Van Gundy has taken away our offense... and given us nothing in return

Clutch, I am not saying that he shouldn't have made the pass as he should have ... I just find it funny that out of everything that went on in the game yesterday, that is the play you choose to bring out as our main problem. We had a lot more serious problems in the game last night than that play.

Steve had plenty of plays that were worse than that one (especially the half court attempt with 4 seconds on the shot clock), Yao didnt want to shoot the ball and in turn turned it over again and again, Cat's numerous turnovers.

This team could barely get a shot off in that 3rd quarter and it was due to a lack of spacing and movement. THIS TEAM GAVE UP!

 

Lets not single out Francis though . MJackson stole the ball and JJ had a 2-1 with a trailer. Instead of getting the pass to Mark, JJ took it one on one , missed, and it ultimately was a 5 point turnaround.

This team does not know how to run a fastbreak. Why though, do even the smart players (jj/mj) fail also?

 

I agree that Rockets offense lacks focus and consistency. You never know when Cat or JJ are going to get a bug and start jacking it.

Are all those are plays called by JVG?

 

I agree with your general proposition that the Rockets fast break is weak. As poor as the offense is, they need all the fast break buckets they can get. And Steve is part of that problem - as are the rest of the Rockets. Why are our guards not pushing the ball quicker down the court while the defense is on their heels? Why aren't our big men throwing the quick downcourt passes to get the break started? Why do the wing players take their sweet time getting up court and filling the lane? A fast break requires an entire team dedicated to it.

Anyway, this whole "trade Francis" idea is a straw man argument. There are no players available who would make a better PG for this team than Francis. Who would you propose we get? What guard will make this team better? Get back to me when the 89 Pistons call us offering Isaiah Thomas.

 

SF and JJ are like twin brothers from different mothers - they both make bonehead plays at times.

Cat is a not so distant cousin.

Gotta take the bad - with the good.

To many players with those charactaristics can be confounding for coach - and fans!!

 

Van Gundy certainly deserves some of the blame, and this is prime example number 1. While I wasn't paying close attention (I was seriously bummed), I recall we had the ball for 3+ minutes and probably a half dozen possessions at the end of the 3rd quarter when Karla was covering Yao. Yao touched the ball in scoring position once in those half dozen possessions, and that touch resulted in two points from the free throw line. The rest of the time Yao was running around the 3 point line. What a wasted opportunity.

 

Haven:

I feel your pain. But do you still feel like JVG has ripped us off today? I mean the offense is fine...

A) turnovers kill us.

B) when you can't hit wide open shots... then what can you do?

C) we need to get more consistent shooters

 

The guards and small forward are needed to help on the boards. Also I think SF and Cat and even JJ logging so many minutes takes it's toll at the end of games especially towards the end of the year. JVG's lack of a solid rotation has irked me all year. To not be able to get 15-20 minutes total out of boki and pike is a lack of coaching skills

 

The guards and small forward are needed to help on the boards. Also I think SF and Cat and even JJ logging so many minutes takes it's toll at the end of games especially towards the end of the year. JVG's lack of a solid rotation has irked me all year. To not be able to get 15-20 minutes total out of boki and pike is a lack of coaching skills

None of that has anything to do with why we don't run. It's very simple, we don't have anybody that can lead a decent fast break.

It's not because we're tired, we haven't run in 5 years. We don't run on opening day or anytime during the season. It's not about being worn down, it's about not knowing how. JVG would love for us to run the ball and get some easy hoops. He's continually telling them to push the ball all game long. Go back to page 2 of this thread and take a look at the Fratello quote in Gater's signature.

Jason Kidd rebounds and pushes the ball. Those two things aren't mutually exclusive. We just have to have somebody that has the ability to lead a break and the willingness to do so.

 

Haven- I can see how Van Gundy should have made adjustments to the offense, just because its his job he should have had Steve playing like he did in the playoffs before Christmas.

If anyone raised their game over the last games of the season and the playoffs it was Steve. I think he should have relied less on posting up our guards. He also should have pushed the team alot harder to get Yao to position deeper and to get that intial post pass into him before running off too much of the shot clock.
I think those improvements would have given us 2-5 more wins.
He's the coach that's his job.

But I strongly believe what kills us the most offensively is not the system but the turnovers. The poor passes, the stupid passes, the poor ball handling. Things that a far lesser talented player could be consistant at our team had 4 starters making stupid mistakes consistantly:

Yao- clumsy catching the ball, getting stripped, not securing the pass

Steve- dribbling out of bounds, out of control, make stupid unforced errors, travelling

JJ- bad lazy passes

Cat- lazy passes, travelling, mental lapses on passes

Add it all up and we are terrible at turnovers.

This more than anything else destroyed the offense this season.

Every game we were having to fight against ourselves because I don't remember a game that we had fewer turnovers than our opponent.

Talk about bad offense. God help any coach who has to come in and put in an offensive system with a group that averages 17 or 18 turnovers a game.

Unforced errors, whether the NBA, tennis, golf, NFL, errors in baseball... they kill you.

