[Urban Myth] Jeff Van Gundy Doesn't Know How to Coach Offense

So T-Mac's slow start was because of not knowing his teammates, yet his 'resurgence' happened because of new teammates that he had never played with before?

 

It has nothing to do with who his teammates are, it has to do with him wanting to shoot the ball more and taking the shot. JVG sat him down and explained it to him -- the rest is history.

 

Actually McGrady sat JVG down, not the other way around.

 

This turnaround has been pretty amazing ~ props to JVG.

 

I sitll think JVG doesnt know how to run an offense. The reason for the Rox pts xplosion? Mac and Yao stepping it up, as well as the role guys hittin gthie rshots

 

Let me take a stab at this. Feel free to read ahead to my sig to see where I am coming from.

1) He has played Andre, and he is just not that good. He is fun to watch and he gets the ball upcourt real fast. Both I will concede. But he is lost on defense and overall the offense does not run well under AB.

2) Yao seems to me to be in his best stretch ever. SOME of his strangths are being utilized. Sura seems to be well utilized. Howard and Padget are given great production lately, in spite of obvipus limitations. Deke, pretty much everybody IMO. Even got good contributions from Spoon over the last two games for griefs sake. Not sure exactly what you are looking for that you are not seeing.

3) I think that is an unfair stereotype. Maybe it is just my prejucice, but evertime I hear JVG speak I come away saying he speaks the truth. He does not sugar coat it, he dosen't hide it, he just goes directly to the heart of the matter. HE speaks facts and backs them up.

4) Well you got me on that one. Our defensive intensity clearly sucks.

5)Taylor sucks, just flat out. He does not do the small things like cut, block out, pass, rotate etc. To play him just because we pay him to much makes no sense whatsoever to me. Let me give a weird example. You are going to a party tonight. For some reason you have only two shirts. One looks good on you. You bought it a while ago at pennys on sale. You have "gotten lucky" in it more than once. The other shirt you bought tof $400 one night when you were drunk on mescal. In fact you bought the shirt shortly after eating the worm. You look like an absolute dork in the shirt. You know it becaue 1. you have a mirror, 2. EVERYBODY tells you how stupid you look. 3. You have never gotten lucky in that shirt.

Which shirt do you wear to the party?
Remember, one cost $400.

6) I agree that we need a PF (PS props to JVG for adjusting to the PF he has to work with). But it is pretty apparent that we needed what we got. Which is evidently working. Why are you still crying about the other? I am sure that will get fixed the first good opportunity that comes by. That need is not lost on anybody.

This team is learning, growing and connecting right before our eyes. That seems like something a head coach would be responsible for.

Things are great for Rockets fans RIGHT NOW. Enjoy yourselves.

 

When you hold grudges against Jeff and pass judgement with 0 evidences, you guys are not talking BB, just opinions ... and you know what people said about opinions.

Just because Tmac or Yao or anyone stepped up, it does not mean Jeff does not coach offense. You have to come up with some concrete evidences.

A good coach is someone who puts his players in the position to do their best. He designs plays to get open shots. He maximizes the players' talents and hide their weaknesses ...

Judge Jeff by those criterias, not because he is from NY, not because he replaces Rudy or because he is grumpy all the times !

 

I know I am prejudiced, but man, great post.

 

If you search the web (Tmac's comments to the media) you'll find that at start of the season Tmac and Yao were both deferring to each other. TMac was trying to shed any past stigma that he was a selfish player. On the other end there was Yao deferring to him. Add Yao's foul and stamina problems to the mix and two guards (Ward/Lue) that really didn't give us any scoring options from the field. Well, you had a situation that was doomed to struggle.

Your comment about "TMac had to force JVG's hand" is only a small part of the equation. So, it's not like that's *all* that happened. TMac could have "forced" JVG to give him the ball all he wanted...but if we didn't have Sura, Barry, Westley giving us that extra boost...we'd still be struggling regardless.

And as far as JVG doing the *same* thing with TMac he did with Francis. Again, that's only half the story. Yes, JVG might have been skeptical about giving TMac the green-light at first (however much that was). The question you should be asking yourself is this: How much *trust* does TMac get over Francis? Now you tell me....

...who do you *trust* taking the last shot? Francis or TMac? Who do you trust getting others involved in the offense? Francis or TMac? Who do you trust that the player you give the green-light to, that he'll not *turn the ball over*? Francis or TMac?

Think about it.

It's all about give and take. TMac has earned that trust. Francis never did.

 

Please don't make up stuff.

TMac and Sura are the players that run the plays that JVG sets up. If they execute then all is fine. If the players don't execute then all is NOT fine. Player have skills. They are put on the court to execute the plays. If they have natural ability, then the coach will utilize those players. If bad trends occur, then adjustments will be made...If good trends occur...then an understanding starts to grow between the player and coach. It's a two-way street.

So, you can't just say that JVG gets *no* credit for us scoring, but then turn around and blame the coach for losing games while admonishing the players of *any* fault.

You have a double-standard going on there.

So, we all know that TMac and Sura are putting points on the board. But that's the same as any player/coach relationship. Shaq scores for his coach. Jordan scores for his coach. And Duncan scores for his coach. Again. It's a two-way street. Coaches run plays, and the players execute them.

 

I'm thrilled with the Rockets winning ways of late... AND... as one of many who opposed the arrival of Rainman Gundy, I've already stated my willingness to be proven wrong.

