Out of curiosity, when do we put the loss on the coach? Not saying it was his fault last night as I put the loss on the whole team last night including him. But what do you see in a game/before a game that constitues a failure by the coach?
I know when its his fault. JVG got our players in crazy foul trouble in the beginning of the season (Yao and Battier) by leaving them in the game. This was against the Jazz and Hornets in the first few games. You cant blame these losses on him though. We have beaten good teams without Yao and we have lost some that we shouldn't have also. In general, he is an above average coach. I used to be frustrated with JVG at times, but I am definitely a JVG supporter.
If we had a full complement of talented players I'd be inclined to put stuff on him - but given the expectations for when Yao went down it is hard to blame him for a not-very-talented squad reverting to its natural state of suckiness. I honestly don't think coaching makes a huge difference in basketball. It's a players league. Players make plays at the end of the day, it is why even the best coaches barely make the equivalent of the MLE. I think at best, coaches can maybe find a way to augment their players performance by 10-20%, at worst they will r****d it by that much. IN this case it's clear that the Rockets did the former, rather than the latter, under JVG's tutelage for most of this season.
I disagree to a certain extent. One of the coaches that has really made an impact on a team is Avery Johnson. Don Nelson had practically the same players and couldn't do much with it but Avery was able to transform the team into what it is now. Don Nelson put much emphasis on outside shooting, while Avery centered the strategy on penetration and taking it strong.
Just stop whining about the lose or whining about the whining. Go to Pryuen's thread to see the latest update on Yao's return to full practice. If that still couldn't make everyone feel better, then it must the fans who have problems, not the team.
There's a tendency to want to judge coaching on a game by game basis. I think, in general, this is a mistake. The coach has to set a strategy, communicate that strategy to his players, and put players on the court and call plays that he feels gives his team the best chance to be successful. But so much happens during a game that is outside his control. Unlike players, coaches can not have a direct impact on the outcome of a game (unless they get a technical). If you want to pass judgement on a coach's performance, I believe you should look at the record he's yielded over a significant stretch of games, taking into account the situation he's had to deal with (injuries, schedule, etc.). Based on that, JVG has done an admirable job with this team. Even renowned JVG-hater Charlie Rosen has admitted this.
I think this example proves the opposite. Efficiency-wise (i've posted the #'s before but am too lazy to look them up), the Mavericks really are not much better on either offense or defense than under Nelson. THey are slightly better than the last Nelson season, but it is a small improvent, not tons better. However they play a much slower pace under Johnson. Overall it's not like they were awful under Nelson - they won anywhere from 52-60 games per season...likewise Avery and Don aren't playing with the same exact players at the same stage in their careers either. Go back to 2003 when they won 60 games and went to the WCF's (same as they won last year) - and there's only a single player (Dirk) still on the team.
i did saw the game, i saw it live at the toyota center in section 107, row 7. first off we were not ready. basically your saying we're prepared it was the players fault, then your saying its battiers fault. hes been guarding bargani the first two quarters, and he couldn't do anything for several reasons. 1. hes too big 2. battier is always helping on the pick and roll. mostly on rafers man, which then will dish it out to bargani. what did jvg do? nothing. your saying that we dont know what jvg does in practice. neither do you. we're just guessing on the way he thinks, well maybe dakota trualy belives anything. and yes people have great repsect for him, jon barry, john almachie, tmac. i agree with you in that part. but how in the world did u get that snyder has no iq? with yao, he apparently did. pass, cut bam. foul or dunk. either one i like. without yao, did he ever get a chance? you know when someons bball iq is low by watching them ala swift, kwame brown. everyone got a shot? he sticked with his 8man rotation until praticaly 2-3 minutes left. raptors didn't put in their bench until later so vspan got to show what he can do. and he did fine. theres a difference from giving time to players when its blown out, and when its not. i'm fine with these loses. when yao comes back we'll be fine.
