Yao Ming's rockets prepare for new home, new season
(Houston Chronicle, the US )
Updated: 2003-10-28 10:47

Jeff Van Gundy would not pose for this picture.

He explained that he was not trying to be difficult. He understood the concept and that he is by far the most high-profile addition to the Rockets. He might even spend the buck and a half and to check out whoever does grace the cover of this section. But no, he would not be able to pose.

Van Gundy does not have much interest in drawing attention to himself. He does no television show, no radio show, no commercials. He will not be featured on the cover of the Rockets' media guide.

But it was not humility that inspired his objection to playing cover model.

Even his lament, "I'm so tired of talking about myself" did not indicate his refusal to smile and say cheese.

Instead, he insisted, "It's not about me."

The Rockets, he decided, will not be new and improved if the most meaningful change is the guy in the suit.

Instead, the Rockets can only make meaningful strides if they change from within. Or -- though he would never put it this way -- most of the faces remain the same, but the time has come for the Rockets to be remade in his all-business, bottom-line image.

"A coaching change brings no change," Van Gundy said. "Without change, there will not be a change of results. We have to change as a group. It's the same core group. It's not the coach who is going to be the catalyst of change. It's going to be the players."

Everything around the Rockets would seem different. In addition to Van Gundy becoming the first new Rockets coach in a dozen years, there is an entirely new staff. There has been a new training camp site and practice facility. There is a new arena and arena announcer. There are new colors, uniforms and logo. Practices, procedures and rules around the team have changed. Even the charter jet that carries the Rockets to and from road games is new.

But wearing a red, bleeding "R" probably won't intimidate the Spurs. And the Lakers have seen new arenas before.

Though most of the changes have little to do with the coaching change, Van Gundy's influence is everywhere. But after studying all things Rockets, he became convinced that for the team to really change and break out of a four-year residence in the lottery, the change must come from within.

The Rockets have kept their nucleus together with far greater patience -- or stubbornness, depending on one's perspective -- than most teams that have received so little in return. Steve Francis, Cuttino Mobley, Maurice Taylor, Kelvin Cato and Moochie Norris are going into their fourth season together. All but Taylor have been together longer than that, through the Rockets' lottery streak. Only Mobley remains from the Rockets' last playoff team.

"It's not anymore about what has happened to them ... but how they deal with what happened to them," Van Gundy said. "We've been in the lottery four straight years. Now what?

"Losing can have an unbelievably negative or positive effect. Negatively, you can become resigned to your fate. Or positively, you can become urgent and hungry to succeed. I hope we're the latter.

"You never know which comes first, winning or the right attitude. I know there is less difference between players and teams in terms of talent. There's a much bigger difference in terms of chemistry and team spirit. Winning teams always have the right attitude. Right chemistry and right team spirit. That's harder to find in the NBA."

That might come. For now, the Rockets' most noticeable change has been on the bench.

"Some of these guys have been here for quite a while," center Yao Ming said. "But I don't think to have a complete makeover is the answer. What we have to work on is fixing the weak points that we have instead of changing our entire direction. We have to get better."

Van Gundy couldn't have said it better. But that is not a coincidence. Increasingly, the Rockets have started to sound like their coach, to touch on his favorite themes. Francis in particular has begun to describe the Rockets, their strengths and weaknesses, with the same terse terms as Van Gundy.

Van Gundy has labeled Yao and Francis his best players and said getting a team to buy into the need for change "really falls on the best players.

"Some things are universally true," Van Gundy said. "One of the great universal truths in the NBA is that the best players and the head coach set a tone, an environment on how things are going to be, what the environment is and the culture is, a winning environment or a losing culture, a disciplined culture, a loose culture. That responsibility falls to the head coach and the best players to form a bond. You have one goal, one voice, one vision."

In some ways, that could have been difficult for Francis and Yao, who remain loyal to former Rockets coach Rudy Tomjanovich. They have found, however, that many of Van Gundy's values are the same as Tomjanovich's.

The Rockets have undergone changes. But none seems to be change for change's sake. The result seems to allow players to believe that Van Gundy's way will work without having to feel as if they are betraying Tomjanovich.

"They built us the right way," Francis said. "Not to take anything away from coach Van Gundy, but they basically built the nucleus of this team over the past four or five years. We've been trained for four or five years to be in this situation. This is a good situation to show what we've learned the past four seasons and what we're learning this season and to put it together. This is the year we should make some noise."

Francis is in many ways a fitting symbol for the Rockets' four years of sometimes-awkward rebuilding and their hopes to finally take the next step.

Van Gundy, however, has happily given Francis the ball, then compared him to a player he loved coaching as much as any.

