you never told me an opinion on my statement. probably b/c you agree with it, as well you should. it makes sense. I know everyone wants to win now but lets be real here only 1 team wins a year and just b/c a championship isnt won doesnt mean that the team is not headed in the right direction. the rockets are on the right track but they need to have more potent weapons to accompany tmac and yao. Who's the 3rd best offensive player on this team? seriously..who? Whichever you chose, its not pretty, especially when you consider that you have such defficient offensive players like chuck, rafer, deke, and battier to a certain extent. they also need more size, length and athleticism on the front line. Chuck hayes, god bless him, just isnt going to get it done on a nightly basis in the playoffs.
yeah. no one stepped up to be the leader and refused to lose. you cant make anyone step up if they dont want to and im affraid our best players just dont have the makeup for that. which is fine, but you cant have your best players be passive and fragile (mentally).
The problem was that jvg never really put this team in position to win. They got lucky with the 1st 3 wins at home. Close games at home and blowouts on the road. Those wins were false hope imo. Not enough pick n rolls, continued to leave yao on boozer, didn't use snyder enough. JVG set this team up for failure and he knew it. He was counting on yao and tmac to have a great series to get him by. The jazz had figured out our offense and had no problem defending it. It was the will power of yao and tmac that brought us down from 16 to take that so called 5 point lead. They had expanded too much energy to come back only to get tired at the end. Who gets down 16 points in the 2nd qtr at home in a game 7? We all should know by now that the right system will bring out the best of most players. Boki, Tim Thomas, Bonzi, these are all perfect examples of players thriving in certain systems. Now we know yao and tmac are halfcourt players, thus we have to be a half court team. But we also have to change our offensive sets and style because its evident that yao is not a beast in the post as we thought he was. We need to create better looks for him and set him up easier (pnr). So yes i disagree with your statement that jvg put us in position to win. It was the players that brought us back from 16 down to up 5, only to get tired out and not have enough in the tank to close it out.
Five points down, Utah score 20 pts in last 6 minutes. Boozer 7pts, DW 2pts, Okur 6pts, AK 5pts. Rockets get 11pts, Yao 7pts, Tracy 2pts, Heyas 2pts. Utah didn't only depend on their stars. Rox almost sololy depended on stars. When defense really count, Rox let opponent get 20 in 6 mins. Can't say JVG doing good with his defense plan.
[ so it was all the players that won those games? Yes the rockets played poorly but they still won. i dont get what your point is. . yao on boozer makes sense. its the lessor of 2 evils. but who else do you rely on if not yao and tmac? thats the problem. there are only 2. of course they figured it out. only 2 players can hurt you and since yao didnt come to play, thats limits it down to tmac. expended so much energy? give me break. if its them that came back it was them that lost the lead and them that faded away when it counted most. whats a better look than having the ball 10 feet away with a guy 6 inches shorter than you? maybe, but it seemed more of a mental collapse than physical.
The people who hate JVG have many reasons to say it. It just wastes time to argue with a lover. JVG, TMac and Yao are the first three responabile for the loss. JVG is the first one to go, TMac and Yao have to play better next year to save their life too.
a plan doesnt mean squat if its not executed. Its been the same freaking plan all year...all series. i dont think that a strong argument.
it waste time to show valid reasons and arguments? yeah, I would hate to waste time by talking reasonably. and dont try to discredit me by calling me a jvg lover. In fact i was much like the other people who hated the guy for no valid reason other than his demeanor and his perceived negativity. But i gave him a fair chance to prove himself as a coach and as a person and i think anyone that has done that would hold him in a higher perspective. fine. if you think that a lost series to a good team means a coach has to be fired, whether justly or not, then fine. But if you are saying that this team would be better without him and that he is the reason that this team lost, then thats a different story. if you take a step back and put aside your emotional attachment to one team then you will see that the rockets are just not good enough. i'll say it again. Whose the rockets and jazz 3rd best player respectively? whose the 4th? 5th? 6th? theres your answer and it should be clear
huh? it is hard to be creative when you only have 2 offensive players. but it doesnt matter what you run, its how you run it.
in near future, next year, I see a Houston team that without JVG will win a championship and I see DonkeyMagic taking few days off to think about whats best for him....my guess is he will finally jump of that JVG bandwagon....
well i hope the rockets do win a championship. until someone can reasonable prove that jvg is a bad coach then no. JVG has my respect and you cant argue that he is a top tier coach. is he the 'right' coach for this team? maybe not, but he is still a dam good coach. its a shame others have to bash a guy just b/c they disagree with him.
lessor of 2 evils? How is boozer shooting 50+% in the post better than okur shooting 35% from 3, especially when he was struggling after the 1st 2 games. You also take away hayes' ability to rebound if he has to guard okur on the perimeter. Im not saying have yao solely on okur the whole game, but youve got to mix it up because you've got to expect yao to tire out from guarding boozer and having to carry a huge load on offense. Btw, how many double teams did boozer see this series? thats the coaches fault if he only relied on yao and tmac. wheres bonzi and snyder? Remember he specifically said one will play. Thanks for confirming my point. No bench play. You can't expect players to play 45 min a game for a whole series after half the season of doing the same. How about being 4 ft from the basket with a guy 6 inches shorter than you. also, the majority of the time he was 15 ft from the basket, not catching it in his usual area, thus having to dribble more to get closer.
It's hard for players to be offensively creative when their head coach knows next to nothing about creating offense and makes little adjustment to the defense thrown at his team.
However, our top 2 players are suppossed to be head and shoulders above their top 2. btw, i respect jvg. he is an intelligent man. I just believe he can't coach superstar players because his best coaching is getting the most out of average players. He didn't have a single superstar level player in ny. Not spree or houston. Ewing was injured in the playoffs, thus he got the most out of camby. we gave him ample opportunities to prove us wrong. It didn't happen. time to move on and give another coach an opportunity before tmac and yao get older.
bonzi quit after he was given a chance to prove himself 2 weeks before the playoffs. snyder. he is/was an X factor all year. But he was too up and down. in this series, when he did go in i remember 1 turnover on his first possession and another time he jacked up a 3pt. not really smart play is it? i guess it is his fault for having relying on what are labeled as "superstars" to be dominant. no bench talent. howard was outmatched, although he gave a couple good performances. Deke really didnt fit into the mix. luther was abused. snyder was lost. etc etc . that would be nice if he was aggressive enough to get that spot. but he wasnt and he didnt. well we can agree on that...he was getting pushed away too far from the basket by the smaller and, what i thought, weaker okur.
A coach famous for his defense yet his team failed to execute defense in crucial time after training for two whole year. That's not a great coach.
Ok, for the basketball aspect, the Rockets are equal to the Jazz, if not better. Almost everyone in the ESPN, and CBSsports picked the Rox to win because we have a homecourt. I asked Jon in the chron.com about our winning chance, and he said it was about 84%, but we lost. Like I said, JVG is not the only reason for the loss, but he did a bad job for no change in the game plans, for example, Yao for Boozer match. A slow center just can not guard a quick PF, sometimes, you need mix up, but he did everything same in all seven ggame. Much more can be said, those are a few examples.