Who would have guessed this day would come? We agree on all points in this thread so far. Maybe I won't have to hunt you down and beat your ass anymore
Mine are just opinions, and my opinion which has been backed up by JVG himself is that the team has been lethargic and unenergetic and not competitive. And it IS JVG'S fault for not getting them to play harder, you know why? Because he does not HOLD THEM ACCOUNTABLE for their actions. If they are not going to play hard, then put them on the bench......but regardless of how hard the team plays or doesn't play, the same rotation gets run out there night in and night out regardless of effort. And that is nuts. JVG has been beating the drum about lack of effort for at least 2 weeks and I TOTALLY agree, so what has he done about it? Beat it louder? Do something about JVG.....stop making excuses, hold your players accountable. It is hypicritical to complain about some players making mistakes and then ignore the blatent mistakes of others. As for Rafer, the guy is just bad, he does have a good basketball IQ, but a bad finish. Ironically, he seems to hit a higher percentage when he is just acting natural versus trying to stay in control. Kas, I understand your beef, but what is the point of this thread? JVG himself is holding himself accountable, why can't you agree with him? Watch the press conference last night and you will see what I mean....I am in total agreement with JVG on this point. As for his rotations and substitutions, I would do things differently, but I am not the coach, so as a fan it is my perogative to criticize his moves, it is the arm chair QB or PG creed. Cohen, If any of my employees dogged it on a consistent basis AFTER I had sat them down and outlined what was expected of them, and they continued to ignore those guidelines, basically throwing them back in my face, I would get rid of them, or put them on the bench ! DD
Yeah, I know I am one of the big offenders of Clutchfans redundancy ! "Hello clutch fans, my name is DaDakota, and I am a Clutchfans redunderhead" DD PS...good spelling Sammy.
The significant point here is that we aren't going to be truly happy unless we win a championship. And in light of Yao's absense, we know what kind of team we are. We are a very good basketball team that is going to have a lot of trouble against teams with great quickness who get up and down the floor...........unless we change our dynamic somehow. And it's pretty obvious when we lose to Phoenix, Dallas, and Toronto.....what they are doing to us. They are taking McGrady out of the game and forcing everybody else to beat them. So, when you see the same scheme over and over again and it starts to turn against us, you either deal with it or you keep standing on the record that we have ammassed over the first 50 games and assume it is going to carry us the rest of the way and that nothing needs to be improved upon. You can't just keep looking in the rear view mirror, except to use those prior games to GET BETTER!!!! BECAUSE THIS TEAM AIN'T GOOD ENOUGH YET......and realistically everybody knows it. This is the most thorough BBS on the net concerning the subject of the local NBA team, no matter what city. There is more pure basketball knowledge here than any other website. That's why we all like it so much. So, before you label everybody as b....ing and moaning after every loss, you should consider, any good coach that wants to win the big one is going to look for ways to get better. JVG is constantly criticized because he will often find fault in his team after a good win. All most of us junkies are talking about is what we need to do to get better. It's really pretty basic. And what we need to be better is basically better point guard play. What a lot of us are basically saying is JVG hasn't even acknowledged this obvious deficit in this team, the lack of playmaking from the point guard spot to go along with very subpar shooting, which is an obvious hole that we have to fix if we are going to be World Champions. Instead, JVG keeps stroking Rafer, giving him big minutes, ignoring a possible fix, and substituting players that can't make plays for themselves, can't distribute, and can't defend. KAS started this thread talking about our defense is what killed us against Toronto. Fine, let's go there. The WORST defense that we had in this game was the fact that we couldn't stop their point guards and Bosh and Bargnani got whatever they wanted, which was probably 90% long jump shots from Bosh and Bargnani and dribble drives, dishes, layups, and playmaking from Ford and Calderon. They shredded us from the perimeter, not from the inside. They played outside in all night long and just killed us with their ball movement and dribble penetration. Juwan and Deke weren't the answer and Rafer, Luther, and JLIII weren't the answers. We never got the matchups to work. I'm sorry, but if you want to look at defense, it should have been obvious after the first quarter that Rafer and Luther were going to get toasted all night, and you should have been able to tell after just a couple minutes from JLIII that he was going to get toasted. So, you gotta go somewhere else. Say what you want, but VSpan is the best mano y mano defender that we have at the point. He responds quicker and moves his feet defensively better than Rafer or JLIII or Luther. All we are doing is pointing out the obvious. Why are we going to guys that can't get it done? Let's not talk offense here. Let's just talk defense. The guys we had out there got burnt, burnt, burnt. 106 points given up by a JVG defense is horrid. And who was out there?
