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2008 and 2009 Rockets with JVG

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grond
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Re: 2008 and 2009 Rockets with JVG 

Post#21 » by grond » Wed Dec 17, 2008 10:24 pm

MaxRider wrote:
grond wrote:In genereal, JVG is old school. Loves defense, won't double, won't zone, doesn't play rookies if other options are available. I suspect Hayes would be seeing a lot more time and Landry/Scola a lot less under JVG.


Who started Hayes in the beginning of the 2007-08 season? Adelman
Howard is gone, so Scola is the only option we had left at backup PF. So Adelman had to play Scola
Landry didn't crack the rotation until mid January. I guess he doesn't like to play rookie as well.
Brooks didn't crack the rotation until halfway through December, when James and Francis were sucking for more than one and a half month. Then Adelman decided he can't trust a rookie and traded for BJax to play backup PG.


None of this contradicts what I said. Unless you're implying that Hayes' role under JVG would be the same as it is under Adelman today (but I didn't see you say that directly, so ...)

MaxRider wrote:BTW JVG did play zone defense, but his definition of zone defense is guarding the paint and force people to shoot 3.


Not really. His schemes were man to man, but with emphasis on collapsing in the paint if penetration occurred (and giving up the outside shot, as you pointed out). He's on record from his NY days as being a hater of zones. Regards them with some measure of disdain.
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Re: 2008 and 2009 Rockets with JVG 

Post#22 » by tha_rock220 » Thu Dec 18, 2008 3:47 am

JVG's idea of a zone was the same thing he used before zones were made legal. He played a soft man defense with the defense hedging towards the most lethal scorer even if they that player didn't have the ball.


HTown_TMac wrote:
Is there another form of zone?


The purpose of every defense is to limit easy baskets. Pop never goes zone, but the Spurs shut down the lane. They do it by doubling and reacting.

A 2-3 zone is weak on the wings and between the ft line and 3pt line.

A box-1-2-2 leaves post mismatches at the elbows.

grond wrote:

More relevant is that it was obvious that some adjustments should have been made (or at least tried), but were not (eg Yao on Boozer, even after repeated booze-outbursts). The issue in question is his flexibility. ie whether he recognises the need (and is willing) to change tact, not his skills once he's actually made up his mind to change.


Not sure what you're sayinga bout Yao on Boozer. When JVG put Yao on Okur and Yao refused to come out and guard the three we were bitching about that. The team wasn't tall or athletic enough to effectively guard those two. S.A. was willing to allow Boozer to go crazy by leaving Duncan on him, but the Rockets didn't have another starter as tall as Fabricio Oberto who was able to able to get a hand in Okur's face while Duncan(the shotblocker) could remain in the paint.

grond wrote: In genereal, JVG is old school. Loves defense, won't double, won't zone, doesn't play rookies if other options are available. I suspect Hayes would be seeing a lot more time and Landry/Scola a lot less under JVG. It is interesting tho' to think about what he'd do with 2 defensive studs like Artest/Battier with Yao behind them and looking more confident this (and last) season in terms of holding his position and anchoring the defense. The Rockets would be downright scary defensively.


Ummm, JVG played Hayes as a rookie. He also played Juwan Howard who was horrible defensively. So why wouldn't he play Scola who was a rookie, solid on defense, and capable on offense.
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Re: 2008 and 2009 Rockets with JVG 

Post#23 » by PocketRockets » Thu Dec 18, 2008 1:44 pm

Okay rock...

There you go. Yao on booze or okur is a mismatch in some sense b/c of yao's defensive abilities. What about running plays other than isos? That's not an adjustment that you can change however in the midst of a series b/c all year that's all they did. Give it to tmac or yao on the low block. Teams that didn't make the playoffs knew what we were going to do, much less playoff teams. Pop/Jac would have enough smarts to double dirk and terry (when he was hot) and get the ball out of their hands and make the other mavs beat us. JVG also let the other players think it was okay to watch the tmac show all season. That hurt us in the playoffs.

