JVG did nothing to promote V-Span's career but V-Span claims to be through with the NBA not the Rockets. JVG has been gone for a long time. V-Span claims to have been informing the Rox of his disinterest in returning. He claims they haven't heard him-- maybe because they were trying to trade him? Then his message gets out loud and clear. V-Span is through with the NBA and the US.
While I wasn't all that agog over JVG, this is one thing I cannot blame on him. In the end after all is said and done, you need your players on the court to go out and win the damn game and that's something the Rockets beginning with Mr. "It's On Me" simply DID NOT DO. To even assert that they lost because JVG "allowed" it to happen is one of the dumbest things you could have even posted. NOBODY wanted to win more than JVG. If this team had half of his determination to win, they would have beaten Utah & Golden State and gave San Antonio a run for their money. It's a major copout - one that Les & Morey wanted to encourage when JVG was dismissed - that the playoff failures of this team were due to the failure of the head coach. And it's a theme that a good many of the faithful have adopted. That is exactly what the Rockets' want because it conveniently absolves them of any responsibility for the past 7 years of ineptitude emanating from the front office. That Utah series exposed the weaknesses on this team in vivid detail and one of those weaknesses was the lack of mental toughness. When that series tightened up it was the Jazz who dug down deep and fought through adversity while it was the Rockets, not JVG, who came apart like a cheap suit. So if you really want to blame JVG for anything, then go ahead and blame him for not being able to get this team to grow some stones when it counted. He never developed an "elite" way of managing this team? What kind of BS is that? This team cratered 2 years ago when Yao & Tmac went down. It was an absolute Fng joke. You seem to have conveniently forgot that in December Yao went down AGAIN for 32 games yet JVG's non-elite way of managing this team still got them to 52 wins and the 4th seed in the playoffs. He got more out of this collection players than anyone thought possible but in the playoffs when every weakness gets exploited, in the end, it is the team with the most flaws that goes down. And in the Utah series, that team was the Rockets. The same thing happened to Golden State against Utah and to Utah against San Antonio but hey, why bring reality into the conversation? Again, how many losses were you prepared to accept once Yao went down? Were you more interested in watching Spanolis continue to stink it up or JL3 run around the court looking like a kid playing amongst men? Would you have been happy watching Novack get his ass handed to him on a nightly basis because he couldn't defend a lamp post? More importantly, how pleased would you have been with JVG if by doing this they slipped out of playoff contention? Would you have absolved him of all blame or would you have joined the bleeting of the Rockets sheep calling for his ouster because they did not win because he played a bunch of players at the end of the bench? The last time I looked, it was the responsibility of the head coach to win as many games as possible regardless of the circumstances and JVG did just that. The only thing a Houston coach appears to be unable to survive is the actions of the owner & front office. First it was Rudy T. Next it was JVG. In 2-3 years it will be Adelman. (The tipping point for him will be if Dallas breaks through and wins the NBA Championship) Now if they had been doing their job all along, then I'd be right there with you torch in hand ready to throw it on the JVG bonfire. But the truth is that we are where we are right now because our talent evaluation has been amongst the worse in the league and a babble of baboons could have done a better job at drafting for this team over the past 7 years. One only has to look at the off season so far to that Adelman is being set up to fail. But that's OK because when that happens, you and the others can blame him for everything just like you did for JVG.
