[Rockets.com] Adelman interview on McGrady

durvasa · Dec 30, 2009

http://www.nba.com/rockets/news/rockets_use_fantastic_finishin_2009_12_30.html

RICK ADELMAN (pre-game on Tracy McGrady)

It’s what it is. He’s wanted more playing time and we weren’t ready to do that at this point. It came to a head and we’ll see where it goes from here. We’ve talked about it enough and hopefully we can move on and see what happens from this point on.

(Physically what was missing from his game?): He’s been hurt for over a year. The thing that people want to write about it who he was two years ago and he isn’t that right now. I’ve said it before: we have a whole team here and it’s not just about what he wants or what he was going to want. It was about what can he do to help us win? And that was the bottom line to me. In the past, we’ve been able to play with him and last year we were able to work him in, but we had Yao, we had Ron and a lot more room for error last year.

We could run things through him in the past just like good teams do with great players and he was able to create a lot of offense for everybody else. We’re playing a different way (this year); we have to push the ball and play a certain way to give us a chance to win and we needed him to be part of that. I don’t think that was possible today. Tracy, he wanted to play and he wanted to push it and, unfortunately, you have to deal with the whole group and not just one individual. I think he’s coming back from major surgery and he’s rehabilitating and who knows when he’s going to get there, but right now he was not there – not enough to change the way we were going to play.

(is there a sense of relief?): Believe it or not, I had a feeling this was going to happen all along. It was in training camp where I was interested to see where he said he’s not supposed to be back until January or February. Well, OK. We started in training camp and he wanted to push himself and get out there quicker than we thought he was able to help us. I had to make that decision as to when we brought him back and we looked at it and he wasn’t satisfied with that, so we decided to go this way.

We’ll see what happens now. My job is still those guys in that locker room and we’re trying to win games. We’re trying to stay where we are and I know how fragile it is, so my whole concentration now has to be with the guys here and what we’re trying to do as a team.

(if he was OK with the status quo, would he be playing 7-8 minutes tonight?): Possibly. But I didn’t know what was that answer after the 7-8 minutes. Do you go up to 15, do you go up to 20 and then once you do that for two games does it have to be 30? It seemed like that was the direction it was being pushed and I wasn’t comfortable with that or ready to do that.

(was the explosiveness gone?): Well I think that’s pretty obvious if you watch him in those games. That’s the two things: He’s such a great creator and I still believe that he’s got so much skill and he’s so talented and such a smart player that he can be an effective offensive player. But it has to be a certain way: the ball has to go through him a lot of times. Yeah, the explosiveness definitely wasn’t there. He didn’t get to the basket like he used to, he didn’t have that first step where he could blow by people. And defensively he was struggling with that a little bit but that’s to be expected. We all expected that. I’ve seen that before from players who have had that surgery so it wasn’t unexpected to me. But we don’t know what timetable he has or if it’s going to come back.

(with him not being with the team any longer, does it limit this team’s potential?): I don’t believe so. He could have a real positive effect if, all things being equal, if he was willing to accept the minutes and we needed him at a certain time and he could play like we’re trying to play. I didn’t know if that was going to be possible going down the line. The guy has played ten years in the league and he’s played a certain way. He’s comfortable playing that way because he’s had great success but we were hoping that he could be a difference maker. Right now, our team is trying to play a certain way and we fell off recently in the way we were playing and a lot of that has to do with the schedule. We have a period coming up where I think this team can still compete at a level where we can be very competitive and we can win games. Whether Tracy could have helped us there, I would hope that maybe he could have with the talent he has but then there’s got to be an acceptance of how we’re going to play and how he was going to fit in with the group – at least this year.

(could Tracy come back with the Rockets?): Today, I would seriously doubt that. He’s made it clear that he wants to move on and we’ll see what we can do.

(did you get the sense that if you gave Tracy 15 minutes he would have wanted 20 and if you gave him 25 he would have wanted 30, etc.?): That’s what I didn’t know. The envelope was being pushed every time we did something. It would last a couple games and he would want it to be changed and I, after 6 games, was not willing to do that because I didn’t know how it was going to affect the team. I really did not know that. This team has a great group of guys and they bust their tails every night and in practice every day and the effect of that on the team – it affected us last year somewhat but we were able to overcome it – but right now I don’t know if we could overcome just how much it could affect everybody on the team. His reputation is tremendous in this league as far as talent but what you can do on the floor is what we have to look at.

(how disappointed are you that you couldn’t work things out?): Well, I decided to do that and it didn’t come easy when I decided to play him those 6 games. You remember, I read the Chronicle and I went with their thought process… Now I’m not so sure (laughs). No, we had three straight back to backs, Tracy was pushing to play, we had watched him in practice and I said at the time, ‘You’re going to play 7-8 minutes, so there’s no reason for you not to just go out there and attack.’ I felt the one game here he did that and he looked good. The other games that was not the case. Now a lot of that is because the game just went by him because he only had 7-8 minutes and that can happen.

But that was going to come sooner or later and I tried to do it during that time frame when the schedule was the way it was because I thought it would be easiest because we needed bodies when Chase went down. We needed to have people play anyway and I thought he could help us there, too, and we could get a look at him. It didn’t work out. He wanted more minutes than that and I just didn’t know what the answer was but I knew it wasn’t going to be just increasing minutes. I wanted to be positive that, whatever we did, it was going to go in the right direction for this team. When we sat him down two games, he decided that he wanted to move on and maybe that’s the best thing – see what we can do.

(did you think he wouldn’t accept what he was going to have to do to fit in with this team?): Well I watched him practice. We’ve watched him and seen the same things in practice that we saw last year when he was hurt and now he’s coming back and it’s all understandable. He’s played at such a high level (in the past) but I truly believe that he thinks that maybe he can turn it on and be an effective player but the way we’re playing didn’t jive with that. Maybe on another team he could fit in and play the 25 minutes and they could go to him – I don’t know, that could be possible. But I just saw the way it was going, it was going to be a difficult task, I could sense it.

(when he put the uniform on a month ago, how shocked were you?): That was all part of the process. That was something where he wanted to show that he was ready to play or whatever – I didn’t think it was real cool. I think we’re all dealing with the whole situation and I told him at the time: we’ve got a group here, a team here where we’re trying to develop something to keep up through this year with the injuries that we started out with. And that’s why I say the process, it wasn’t going smooth; it was being pushed. I got to the point where the pushing wasn’t going to continue. It was going to be what was best for the team and not for one individual.

(are you relieved?): If we could win tonight, I’d feel a lot better. Really this is the one day we’ve talked about it and I hope this is it. I’ve always said that these guys need to be consistent and stay with it day after day. And if I’m asking them to do that, I have to do it, too. I can’t be worried about what’s going on in another area of the organization – I’ve got to worry about these guys and we’ve got to try to maintain the consistency so we can compete like we have all year.
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[Rockets.com] Adelman interview on McGrady

durvasa JBB Rockets Fan

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[Rockets.com] Adelman interview on McGrady

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