Sure I'll give you Pop/Jax had good players, but how do you know jordan/kobe, etc would become the players they were without a good coach like Phil? This is a chicken/egg argument b/c you don't. You underestimate good coaching b/c you don't know what type of ego's these players have. You think any other coach could get rodman to play the way he did for the bulls? You have to know how much rope to give players and when to pull back.
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Re: 2008 and 2009 Rockets with JVG 

Post#24 » by BaYBaller » Thu Dec 18, 2008 11:12 pm

My opinion of JVG was that you can not really fault him for not running inventive offenses (though he ran great plays out of timeouts) because that's not his calling card, everybody knew this. You can however blame him for not adjusting on defense. Zone has holes, obviously, but the issue I always had with the 06 series was that very year a zone defense was shown to be effective vs Utah's most potent play, the Boozer - Williams pick and roll, which absolutely killed us that series.

As for rotations there's no doubt Scola would get plenty of burn under JVG as he's a hustle, full-effort veteran player. However I would seriously question whether Landry and Brooks would be where they are now under JVG. In fact I do not believe the team would've drafted Brooks had JVG still been coach.
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Re: 2008 and 2009 Rockets with JVG 

Post#25 » by tha_rock220 » Sat Dec 20, 2008 12:04 am

PocketRockets wrote: Okay rock...

There you go. Yao on booze or okur is a mismatch in some sense b/c of yao's defensive abilities. What about running plays other than isos? That's not an adjustment that you can change however in the midst of a series b/c all year that's all they did. Give it to tmac or yao on the low block. Teams that didn't make the playoffs knew what we were going to do, much less playoff teams. Pop/Jac would have enough smarts to double dirk and terry (when he was hot) and get the ball out of their hands and make the other mavs beat us. JVG also let the other players think it was okay to watch the tmac show all season. That hurt us in the playoffs.


1. The "simple" offense run JVG was run by Pop in his 4 titles and Pat Riley in his last one. High screen n roll, perimeter and post isos, and good 3 pt shooting. No, niether of the the three have a playbook that has just 3 plays, but the offenses are largely the same.

2. So you're adjustment against Dallas in 05 would have been to double Dirk(who shot 35% for the series) or Jason Terry(who did kill us that series). Well JVG did bring help over on Jet, and the games we won were the games where Stack, Finley, Howard, and Daniels didn't kill us when we did.

Fine, so how do you propose JVG make up for the bigger, faster Mavericks once Kieth Van Horn got hurt??? Dallas back then relied on matchup problems created by Nowitzki. T-Mac took that away, but the rest of the Mavericks were too good. We lost because Sura wasn't quick enough to hold Terry without Help, Wesley was too small to guard Stackhouse and Finley without help, Padgett was expected to guard Josh Howard(!?!?!?!) or maybe Ryan Bowen was given that job only then it was 4 on 5 on offense.

Yao on Booz, I'm still not sure what you're saying about that. What should Jeff have done???




PocketRockets wrote: Sure I'll give you Pop/Jax had good players, but how do you know jordan/kobe, etc would become the players they were without a good coach like Phil? This is a chicken/egg argument b/c you don't. You underestimate good coaching b/c you don't know what type of ego's these players have. You think any other coach could get rodman to play the way he did for the bulls? You have to know how much rope to give players and when to pull back.


Jordan was already a good player before Jackson as was Shaq. Look at the Bulls back then. You saw an obvious trend of improvement against Detroit before and after Phil's arrival. We're seeing now how "great" a coach PJax is. He didn't have the talent and he couldn't get out of the 1st round. Now he does and they're a favorite to win it all. Popovich went 17-47 in 97 before Duncan got there and now he's talking about hanging it up soon(see when Duncan retires). Larry and Hubie Brown are excellent coaches who have rarely had the talent needed to win a title, and LB only has one because of it. Doc Rivers is worse than all 4 of them yet he won a title last year because the talent his team had. There's no getting around this. Yeah, a coach is important for an NBA team but they take a backseat to the quality of players that team has. So there's no chicken/egg argument.
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