(opp) -1.2(dif). We have a good defense. Just no offense to go with it. So we have a conundrum here. Is it our (JVG's) system? Or is it the players? Either way the path leads back to JVG because he created the system and no doubt has been very involved in picking players to fit his system. I'm willing to give him the benefit of the doubt that his system can work if he can find the 2 more players that can contribute more than the current set of role players have. But time is ticking. If this is the path we are going down with JVG then he and CD better come up with some FA's, trades, or draft picks that can contribute more than the players they have gotten in the past have.
I agree with all of that. And by "almost out of line" (which I shouldn't have said) I didn't mean I thought you were insulting at all. I just sympathize with quite a lot of people who seem to lurk here, absorb opinions and finally feel compelled to express their opinions. And when those guys finally do, a lot of it is typically venting. Peace. And JVG just routinely pisses me off.
The rest of your post doesn't support this. Injuries are still a problem, and are in fact the root of the player efficiency problems that you went on to detail. Bob Sura was supposed to be a starter. His injury takes him out of the rotation and brings in Moochie, Brunson, and Head. TMac was our starter at SF, his injury paves the way for RyBo to get playing time. Yao going down forces us to play Stro and Juwan more minutes than they can handle and sometimes out of position. Derek Anderson was supposed to be a rotation player, and he is gone. Same with Jon Barry. You simply cannot use any measure for this season against JVG, because the team he is here to coach has not been playing. When even just the top 2 players are here, and we are still down quite a few rotation players, he has shown an ability to get it done. Injuries are what has kept the team down. Injuries are the villain here, all of the other complaints are nitpicks about what the villain is wearing.
