Kerr generally is an idiot. But he is right, this team is slow and needs more scorers to help Tmac and Yao out. Scorers, not shooters. Scorers. That should be priority #1.
Possible. Much like how Nelson uses Biedrins with 4 fast and athletic players. Jabbar on showtime Lakers did fine too. It will require creative coaching though.
Del Harris. Take Harris away from Avery and they will be a team without brains. Avery cannot coach without Harris and the Mavs will be a .500 team. Lets get Nellieball going in Houston!
[Yahoo Sports]Rockets mention (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_y...LYF?slug=sk-mcgrady050507&prov=yhoo&type=lgns) Wanted: Help for McGrady By Steve Kerr, Yahoo! Sports May 6, 2007 HOUSTON – Tracy McGrady told the media, his teammates and anyone else who would listen before the first round that if the Houston Rockets lost "it would be on me." McGrady has taken a lot of heat over the years for never having won a playoff series, but this was the first time his team would actually be favored. T-Mac decided to put all the pressure on himself. So after watching his Rockets lose Game 7 to the Utah Jazz on Saturday, a loss that extended McGrady's winless playoff series streak to six, I couldn't help but feel bad for him. He may or may not have done the right thing in welcoming the blame, but in the end, he didn't deserve it. The simple fact of the matter is that Houston just isn't a very good team, and McGrady needs more help. Don't get me wrong: The Rockets are OK. They did win 52 games this season, but relatively speaking, they're not among the NBA's elite. They are a slow, plodding team in a league that is going more and more up-tempo. Houston relied on solid defense, attention to detail and the scoring of Yao Ming and McGrady to win a lot of games in a watered-down league. But now that the playoffs are here, the best teams are on display and everyone's weaknesses are exposed. And for the Rockets, their biggest weakness – a lack of playmaking perimeter players – was all too apparent. The Jazz ran circles around Houston with their two young studs – Deron Williams and Carlos Boozer – doing whatever they wanted to do. Yao stood no chance in slowing down Boozer, who was way too quick for him, and Williams had his way with Rafer Alston, who, despite his "Skip to My Lou"/And1 pedigree, is hardly a track star. In the end, as we have seen so often in the playoffs this year, speed won out, and the Rockets don't have much of it. If McGrady and Houston are going to reach the next level, they'll need a major talent infusion. Jeff Van Gundy told me a couple of years ago that with two stars like Yao and T-Mac – both very docile men – "you need a team of pit bulls around them." Look at the roster and you won't find many. Shane Battier might be the only guy you could describe as a pit bull. He plays great defense, takes charges and hits open shots. But nobody on the Rockets scares you. No one puts fear in the defense, as in, "Man, we've got to stop that guy." They don't have a single player who can break down the defense and create a shot. And as we're seeing with teams like Phoenix, Chicago and Golden State, it's critical to have multiple players who can attack defenses and score the ball. The NBA has changed quite a bit in the past five years or so, and big, stodgy teams aren't effective anymore. The Spurs have been great with Tim Duncan in the post, but only because they added Tony Parker and Manu Ginobili to the mix several years back. With today's rules – the zone defense and hand checking, in particular – it's critical to have slashing perimeter players. Zones make it easy to bottle up big men, so you have to be able to rely on perimeter penetration to generate offense. And since you can't hand check anymore, great guards can get to the rim. Look at some of the players who are dominating the league these days – Baron Davis, Steve Nash, Dwyane Wade, Ben Gordon, etc. Houston needs one of those guys. McGrady is an interesting player. He's a great athlete who doesn't really want to run. He's more of a half-court guy, capable of rising up and shooting jumpers, or driving around his defender for dunks. He can take over games with his skills and win them by himself. But Houston relies so heavily on him that he has to do everything – score, rebound and pass – every game. Against the good teams, it's not enough. If the Rockets are going to take the next step, they have to find players who can help McGrady. An attacking point guard who can break a defense down. A forward who can run the floor for easy hoops. Anyone who can take pressure off the guy. In the end, this season was a failure for the Rockets. The franchise needed to win one playoff series – something it hasn't done in the three seasons Yao and T-Mac have been together. The Rockets needed to justify their All-Star combo. They needed some upward mobility and some momentum to go forward. But now the questions will begin. Will Jeff Van Gundy, who doesn't have a contract for next year, return as head coach? Will Daryl Morey, who will take over for retiring general manager Carroll Dawson, want to bring in someone new as his own guy? And how much personnel turnover will there be? The only thing that's for sure is that if McGrady is a Rocket, his only hope of advancing past the first round is if he gets some help. Because he can't do it all by himself. -------------- (http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_y...YF?slug=aw-vangundy050607&prov=yhoo&type=lgns) Van Gundy out By Adrian Wojnarowski, Yahoo! Sports May 6, 2007 Unless Jeff Van Gundy has a change of heart about wanting to continue as coach, he will not sign a contract extension and stay with the Houston Rockets, league sources said. This has been a decision that Van Gundy has considered for months, something he has discussed at length with his wife, Kim, and his closest confidants. Van Gundy turned down a contract extension in February, an offer which came too late considering how little confidence the organization showed in him after the 2005-2006 season. After that 33-victory season in which his team was decimated