That is what must change.

 

The pick and roll did work. The entire series, the pick and roll gave us opportunities to make open shots. If you ask me, JVG did a great job making sure that our guys were sucessful in scoring. We almost won game one, and almost won game four. Last night, Steve had plenty of open jump shots off of the pick and roll, but he couldn't knock them down.

We got a lot of open looks at the basket this playoff series. That doen's jive with all this talk about JVG bitting the big one offensively.

 

It is very simple. Steve is Steve, Cat is Cat, and Yao improved year one to year two. The offense scored significantly fewer points, and at a lower percentage. That can only be due to the change in head coach.

Add in the fact that Van Grumpy just trotted out his old Knicks offense, and ignores the skills of his players, and the picture becomes very clear.

 

02-03 Rockets FG% 44.0 PPG 93.7 Opp FG% 43.3 OppPPG 92.3
03-04 Rockets FG% 44.2 PPG 89.8 Opp FG% 41.2 OppPPG 88.0

We shot 'slightly' better than last year, .2% better, we held the opponents to a lower FG% than last year 2.1%, and our point differential improved by a meger .4 PPG. Thats a slight improvement. Not sure what you're trying to say. But we didn't regress.

 

It is very simple. Steve is Steve, Cat is Cat, and Yao improved year one to year two. The offense scored significantly fewer points, and at a lower percentage. That can only be due to the change in head coach.

Interesting take, too bad the facts don't back it up.

We scored 89.8 pts/game this season as compared to 93.8 points last season. That's a whopping 4 points a game difference. Personally, I don't call a change of less than 5% "significant".

As for the suggestion that we scored at a lower percentage, that is also incorrect. Last season we shot 44.0% from the floor and this season we shot 44.2% from the floor. So, basically our percentage is the same (actually, just slightly higher this year).

You also convieniently forgot to mention the other side of the ball.
Last season we gave up 92.3 pts/game and this year we gave up 88.0 pts/game. Also, our opponents field goal pct. went from 43.3% last season to 41.2% this season.

So, in the end:

Offensive scoring was down by 4.4%
Offensive FG% was up by 0.1%
Opponents Scoring was down by 4.8%
Opponents FG% was down by 2.1%.

I always find it funny that people seem to believe that JVG's Rockets are running an offense like Fratello's Cavalier teams. It's not like we're milking the shot clock on every possesion. We shoot the ball early more times than we shoot it late on the shot clock.

 

My apologies. It looked worse because the attempts were down.
Further, compare stats to the Yao-Mingless 2000-2001 team.
That JVG-ball is less effective on the offensive end cannot be denied.

2002/3
PPG: 93.8
FGM/A: 2840-6461
3PTM/A: 439-1267
FTM/A: 1569-2044
TO: 1276

2003/2004
PPG: 89.8
FGM/A: 2738-6195
3PTM/A: 515-1406
FTM/A: 1371-1774
TO: 1373

2000/1
PPG: 97.2 (!)
FGM/A: 2943-6494
3PTM/A: 504-1412
FTM:A 1385-1862
TO: 1204

 

I admit that durring our regular season, our offense sometimes looked uncordinated; however, we did not regress from what Rudy was doing.

Also, we got open looks at the basket in the playoffs; What more can you ask an offensive scheme to do? We don't always knock down our shots and Yao needs to be more "take charge", but JVG's offensive scheme did not loose us the first round of the playoffs. If anything, we looked better offensively in the playoffs than we did durring the regular season.

 

Ya, 4 less ppg doesn't seem significant, but it is, especially in the west. It is clear to see that most of the games we lost this season was due to lack of offense. Defense can only take you so far, but when you're playing teams like Dallas, Kings, Lakers, Grizzlies, you can't score 89ppg and win.

JVGs all defense, no offense, worked in NYC, but its also the same gameplan that lost 2 finals.

Just look at our record vs. the East and vs. the West. Its absolutely unbelievable, 3rd best record vs. the East, last vs. the West.

SF-YM-CAT-JJ-MoT, shouldn't be scoring 89ppg, not topping 80ppg a bunch of times. Yes, it doesn't help that SF could make shots for his life, but this is something JVG should have corrected. He completely took SF out of his offense and he couldn't find it again.

Tell AI to be a true PG and pass all the time and see what happens. SF is not AI, but he is the type of player that you want to use his offensive skills. I thought SF had a decent season distributing the ball, 5 guys in double figures isn't bad.

 

I believe JVG compromised with our guards. When Shaq was out, he pulled Yao out to 3 point line to clear out the paint for drive in and short distance jumpers. Those shots just did not fall. On defense side, we had no answer to Kobe. Cat can contain Kobe sometimes but not always. That guy can do 20 pts damage in just one quarter.

 

you can when you hold your opponents to 88ppg.

it's the point differential that's important. not just offense...if it takes less scoring than it took the year before to beat your opponents, that's fine too. as long as you're winning. and they won more this year than they did last year....and they played better defense.