Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle reports that when the Rockets were flying back from Miami to Houston after losing their 6th game in a row, that the players (especially Yao and McGrady) had discussions with coach Rick Adelman on how the offense should focus more on Adelman’s new system as opposed to keeping remnants of the old one around.

Evidently Adelman hasn’t been comfortable making a complete switch to his new offensive system. But after several losses in a row where guys were “standing around” and the shot selection was terrible at the end of games, I would have thought it would be a no-brainer for him to go to a more motion-oriented offense much earlier than after losing 6 games. That’s what Adelman had been brought into to do in the first place, right?

Plus, Adelman himself has said he isn’t as worried about how his team played in November as much as it did in April. That statement makes you think he was willing to go through the growing pains of the team learning the new offense. On top of that, the new offense seemed to be doing pretty well the first 6 games of the season when the Rockets went 5-1.

So the question remains, “Why did they move away from the new offense in the first place?” resulting in 6 straight losses. In addition, why did the defense become so porous so quickly? And why did it take so long to give Steve Francis more minutes like he did in Saturday night’s win against Denver? These are the issue that have many observers, including myself, wondering why Adelman wasn’t reacting fast enough with some situations (Francis, bad defense) and too fast with other situations (changing the offense back to the old style?).

I’ll have to admit that when you watch Adelman in a press conference or answering reporters’ questions, he is very impressive. But the aforementioned questions, as well as the lack of communication with his players during the game, and the absence of players saying they really buy into what he’s doing, still makes Rocket fans wonder if Adelman has what it takes to make them a consistent force in the Western Conference.

I guess we’ll find out on this upcoming West Coast road trip. If he stays the course with the current offense (ball movement) and the defense improves, then even if the Rockets lose, I’ll back off on my earlier plea to have a coaching change made.

This entry was posted on Sunday, November 25th, 2007 at 6:37 pm and is filed under Miscellaneous. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.