by injuries, Van Gundy associates said he was taken aback by a volatile meeting with owner Les Alexander, who blamed him for poor attendance and a doom-and-gloom attitude that made it difficult to market the franchise. Van Gundy would've signed an extension then, but he was told to enter the final year of his contract. Once he delivered a 2006-2007 season that made him a top coach of the year candidate, more than one extension offer was made, but he told management to wait until season's end to discuss his future. The Rockets' season ended Saturday night in a Game 7 first-round loss to the Utah Jazz. Now, Van Gundy has all but decided to leave the job after four seasons. His family is comfortable in Houston, and sources said he has no interest in pursuing other coaching jobs and moving again. His future could include a return to TNT as a television analyst. Van Gundy has had some heartbreaking playoff losses with the Rockets, including Game 7 defeats to the Dallas Mavericks and Jazz in two of the past three seasons. Nevertheless, Tracy McGrady has played the best all-round basketball of his career under Van Gundy, and 7-foot-6 Yao Ming has made significant strides toward becoming one of the league's most dominant forces. Houston hasn't drafted well, nor have they signed significant free agents in his four years as coach. Still, Van Gundy resurrected Dikembe Mutombo and Juwan Howard for productive seasons, and found a way to maximize the limited potential of Chuck Hayes, an undrafted player, as his starting power forward. Daryl Morey, who takes over for Carroll Dawson as the Rockets' general manager this offseason, told Yahoo! Sports recently that he had hoped to re-sign Van Gundy, and said that he believed it worked in the Rockets' favor that Van Gundy had "the best talent he's had in his coaching career" with the Rockets. "He's the best coach that I've ever played for," McGrady said after the Game 7 loss. "I have a lot of respect for him. I hope he's back." Van Gundy would be a sought-after free agent, but he recently told Yahoo! Sports that his wife and oldest daughter, Mattie, do not want to move, and Van Gundy said he has no interesting uprooting his daughter when she's so happy with school and friends. Considering that Morey's background is in statistics (he's a former colleague of Bill James), it would make sense for the Rockets to include Van Gundy as a peer when it comes to player personnel, but Alexander hardly seems inclined to do so. In fact, the Houston owner has told friends in the league that he wishes the Rockets would play a much faster style, like the Phoenix Suns. With Yao as his franchise player, and one of the most un-athletic rosters in the Western Conference, it's hard to understand why a coach would try that with the Rockets. As it looks now, Alexander will get the chance to find his man.
Steve Kerr has shown us a lot of love this season, what do we go and do, we choke. I personally talked to him about all this, and his response was, whenever the Rockets come to a junction where they can prove themselves, they fail. That is our story, we can't prove that we can beat big name teams. We can devour the bottom half of the league, but thats pretty much it.
I don't really care for Steve Kerr, but I agree with this article. t-mac can't do it all, and this isn't on him. It is on caoching and talent defiency. Undersized, 1 dimensional scrubs is all we have. We can make up for it in the regular season by beating crappy teams, but just like 2 yrs ago, the bigger, stronger, fater, more talented team wins. Need an offense coach and better players surrounding McG.
he showed us a lot of love??? he said we were a fraud last night and our 50 win season was a result of beating a bunch of bad teams
He was right. Our 2 stars and good defense can overwhelm bad teams, but in a 7 game series with a team like Utah or Dallas, who have SEVERAL good players, you lose, esp with a coach who doesn't even know how to use the 2 stars
totally, we need some hardnosed badass in this team, who is a knife fighter, who backs down from nobody. Sura was that type of player two years ago. Now we need to find someone else during this offseason. Tmac and Yao, both are alittle bit too nice.....i'm not saying they are soft, they are not, but they are a bit too nice....
Excellent article by Steve Kerr on Yahoo sports..... I just think this article is so well thought out and really addresses what the Rockets need to do this offseason........
Hmmmm... A guard that can get perimeter penetration and get to the rim. I wonder who that could be? Oh could it be.... STEVE FRANCIS!
good article but i think it should also say that YAO needs help....if Rafer, Head, and Howard, would hit those outside shots, everybody woud be praising Yao on how good of a big man passer he is and unselfish..but since those players miss wide opne 3's all the time, people say Yao sucks cause he can't take over the game....he is hitting the open man, what every player should do and now people aer holding it against him... the article should have read: TMAC and YAO need help....
Not a bad read. It should be a very interesting offseason for this team. I'm very anxious to see what happens. Although Tracy did so much, I think if he just reached down and played like he did vs. Dallas two seasons ago, we'd be a hell of a ballclub. With him playing like that, this team is instantly scary for any team. We had a horrible shooting series. Inside and out. I worry about Tracy. I know he still wants it badly, but I wonder if he can play at that level again. This series seemed like only a fraction of what he can do, and that's saying something b/c he played both ends of the court effectively. Maybe he got tired, hell if I know. I just expected more superstar-ish play from him. He was just a "co-star" with Yao this year. I don't put all the blame on Tracy, but he definitely shoulders a lot of it with his team. Please come back harder, hungrier, and angrier next year Tracy.
we need help for Yao also...not just TMAC...if we could find perimeter players that could actually shoot, Yao's game would open up much more....
