Yao Ming Mania! ~ View topic - Yao Ming: You Only Treasure After Losing Something Precious

Quote:

http://nba.sports.tom.com/2007-11-23/0424/09935527.html

Reporter Wang Meng reports from Houston

When Yao Ming had put on his training jersey and gears, tied his ankle protector, and stepped onto the court, he still found the Toyota Centre completely dark. It was only 2 and 1/2 hours prior to the game with Dallas Mavericks began, and the lightning for the basketball court still not opened. Yao Ming shook his head (in dismay), and shouted to the working staff: “Turn on the lights. It’s time for our shoot-around practice.”

If such thing happened a year ago, certainly somebody would have been the target of abuse by Jeff Van Gundy. Jeff Van Gundy demanded every member in his team to be the same as he was, to be always well prepared for playing, and such incident of a dark court when players were ready to practice would have never been allowed to happen. Jeff Van Gundy virtually almost spent his days and nights in Toyota Centre. Yao Ming was always the first player to show up at training or game time the earliest; but each time, he would find Jeff Van Gundy’s car already parked in the underground garage. Some working staff had told Yao Ming that Jeff Van Gundy would show up as early as 7 O’clock in the morning, and he would definitely not leave until 9 O’clock at night.

But it seems this is not Rick Adelman’s style. On the game day with Dallas Mavericks, it was one and a half hour before the game started and the players’ changing room was already opened public to the media. It was only then Rick Adelman was seen slowing walking out from the parking lot with his business suits on his arm. Apparently he was not in such a hurry. In the past, Jeff Van Gundy would have already leaned onto the wall of the players changing room, and started his pre-game briefing to the media. Right from the start of this new season, Yao Ming persisted on his habit of coming very early for his training, but now the chances for seeing Rick Adelman’s car already parked in the garage were very few, and could be counted with his fingers. So while Jeff Van Gundy is on one extreme of the spectrum, Rick Adelman obviously is on the other extreme. The current Rockets now are more relaxed and comfortable, but sometimes they are becoming somewhat sloppy.

After wrapping up those pre-game interviews, Jeff Van Gundy would enter the players changing room and started scribbling onto white board main points about his offense and defense strategies for the game; he would also sketch tactical charts onto the board to supplement what he could have left out in the scouting report. Now, all these became the responsibilities of the assistant coaches. The 3 assistant coaches (under Rick Adelman) would take turn to complete this task. Two hours before a particular competition started, the assistant coach would read from his small note book and start to write and draw onto the white board. Now compared to the days of Jeff Van Gundy, there were a lot more main points written on the board, because the scouting report (specially prepared for every opponent), that was distributed to each player prior to the competition was so sketchy and simple; it only contained some of the essential feature and play style of the star players of the opposing team, and 3 to 4 simple tactical charts. Content wise, the scouting report was not even 1/3 of Jeff Van Gundy’s scouting report.

Tracy McGrady once said: “Everything about Rick’s systems is offense related. We must thank Jeff for laying down a solid foundation on defense for us.”

Some people asked Yao Ming with a similar question: “Do you think the defense of the Rockets is relatively weaker than before?” Yao Ming replied with a forced smile: “It is only when people lose (something precious) then they start to treasure and cherish. When he was still around, I always heard people nitpicking and finding faults with him, and hoped he can do it more perfect. And when he failed their expectations and not able to achieve then people started to criticize him. Now it looks like people start to miss him and think of him.”

During play time Rick Adelman only shouted loudly and complained to referees, and very seldom he roared to his players. So now when the Rockets were at the brink of a cliff, they seemed to be without their reins, and so it would be very easy for them to slide and fell off the cliff.

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