Rockets Van Gundy to retire!

[WoodysGirl]

Woohoo!!

Report: Rockets coach to retire
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FOXSports.com
Posted: 3 hours ago



Jeff Van Gundy is retiring, again.

For the second time in his career, Van Gundy is walking away from coaching in the NBA, the New York Post is reporting.

Van Gundy's Rockets lost 103-99 Saturday in Game 7 of their first-round Western Conference playoff series with the Jazz. It was the third time in Van Gundy's four-year tenture in Houston that the Rockets were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. The retirement has nothing to do with Saturday's loss, and the Post reports that Van Gundy's mind has been made up about his future for weeks.

The Rockets blew a 2-0 lead for the second time in three seasons in their series loss to the Jazz. Houston won twice in Dallas in 2005, then dropped the series in seven games.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/6781726

 

[Yeagermeister]

Woohoo!!

Report: Rockets coach to retire
Story Tools:
Print Email Blog This
FOXSports.com
Posted: 3 hours ago



Jeff Van Gundy is retiring, again.

For the second time in his career, Van Gundy is walking away from coaching in the NBA, the New York Post is reporting.

Van Gundy's Rockets lost 103-99 Saturday in Game 7 of their first-round Western Conference playoff series with the Jazz. It was the third time in Van Gundy's four-year tenture in Houston that the Rockets were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs. The retirement has nothing to do with Saturday's loss, and the Post reports that Van Gundy's mind has been made up about his future for weeks.

The Rockets blew a 2-0 lead for the second time in three seasons in their series loss to the Jazz. Houston won twice in Dallas in 2005, then dropped the series in seven games.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nba/story/6781726

Fratello is available

 

[zrinkill]

P.J. Carlesimo is who you should go after ..... although my Spurs would hate to lose him.

 

[Mavs Man]

The coaching zombie is finally out of the league.

He seemed like a good coach. He did a good job getting the Knicks into the Finals in 1999. Until he put Ewing back in the lineup.

 

[ThreeSportStar80]

Van Gundy could never get a team over the hump, he looks beat up after wins or losses what gives with that guy??? I'd take his younger brother Stan Van Gundy over him, LMAO!

 

[Mavs Man]

Not so fast . . . he hasn't retired yet.

http://sports.yahoo.com/nba/news;_y...YF?slug=ap-rockets-vangundy&prov=ap&type=lgns

Van Gundy to take time in weighing future as coach
By CHRIS DUNCAN, AP Sports Writer
May 7, 2007
AP - May 7, 1:59 pm EDT

HOUSTON (AP) -- Frustrated by his team's ouster in the first round, Jeff Van Gundy plans to take some time to evaluate his future as coach of the Houston Rockets.

The Rockets' season ended Saturday with a Game 7 loss to Utah, and a report in the New York Post the next day said Van Gundy was going to retire.

"I do the same thing every year since I've been coaching -- I sit back and I think about what's right for the team and what's right for myself," Van Gundy said Monday. "This is no different."

Van Gundy has no immediate plans to make a major decision.

"To do that, when I'm still emotionally frustrated with the outcome (of the series) would be, really, a disservice to everybody involved," he said. "Where that originated, I haven't seen the story, so I can't tell you. When I got called about it, it caught me off-guard a little bit."

Van Gundy has one year left on his nonguaranteed contract, meaning the Rockets have the right to terminate it any time after June 30. Van Gundy said he had no timetable for meeting with Rockets owner Les Alexander.

"To me, I'm under contract," he said. "I love the team, I like the organization a lot, I've been treated extremely well here. I have zero complaints."

Van Gundy met with his players for about 15 minutes Monday.

Afterward, Tracy McGrady reiterated his support for Van Gundy, calling him "the best coach I ever played for." But McGrady offered no insight into whether Van Gundy addressed his future during the meeting.

"As far as I'm concerned, he's still our coach and that's all I can give you," said McGrady, who added that Van Gundy told the players during the meeting he'd be talking with them individually over the summer.

