First off, I hate to start another JVG thread. This post should be in the "Evaluating JVG" thread a while ago. But I know resurrecting dead threads is a mortal sin here. Second off, it is not fair to blame everything on JVG for this disappointing season. Yet, I do believe that JVG is responsible for some of the bad results we are observing now, injuries or not. The "doctrines" I am putting up here are not speculations. They are preached by JVG and quoted in the media. I am just too lazy to search them out. The "results" are also facts we can observe. The only speculation on my part is the connection between the doctrines and the results. Also, while I don't know exactly how the organization operates in acquiring players. I am assuming that JVG has a huge part in what players we get and what players we get rid of. Doctrine 1 All NBA teams are more or less on the same level of talent. What separate good teams from bad teams are dedication and sticking to playing the game the right way. In other words, JVG does not believe talent is the most important issue when it comes to winning. Result 1 JVG values players with "dedication" (Bowen) than players with talent (Padgett). And most of the major acquisition we've had are savvy but over-the-hill veterans (Sura, Mutombo, Wesley, Barry, Anderson, etc.). It is a fact that we lack scoring talents. When both TMac and Yao are healthy and play well, we are okay. When one of them is not, we are doomed. Compare the roster we have with the roster right before JVG came, has the team been upgraded talentwise? I'd say we have a better starting lineup because of TMac but a worse bench. I might have missed something. But the most talented FA signing in the past 3 years is Stromile Swift. That's pretty sad. Doctrine 2 NBA players are professionals. Effort, intensity, and motivation should be a given. If a player is not motivated, it's the player's problem, not the coach's. Result 2 We have a revolving door policy when it comes to team roster. Since he believes that motivation is within the players, those who are not motivated cannot be used and should be shipped out. The constant search for the "right" kind of players results in very flaky chemistry. There are always new key players having to adjust to the system. Thus the system is never consistantly run smoothly. Doctrine 3 There is no such thing as playing too much for a professional athlete. Fatigue is not an excuse for poor performance. Sounds good. Result 3 JVG demands effort night in night out, whether it's a back to back red-eye game or not, throughout the 82-game season, plus the playoffs if we make it. That's good. That's what a coach is supposed to demand from his players. However, he is not putting into consideration when he makes PT decisions with his starters. Wesley is old. McGrady is frail. Yao is too big. Yet they are demanded to play big minutes during the regular season. Demanding is good. Overdemanding may back fire. I am not blaming JVG for the injuries like some people here. But I do think his "no excuse" doctrine is going to extreme sometimes. It works for some players. But not for others. Overall comment I was neutral about JVG's hiring. I gave him some time the first year. I thought he brought discipline and a system to the team and it was a good thing. I had felt that he was too rigid and didn't fully use the players' strengths. But in general, I thought he did a decent job and were in the right direction. Moreover, I thought he made some good roster decisions last year bringing in Sura, Wesley, Barry, and James. What bothers me about his coaching is his stubburn insistant on one way of playing the game. He is a good coach only for "his kind of players." And he seems to be able to motivate only the self-motivated players. While I agree that it is mainly on the player when it comes to motivation. But part of the coach's job is to inspire players to play to their potential. JVG doesn't seem to have grasped this skill. The only thing he seems to be able to do is to harp on effort and intensity. By that, he overlooks other more glaring problems of the team that need to be fixed. As the saying goes: If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail.
Larry Brown, Phil Jackson, Pat Riley and Popvich are all the same type of coaches. Those are the coaches that have won the championships. They just have better luck with a better GM and better personnel than this Rox team. Now in terms of GM skills, except Popvich, none of them is any good. Luckily, Larry Brown had the detroit GM, Phil has Krause who traded for Pippen, Riley has Jerry West, Popvich is great at talent evaluation.
You know, now that JVG has molded Yao Ming into a monster, is his job here done? Next year would not be a horrible time for a change in direction. I really think that Jeff's "system" is outdated, given hand-checks and zone defenses. His defense wears our players down, and a decent zone destroys his offense because our players are too tired to hit their jumpers. Yeah, defense may win championships, assuming your players have anything left after the regular season. Popovich knows this, JVG ignores it.
Some of the things JVG says, you can't quite take literally. A lot of it is about the mentality his players should have. Obviously, talent is important -- any head coach will recognize this. But he doesn't want his more talented players to assume that they can just coast and don't have to work as hard. When he says professional athletes shouldn't use fatigue as an excuse, he doesn't literally mean that fatigue isn't a factor. He just doesn't want his players to use back-to-back games as an excuse to not play as hard. That he continues to play Howard and Swift ahead of Chuck Hayes demonstrates that he doesn't necessarily value "effort" over perceived "talent".
Alternatively, you could have Larry Brown blaming every loss on the players...only to hedge by saying he isn't blaming the players. I see what you're getting at, though. To me, I think JVG does this so at the end fo the day he can say we didn't lose because T-Mac was out, or Yao was out, but because I didn't coach well enough. Unfortunately, the reason fans are frustrated with it is because it is increasingly coming off as because the players aren't doing what I'm saying as oppossed to I'm not saying the right things... This point never comes up if they are healthy the full season. Then Ryan Bowen actually does provide that 5 mpg of hustle off the bench on average and Scott Padgett, who sucks in NJ more so than he did here (including a pretty horrible shooting percentage himself), becomes a non-issue. Um...isn't this true? We are talking about the NBA, right...not some little league kids are forced to play in by their parents. Regardless, you have to wonder if this would even be an issue had they been healthy. I doubt it. Sucky teams stay sucky just as much as good teams stay good. Where did this theory come from that you should stick with what doesn't work? Championship teams also occasionally make major moves (Rockets, Pistons). Crappy teams that don't change often stay crappy (Warriors still have J. Richardson, Troy Murphy, M. Dunleavy...still suck). I think flaky chemistry is as much, if not more the primary driver of the search for the right kind of player. JVG and CD recognize the chemistry isn't that of a championship caliber team...why wait for what will never happen? Hard to argue this. The entire freaking team is injured. Clearly, something isn't right. I understand your complaints and sympathize with a lot of them. It is just clear that problem number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6.....1,000,000 and so on this year has been injuries. To the extent JVG has been the cause of this, we have a problem. Otherwise, how can you fault him. The team is what 21-10 or something like that when T-Mac and Yao are healthy? That'd be the 5th best winning percentage in the league.
