You guys have to look at the bright side of this. JVG brought a defensive spirit to this team that was very much needed. He has some of the personel in place to continue that trend. Remember Flip Saunders was not a defensive coach when he went to the Pistons but they continued to play defense. When you learn to play defense it won't go away. An offensive minded coach will be much better for Yao's game. Yao has been playing basketball in a system his whole life, to come to Houston and play in no offensive system, trust me is no easy. If the Rockets choose Adelman I think they will be able to combine what they have learned on defense with a great offense. I don't know about you guys but I have been watching the Rockets since Kevin Kunnert, Mike Newlin, Murphy and Rudy. They have always had a center with his back to the basket and played off of that. I dream of the day when they can have a Center face up and drop off some back door passes to some back door cutters. It may be boring to doing it all the time but if you want to win in the N.B.A., without the dominating physical Center then you have to have players and coaches who understand offensive sets and adjustments.
Tell that to the JVG drones that love the guy! We need to take a poll and see what % of posters are JVG lovers who think he will be missed. I think the team will do better with Adelman and be fun for a change.
I think the people blaming it on the coach are delusional if they think we are going to make some huge stride forward just by hiring Adelman. I mean I guess Adelman was a "good coach" for Portland, then a "bad coach" in GS, then a "good coach" again in Sacramento? That is until they lost too many times with out ever going to the finals and the owners decided he was a "bad coach" again? Or maybe his success and failures had more to do with the rosters he had and the opponents he lost to. I'm not saying JVG has no blame, but the roster is alot more of a problem than which coach that has never won a title is coaching the team.
I agree, there will be still a lot left from JVG, the guys learned a lot and hopefully can use it next year
I was going to start my own thread called Feeling Positive About the Rockets but for the sake of not overly cluttering the GARM I will tack on to this one since it is about the same thing. I will admit to not being a big fan of JVG but I will also say that he was a good coach and helped the Rox greatly by teaching Yao to play low post and instilling a tough D. Unless the team is completely changed I think you won't see the Rockets completely abandoning that. A lot of posters are looking at this as an either/or situation where the Rox are either playing grind it out JVG ball of tough D and limited O or they are running up and down the court scoring while forgetting how to play D. What if we see the Rox taking the best out of both JVG and Adelman and playing tough D along with playing a more diverse offense? I believe the Rockets even with the current roster still has the potential to be a even better team than we've seen. For example I noticed in the NBA dish thread someone started a sarcastic thread about up tempo offensive teams noting how teams not known for up tempo offense are in the conference finals. While its true the Spurs don't run like the Suns and play tough D but at the same time the Spurs don't play like the JVG Rockets relying upon a center and jump shooters. The Spurs have a diverse offense that runs and also uses cutters. Tim Duncan while capable of playing in the low post also moves outside making him more than one dimensional. One of the best examples was in the third quarter of yeterday's game when Tim Duncan set up at the top of the key and threw a bounce pass into a cutting Spurs player for an easy lay up. A play like that keeps the opponents' D off balance rather than having Duncan come down and try to establish low post position everytime. I think the Rox can play like that and I think the best of the Yao Ming and Tracy McGrady Rox are still to come.
The bright side for me is now maybe we can see some of the rocket offseason free agents actually be used and that also goes for some of the younger talent as well. I was impressed with Popavich and the Spurs in yesterdays game against Utah, the zone that the Spurs ran really bothered the Jazz cutters and screwed up their pick and roll. When you have a 7'6 man getting torched by a smaller and faster PF in Carlos Boozer, what's wrong in running some zone defense.
