what is happening to Yao and T-Mac

We should let the history tell the story, giving all the opportunities that JVG can pick, choose and use for all the players, this is the team the way he wants to play, there is no way they can win a ring with this settings, no matter how JVG pulling his hair and drawing darker eye bags, the system he is using and running is out-of-date, and not going to get a ring with the players he has sculpted them in, if anyone believes that JVG can use these 8-9 men and win a ring, give JVG a life-time contract in Houston.

I truly hope JVG leaves Rox and let another better or a great coach use exactly the same roster and play a season, when you compared 2 different systems, then you know what really went wrong, and in my heart, I believe JVG’s system on/off the court is wrong, how he thinks, uses, designs, and inability to solve the opponent’s game plan on the spot are the main reasons that Rox can not jump too far in playoffs.

peace out

And I live in Australia. The country could barely care about its own hoops league, much less the NBA. I have zero access to these “talking heads” you speak of, and all the information I get about the Rockets are online, from websites like yours to SI.com, Clutchfans.net, ESPN, Truehoop.com, Freedarko, etc. Then I try to balance that out through little else but common sense.

I don’t care how much of a hardass JVG is (and from all accounts he’s actually a much nicer guy to the players behind closed doors, unlike Jerry Sloan, who’s a legit jerk. Ask Amaechi.), this was Bonzi’s ONLY chance to prove himself. If that means playing by Van Gundy’s rules, then so be it. He couldn’t even do that.

And all this talk about how JVG doesn’t “motivate” people is infuriatingly ridiculous. Just look at Chuck Hayes’s production, or the incredibly long leash he gives McGrady in the offence, because he knows that’s the best way to use him. The go-ahead he gives Luther Head to shoot in the fourth, no matter how badly he shot in the first three quarters.

Or, more importantly, how he made an undertalented team competitive in the West when Yao went out - you think that’s all strictly “tactical”? Or don’t you think him making the players believe that they can win games with Yao Ming out for 30+games could have played some part in that?

Maybe if JVG opened his practices to the public then maybe all this “bad motivator” nonsense would go away. But knowing the Internet, probably not.

I’m sorry if I was insulting. My response was more to the general thinking of people who listen not only to Houston sports talk shows, but follow the analysts on national TV and print and regurgitate their words like it’s The Gospel. I sometimes get frustrated by those people, and I can tell by your deep thinking response that you’re not one of them.

In sum, JVG is a great coach, but I think he has a little ways to go in cultivating young “skill” players (Chuck Hayes not included in that category) and being more patient with them as they make mistakes in real games early on in the season. If it hadn’t been for T-Mac’s injury, Luther Head probably wouldn’t have played as much last year because JVG doesn’t do that with young guards, and Luther wouldn’t have made the contribution he has made this season.

Well said, Jeff. I agree.

Yao’s defense on Boozer needs some adjustments. Can not give Boozer that much room to lunch Js. Boozer’s Js have high enough of arch to clear Yao who is two to three steps back. Boozer is considered a post player. Just close up on him. If he drives you need your team defense to help out.

Just really perplexed during the game. I too hoped that none of the bench scored ever in the game, just to amplify the ZERO bench pt a bit more. How can they not hit one ? Hopefully they will get used to the noise and pressure in Salt Lake. Yao especially.

Guess he was scared and frustrated, lost his cool in the game, using the legs not head to play already. He’s such an intelligent player yet he has a hard time to get adapted to a newly-built difficult situation. However once he messed up and he watched the tape himself, he would come up strong and smart again until new problems are coming up. This is how he evolves his game and his court-IQ.

My take for game 4, Rockets s coming home with a 3:1,

Great observation about how Yao has a hard time getting adapted to a newly-built difficult situation. It must be more obvious than I thought. But I do agree he is very intelligent and can make the necessary adjustments to correct his mistakes. And those corrections end up improving him for the long-run, but sometimes he has the tendency to fall back into bad habits when the intensity of the situation is stronger than what he has seen before (Game 3 in front of a rocking Utah crowd can be considered one of them). But he’s human, just like the rest of us, so I guess it’s not that unusual.

As nice of a guy he is, I don’t have much respect for Fred Carter’s predictions. No one knows who he is, and he’s so mediocre as an analyst, he’s never been able to get to a big network (the 30-minute ESPN show on the NBA doesn’t count). When you’re like that, you have to make contrarian predictions to try to make a name for yourself. And when you’re wrong, you dig yourself into a deeper hole. It’s just like gambling.

Could he have been helpful to the Rockets? The Bonzi Wells who went up against the Spurs last year would have been, sure. But that man never showed up.

His time with the Rockets was supposed to be his opportunity to show the NBA that he’s worth big money contracts. Instead, he let his monumental ego and stupidity get in the way. He’s had a history of doing that, you know. Ask Portland and Memphis.

Bonzi’s a big boy. Don’t blame Jeff Van Gundy for the man’s actions.

That’s the easiest way to think about it — that Bonzi was a cancer. But the great coaches of the league are able to take talented, but moody and/or strange players, and harness their talents when other coaches would give up on them. Rudy Tomjanovich was very good at that. He might not have been a great X’s and O’s coach, but he took a player like Vernon Maxwell who no one else wanted (the Spurs “sold” him to the Rockets for a mere $50k), and Vernon was instrumental in helping them win a championship. Vernon was such a crazy guy, they eventually had to let him go, but at least they got enough out of him to win a ring. JVG didn’t even get to the first step with Bonzi.

But in today’s “talking head” media world, fans start believing what the talking head idiots jump on. I listen to the Houston sports talk show hosts, and some of them are pretty egotistical with not much insightful to say when it comes to evaluating personnel, so they go bash easy targets. Unfortunately, some fans start believing it.