21-10 with a healthy lineup and surely we would be even better if sura had played in those 31 games. i love it how people blame JVG. Red Auerbach could coach this team and our record would be about the same. injuries have killed us and hurt chemistry. period.
You know, in another thread about Larry Brown, someone mentioned that LB's problem is JVG's x10. I don't know if that's true. But there is a reason why Larry Brown, even though he preaches "playing it the right way," only won one NBA championship after so many years. It is true that he always (at least almost always) makes a team better. He is good at making mediocre players play better. He is even good at making good players play at star level. But he is not good at getting stars to win championships. Detroit had no real stars. But they had a bunch of very good players. That's what a coach like LB needs. Star players don't want to play it the right way. They want to play it their way. Coaching in the NBA is very different from coaching in college. You need to balance between freeing your stars to use their immense talent, yet guiding them to take the team with them. They need to be inspired, not restrained.
Actually, it comes across as if he is blaming the players for lack of effort. I understand that he is trying to "motivate" the lesser players to play hard. But if JVG is really that honest as advertised, he should just admit that we lose because we don't have enough talent to compete. A good coach can still inspire under-talented team to play hard. By blaming on their effort, you are pretty much discouraging rather than encouraging them. I am not saying that we should stick with what doesn't work. I am saying that either they haven't done their homework when they bring someone in, or the coach cannot coach the players he agrees to have. Or he doesn't have the foresight of seeing some players just aren't going to last longer than a couple of years. After 3 years, he is still trying to fix the roster. Not to mention that he has McGrady falling on his lap. That makes you wonder. I think the record is overblown. Look at the games after Yao's return to play with McGrady: Grizzlies L Bucks W Sonics W Knicks W Sixers W Lakers L Jazz W Knicks W Clippers W Suns L Clippers W Warriors W Magic W Suns L Sixers L Nuggets W Blazers W We were in the soft part of our schedule. Of the 12 wins, only the Nuggets, Bucks, and the Clippers (2x) are above .500. And these 3 teams aren't exactly the NBA power houses. We were 4-4 against winning teams, which is decent but not spectacular. This team was with a vastly improved Yao and a totally healthy starting lineup. Injury is obviously the main reason for this season's woe. But to me, I think the injuries exposed some of the problems of JVG's coaching and roster decisions.
Yeah, it's the GM's fault. Van Gundy has always had bad GMs. That's why every team he has had has stumbled into the playoffs beat up, fatigued, with a bunch of players on the DL and that's why every one of those coaches more often than not go in to the playoffs with a top seeding and a relatively healthy, rested team.
Yes it was. It is quiet clear that JVG is relying on Yao and Tmac's greatness to save this team. That's not exaclty good coaching. If he was a good coach he could have gotten better out of his players. He has brought in players who he THOUGHT might be able to play his system and he failed. He could have corrected the problem by being flexible and adapting the the players he has. But no. JVG's ego is too big for that.
This should be the second post in every JVG thread! Preach on my brother I've said it many times before, our teams problem isn't the system or the coach its the players and the lack of shooting. And if you don't believe me just take a look at our team shooting percentage for the year, then take away Yao and T-Mac's shooting percentage and what do you have? Granted the players we have now were brought in during JVG's time here but I personally feel he has done an outstanding job in helping Yao develop and he has also dumped every single albotrose contract we had on our roster; something that seemed imposssible before he got here. Which by the way was the exact topic that most of the posters on this BBS were complaining about before....lol We have some decent young talent and we will undoubtedly add a shooter in the off season. Hopefully we can pick up another Luther Head type player in next years draft (although a bit taller would be nice). Give T-Mac the rest of the season tro nurse that back to healthy status and I feel pretty good about the direction of this team. But I will admit that we do need to get deeper, younger and more athletic with guys who can handle the rock AND shoot a decent %, especially the wide open shots; which they are certain to get with Yao and T-Mac.
I agree with everything you said. I don't agree though with all the comparisons made between JVG and the other successful coaches mentioned. They are similar to a degree, but JVG can take the negativity to another level. The other successful coaches, like Jackson for example, are able to inspire their players as well as discipline them. The word inspiring never comes to mind when I think of JVG. He's so focused on discipline that it can often make the team mechanical. I remember his first year, he'd constantly call time outs to make sure everything was structured perfectly, but the problem was that would often kill the flow of the game. He has losened up in recent years and let the team run more, but he doesn't do it nearly enough. He does some things really well as a coach, like teaching defense and preparing his players for each game, but I just see more negative than positive.
How do you explain the lack of shooters on this team. Either players can't shoot well under JVG's system/coaching, or getting good shooters is not his priority, or both. Count how many times JVG rips the players about their lack of effort, lack of defensive intensity, and how many times he mentions about our shooting. That discrepancy to me is an indication of his priority. How many guys (not named Yao or TMac) with a good shooting reputation have we acquired in the JVG era? I counted 5: Piakowski, Padgett, Wesley, Barry, and James. Sura and Alston are not known to be good shooters. And Wesley is the only one left on our team. Wesley is the only good shooting role player we have. Last night the only guy who could shoot was Yao. Is there any wonder why we barely broke the 80 point mark against Dallas?