Everyone keeps touting the idea of fast paced offenses and who Adleman will bring that to the Rockets. But I think this years playoffs shows why that's not such a great idea. The teams that are fast paced, high scoring offenses got eliminated by teams that are defensive minded and disciplined. San Antonio is far from fast paced but they were able to dictate the pace a lot in Pheonix. Utah CAN be fast paced, but they prefer the slow it down gritty style and it worked very effectively against Golden State. The only other real fast paced team in the playoffs was Toronto and they got beat by New Jersey (now honestly, I don't know what New Jersey's style is...but everything in the east is kind of a crap shoot). But just looking at the remaining teams in the playoffs. Of the 4 teams left, I'd say 3 of them are a slow down, half-court, discplined offense - namely Utah, San Antonio, and Detroit. So perhaps fast paced Rockets basketball will be more exciting (I'm still not sure how Yao fits into that...or even McGrady really), but I'm unconvinced that it'll lead to a lot more success. I hope I'm proven wrong, but I'm not holding my breath.
I don't think Adelman will go the same way as with the Kings, he has to adjust to Yaoza, so I think it might be more of a passing game...Yao could become a passing mashine with a bunch of slasher around him There is no way we will become a full fast paced team
You're mistaking what they do with what JVG was mostly doing with the Rox offense. Most of the Rox offense consist of tossing the ball into Yao who either gets good position to shoot or kick it back out to a jump shooter or wait on T-Mac to create by drawing a defender and passing it to the open person. The Spurs though move the ball around a lot have cuts and will play their big guy, Duncan, outside. They also deliberately look to Parker and Ginobli to push the ball. The Jazz rely on a lot of movement to get penetration and open looks. Those teams are more creative and diverse offensively than the JVG Rox.
I find it amusing that JVG is getting blamed for the Rockets offense because you just described exactly what they wanted when they made the Tmac trade. If you'll recall, at that point in time, everyone was fed up with Rudy T's "ISO" offense and wanted a change. Well, this is the offense they changed to. It was by design that Yao and Tmac are the primary offensive options surrounded by jumpshooters. It was never supposed to be a "diverse" offense because CD & Les never bothered to bring in players with the ability to create offensively - all of their player acquisitions were to designed to fit into this framework. From the start, all the talk here and in Houston about this team was the search for the right set of role players who could fit the offense philosophy of this organization. JVG now finds himself in the curious position of doing exactly what the organization wanted and still getting the axe when things did not work out. I hope that Adelman is paying attention.
^ For one JVG had a say in the players, such as all those ex knicks. For two Les and CD did bring in some players who they thought could open up the floor which JVG didn't play.
Rick Adleman will bring some offensive flow and diversity to the Rockets, thank God. First I had to watch Rudy's iso sets for years, then I had to watch JVG's disjointed one on one offense. I bet some other fans forget what's real team offense and how beautiful it is when things start to get flowing. If one thing Rick does bring it's the flow! yes, the flow!
I liked JVG. He was a good def coach but I am okay with his departure. I am more excited about getting rid of CD. And if JVG was really behind the player/personnel decisions then I'm glad he's gone too.
I had several problems with JVG's offense that have already been mentioned, but the result was not just ugly, stagnant baskeball: 1) Our offense did not make other defenses work hard at all (excepting the guys that were pounding on Yao). When the opposing defense is just standing around, they're conserving their energy. Then we defensively run all over the place on the other end and it caught up to us so many times late in games last year that it was pathetic. 2) JVG's schemes are not suited for a 7'6 talented guy with stamina problems. I firmly believe that will be very obvious very soon.
To me one bright spot of the Adleman hiring is that the Rockets can now begin exploring the Euro FA market for talented players who JVG never would play because they were horrible individual defenders. The Euro FA market is really a new market full of proven clutch offensive players that can't defend, in other words, they would have been buried at the end of JVGs bench.
Anyone chiming in here to bash the little bald man again is just kicking a man when he's down. What's the point? Spiteful meanness, taking advantage of someone. Belittling others for your own sake only makes you be little. I like the idea of the original post, and would like to think that the team will take what they've learned and grow. I would like to think that's the idea. To learn and grow. Let's hope we are able to do that as a team, regardless how we all feel about the rightness or wrongness of pinning it all on JVG.