Van Gundy, a former assistant to Pat Riley and Don Nelson, coached New York for six seasons, then quit when the Knicks started 10-9 in 2001-02. He spent the next year working in television before becoming Houston's coach before the 2003-04 season.

He repeatedly chastised himself Monday for losing Saturday's game and three other home playoff games in his four seasons as the Rockets' coach -- to the Los Angeles Lakers in Game 4 in 2004 and twice to Dallas in 2005.

Van Gundy expected those losses to come up when he sat down with Alexander and new general manager Daryl Morey, the successor to retiring Carroll Dawson.

"This is a result-oriented business," Van Gundy said. "I have to take responsibility. Those four home playoff losses -- I'm not saying you're going to win them all. But if you're management, you have to look at that, certainly."

The Rockets haven't won a playoff series since 1997, and Van Gundy has lost their last three. He's had Yao Ming for all three series and Yao and McGrady for the last two.

"They want to work, they want to win," Van Gundy said. "I'm disappointed that I haven't been able to help, not just those two, but the whole group get over the hump in that first round. That's where my emotion is right now."

The Rockets went 52-30 this season, their best record since 1997. Van Gundy said the franchise has "made strides forward," but needs to make offseason changes to compete with the elite in the Western Conference. He wouldn't specify what those changes might be.

"We're a really good regular-season team," he said. "What we have to decide is whether that can translate into playoff success. Something's got to change, so we can get more playoff success."

 

[WoodysGirl]

Got my hopes up for nothing... ~sigh~

 

[Mavs Man]

Keep in mind that Parcells did the same thing this year and he ended up leaving.

 

[NIBGoldenchild]

Van Gundy retiring will go along way in taking the Rockets to the next level, and keeping T-Mac's sanity.

 

[coogrfan]

Van Gundy retiring will go along way in taking the Rockets to the next level, and keeping T-Mac's sanity.

Upgrading the talent level of the ballclub would do far more. Any team that's playing Rafer Alston 44 minutes a night has serious issues.

 

[Mavs Man]

More on the subject . . .

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-around 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 the Rockets signed significant free agents in his four years as coach. Still, Van Gundy resurrected Dikembe Mutombo and Juwan Howard for productive seasons, and he 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, recently told Yahoo! Sports 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 interest in 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 doesn't seem 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 unathletic 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.

 

[Mavs Man]

Okay, now it's official:

http://sports.espn.go.com/nba/news/story?id=2874873

Van Gundy fired by Rockets after four seasons
ESPN.com news services

HOUSTON -- Houston Rockets coach Jeff Van Gundy was fired Friday, less than two weeks after the team made yet another first-round playoff exit.

Jeff Van Gundy was ultimately done in by his inability to get the Rockets to be more than a first-round playoff team.

The Rockets went 52-30 last season but lost to Utah in seven games, prompting speculation that Van Gundy was going to step down or be fired. It was the Rockets' third first-round loss in four seasons under Van Gundy.

Van Gundy had one non-guaranteed year left on his contract, meaning the team held the option to retain him.

"First and foremost we want to thank Jeff for his tireless efforts here with the team over the past four seasons," Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said in a statement. "Jeff built the team into a top defensive club and played a crucial part in helping mold this team into a playoff contender.

"Since the end of the postseason, we have had numerous conversations with Jeff about his interest in proceeding as the head coach. He asked for, and was granted, additional time to evaluate his situation with the agreement that we would begin looking into other candidates. During that process it became clear that Jeff did not want to continue in any capacity with the team other than as head coach."

According to Morey, Van Gundy requested and was offered the opportunity to stay within the organization in a senior consultant capacity.

The 45-year-old Van Gundy led the Rockets to a 182-146 record in four seasons. But Houston went 7-12 in three postseason appearances and more was expected from teams anchored by All-Stars Tracy McGrady and Yao Ming. McGrady dropped to 0-6 in playoff series when the Rockets lost to Utah.

Van Gundy was working in television when the Rockets hired him before the 2003-04 season. Before that, Van Gundy coached the New York Knicks for seven seasons, leading them to the NBA finals in 1999.

Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.