"You know how people, whenever you're coming into a new situation, they're always trying to pollute your mind with the negativity?" Van Gundy said. "That's why I've learned to just wait and see. I'll go by what I see versus what I hear. I had a great experience back when I was the Knicks' coach. We traded for Larry Johnson and a couple of people called and said, `You're not going to like him.' But there was no one I enjoyed coaching more than him. No one. So I learned back then just to go with what I see, and it's been the same thing with Steve.

"What I heard was not true. He can defend and he can make good decisions. I don't know if he's a point guard or a two guard. All I know is that his ability transcends a position, and he can be both. He's a player. A lot of guys have a position, but they can't play. But when you're a player, you can play."

If Francis' role is not an issue, and Yao's never was, their next job is to influence their team. Yao is a part of the usual locker-room banter. But he is hardly outspoken. Francis has often tried to be more of an influence, vocal or not, with mixed results.

"Maybe not in the traditional sense of having to be outspoken, but your best players are always your leaders," Van Gundy said. "So they're going to set the tone. People talk about leadership, and it's always in the positive sense, but sometimes it's not. Sometimes your leaders are going to lead you in a negative direction.

"So it's up to our best players to lead us positively. Some may do it more vocally and some may do it by example. That's why it's so important for Steve, Yao, Jimmy (Jackson) and Cuttino to not only play the right way, but to practice the right way."

As much as his best players might lead, however, Van Gundy's teams are in many ways led by Van Gundy. His voice resonates. His voice becomes his players' voice.

"I've been letting them feel their way through what Jeff wants," Rockets assistant coach and former Knicks star Patrick Ewing said. "I think it's important they develop a very good relationship with Jeff. Somewhere down the line I see myself sitting down and talking to Steve and Cuttino and the rest of the guys."

But this is a different team than any Van Gundy has coached. He is different, too. When he took over the Knicks during the 1995-96 season, he was roughly the same age as his players. When he started as a Knicks assistant in 1989, he was younger than many. At 41, with a wife, Kim, and 7-year-old daughter, Mattie, he not only is of a different generation than Rockets players, his life is at a different stage.

"The group is going to be a challenging group," Van Gundy said. "It's a different group than I've ever coached. I feel like for the first time there's an age gap. I'm around younger men. I told one of them I was going to be his Father Flanagan. He looked like I had four eyes. He had no idea.

"The guys in New York, I was either their age or near their age. They were married, had kids. It was a different environment. These guys, I really have liked. You find out different doesn't mean better or worse. It just means different."

He also has noticed the difference in the Rockets' relationships. They might not be the fraternity brothers taking offseason vacations together any longer, but they remain pretty buddy-buddy. Van Gundy noticed, but he does not consider that quality relevant to anything else.

"I've never cared about how they hang," he said. "It's all about team chemistry. It's how they play together on the floor, how tough they are, if they'll work and share and sacrifice. If they like each other, that's a bonus. I don't think it has anything to do with performance. Some of the best teams I've had there have been some off the court very different personalities that probably didn't see eye to eye. But on the court, they played."

Van Gundy might be different, too. Friends and former players have advised him to try to enjoy the good times more.

"The only thing I missed about the NBA was the competition and the camaraderie," Van Gundy said. "You can never simulate that in any other aspect of your life. I was tight with Mike (Fratello) and Marv (Albert). But it's different. But I feel really good after a year and a half (away).

"I wasn't very good (as a television analyst), but I did like it. That was the biggest thing I learned. I can enjoy my life without coaching. That was the biggest thing. It ends for everybody. How long I stay in Houston will be directly determined by how we play, as it should be. It feels good to not have that added pressure. There is enough pressure. It feels good."

As much as coaches and players have always said that the real pressure is the pressure they put on themselves, in Van Gundy's case, it really seems true. He said in his first news conference that he missed "the misery." He has said he will see the negatives when they are there and when they're not there.

But the Rockets desperately needed to improve their attention to detail. As important, they finally seem to know it.

"It wasn't about our coach," Mobley said. "It was about us being professional and our attention to detail, things such as that. There were things Rudy told us to do and as a team we forgot it or did this or that instead. As a team, we learned from that. Being together for four years, our fifth year now with me and Steve, Cato, Mo, Moochie, we have to represent.

"Like coach said, we have to believe like him. Think big. That's our whole (motto.) I'm excited. I'm ready for us to have a really good season because we owe Houston that."

Perhaps Van Gundy won't have to be the face of the Rockets. Perhaps he is just another change around them.

Instead of getting the Rockets to look at him, Van Gundy has tried to get them to look at themselves, then make the changes that really matter.

"We have the pieces," Norris said. "We have the tools to get it done. We have the same players. We have to make it happen. We have to get it done. We have to take care of business. We haven't been in the playoffs. I want to see that next level.

"It's going to be up to us. We can't look anywhere but in the mirror."