If the Rockets make it past the first round of the playoffs. (my only measure of true progress over last season and compared to the "good" Rudy years!) - then I will find a nice quiet corner in which to consume my "All-You-Can-Eat Crow Happy Meal".

I love T-mac and Yao, but Sura and Padgett are quickly becoming my two favorite Rockets... Yep, I'm slow and white... and 40-something, (a true triple threat )

But seriously... the chemistry on this team with Sura, Padgett, Barry, Wesley... as well as Yao and T-Mac is incredible. I even have to throw some props to Howard for his rebounding!! The chemistry reminds me of how things felt toward the end of '93.

As far as Grumpy goes... I'm still in the wait and see crowd. But the waiting is a lot more pleasant lately!!!

 

He has adapted to the team quite nicely as of late.

 

People that were having brain spasms saying to fire van Gundy after a handful of games with a revamped squad are reaching now. "Uuuuh, but... uuuhh".

I'm still reserving comments until the end of the season. He's done nothing yet to make me say he's the greatest thing to happen to the Rockets or the worst. He sure doesn't need to be fired.

 

Has JVG done anything to allow them to win, or is it more that Tmac has just decided to play his game?

If JVG had his way, they would be dumping it down to Yao...Inside/Out offense.

I think JVG has had to change his perspective, but man, the guy has no innovation at all.

The fact that we did not ONCE try a zone defense when Odom was going Isolation and single handlidly bringing the Lakers back is just plain annoying.

JVG is a mediocre to good coach, but hardly a championship caliber one.

DD

 

DD- you could make that analysis of any coach in the league.
If you don't think the little dictator has made significant adjustments then your opinions are contradictary.

He is still the dictator, Tracy is playing more his game by design and coaching. I don't like JVG personality but I am beginning to see he is pretty smart. I expect us to be tough in the playoffs.

JVG has fundementals that are very important to his system, they don't work best for every player, but they are fundemental to intelligent basketball.

His defensive rotations are designed to take away #1 option scorers. Those switches look bad when our players are sluggish in execution, but they stifle teams when the players are aggressive on switches and double teams. Odom was shut down the first half because they were switching crisply. Once they started slowing down and hesitating on rotation in the 4th quarter Odem started driving hard to the hoop and he killed us. (Hubie Brown noticed and made mention during the telecast)

This is our system and the zone is not our system. JVG knows that we can only zone effectively for short periods and we would break down because we run a completely different defensive philosophy.

Instead of mixing in a zone, Van Gundy has tried to create a mental toughness and intesity that keeps the rotation defense effective for 4 qtrs.

I believe we will have success with this in the playoffs. The new players are still learning the defensive scheme.

Also we are losing some intensity on defense because everyone is buying into making the extra pass (almost to a fault). This is something we never saw chemistry wise last season.

I would like to see a zone more also, but I would rather get the execution of JVG defensive system clicking by playoffs.

Expect them to add some more zones situationally once they have much better defensive chemistry and execution in the preferred scheme.

 

spot-on analysis of the Rocket's defensive tendencies rhester

very good post.

As the guys started wearing down and not making their switches quick enough, Odom took advantage..

just holding someone of his talent level like they did for 3 quarters barely 36 hours after a tiring overtime win at the end of a 4 games in 6 days road trip was a pretty decent accomplishment imo...

they had to have been draggin by the end...and still managed to pull it out...

 

This is a post about offense but since you guys wanted to discuss defense on the Lakers game.
I don't think we slowed much in rotating and helping defense in the 4th. It was the Laker's changing offense.

Early on the Lakers' spacing was not good. They ran a balance offense with 2 men on the right, 2 on the left, 1 up top for the most part. There were not enough room for Odom to operate. Our helper only had a little way to go to double on Lamar. He also missed some shots and gave up the ball quicker.

In the 4th, they went to an isolation and cleared out the whole right side of the court. They had 3 men on the weakside and a 3pt shooter up top. Lamar had a lot more room to work. If his defender backed-off, he took the outside shot. Too bad for us he made them. Our defender had to play tight and Lamar drove.

We typically doubled on Odom with the closest man available and that was the defender up top: Yao (or Weatherspoon when he was in with Howard). Our helper had just too far to go to double plus it was easy for Lamar to find the man at the top of the key.

I would have still tried to double him that way some, but maybe changed up and pulled one defender from the weakside to double on him out right and let 2 defend 3 on the weakside. If Lamar passed cross court, we would have had time to rotate once more.

The 3-2 zone defense would have worked too because we would have had helper on the right side . We must practice it first though and I don't know if we spent much time on it. We played maybe 10 minutes of zone defense the last yr and 1/2.

 

One small adjustment JVG made at the end of the Laker game...he put T-Mac on Odom. I'm sure Laker's wanted Odom taking that last shot instead of Cook. Odom couldn't shake T-Mac & gave up ball to Cook. History.

 

If Yao was as dominant as Hakeem then "dumping it down to Yao...Inside/Out offense" wouldn't be such a bad thing. But after learning about Yao's tendencies, we moved from a Yao centric team to a Tmac centric team.

That's called, an adjustment. If it didn't work, as in.....TMac iso'ed all over the place, ignoring his teammates, and turning the ball over...you better be damn skippy that JVG would pull in the leash.

So, the green-light is given not without some caution. JVG is still the coach. But there is a trust between JVG and TMac. And it's well deserved.

 

Yeah, it really makes me wonder where we would be if Sura had not hurt his back and if we had this group of players together from the start of training camp. Would five or six more wins have been improbable?