Daryl Morey is throwing away the season by keeping McHale as coach.

McHale will make any roster look like chumps. He is that much of an idiot when it comes to coaching

You cannot ask for a better roster than this which is two deep at every position with experience.

 

Agreed. I guarantee that if the Rockets deal Lawson because they conclude he's a bust, he'll immediately start tearing it up on whatever team he winds up with. You wanna know why he sucks this year? Because he's been reduced to standing around the perimeter as a spot-up shooter. That's not his strength. He's a playmaker, so let him handle the damn basketball and create plays for his teammates. That's on McHale to design plays that utilize Lawson's skills. If he allows Harden to ISO at the top of the key for 20 seconds, no one's gonna look good in this offense(and no one has so far).

And I don't wanna hear any BS about the team being unable to handle two players in the backcourt who need the basketball to be effective. Plenty of teams in the NBA have been able to succeed with a really good PG and SG. The Warriors seem to be doing just fine with Curry and Thompson. Hell, the Rockets themselves made it work when they had Drexler and Cassell.

 

McHale isnt all that bad. He's just misunderstood. Or he misunderstood how to coach a team.

 

come playoffs. lawson's the main playmaker, his shot isn't falling. add to this his habit of throwing up a proportional number midrange shots which he's poor at. then on defense, he has none. so doesn't have that as a fallback to stay on the court. what then? he isn't the player he was 4 seasons ago.

lawson's early struggles can be a silver-lining but it's on morey to act on it. morey's got to "know when to hold 'em, Know when to fold 'em, Know when to walk away, And know when to run." in this situation.

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Again, if people wanna write off Lawson this quickly, go ahead. But this reminds of when we had Quitten and Rudy decided to plug him into the same role Horry had as a 3-point shooter and defender. Not surprisingly, Quitten did poorly here and was so miserable that he forced the team to deal him after just one lockout-shortened season. And yes, he did have some horrible moments in that Lakers series, but he also did pretty damn well the following season in Portland(at least til Game 7 of the WCF), so there was plenty of evidence to back up his claim that he wasn't being utilized correctly.

Same thing's happening with Lawson. We bring in another playmaker whose strength is creating shots for his teammates based on his assist totals last season. What do we do with him when he arrives? Plug him into the Pat Beverley role. Stand around the perimeter watching Harden dribble and try to go for steals on the defensive end. You have to create a system and design plays that take advantage of your players' strengths. Just like we all know Dwight is a horrible postup player and is better suited in PnR situations, Lawson is not a spotup 3-point shooter. It's on McHale and his staff to figure these things out and make the necessary adjustments. If the players won't cooperate, bench them. If the coaches are unwilling or unable to adjust, fire them.

 

the defense is a bigger issue than the offense. lawson's shooting will only improve if going by averages. however, it's the former where he won't help at all today or tomorrow. big picture, he's not the right piece at pg.

 

The question is, who can you get that is better than McHale?

There are not many options.

Thibs is an excellent coach but he will not handle skipping Howard in B2B well. He will not get along well with Alwxander or Morey either. Thibs wants full control of the organization and that won't happen in Houston.

 

Adelman is gone because he didn't communicate with the owner and wanted control over trades/free agency. He made negative comments while still coach and did not buy into analytics. That doesn't even take into account his nepotism.

Adelman left for a job that gave him the money, management control and the ability to hire his family members as he see fit. It was a disaster.

Finch was also not to be Adelman's top assistant. It is also not unusual for a GM to have input on an assistant coach being added to a staff.

When you have a GM and Coach with different philosophies and view points, a divorce almost always happens. In the case of Adelman, he wasn't gone because he was a poor coach. The same thing happened with Thibs in Chicago.

Ultimately you have one Chief and a lot of Indians. Adelman and Thibs wanted to be Chief and it was a disaster. Thibs will probably get his chance.

 

Thinking about this a little more... maybe McHale shouldn't be fired.

Pelicans fired Monty Williams because they thought he was underachieving. They hire Warriors assistant Alvin Gentry, and the team is 1-8 right now.

Clippers fired Vinny Del Negro after he won 56 games. They hired Doc Rivers, and in his two seasons he's won 57 and 56 games. Virtually no improvement.

Although, the Warriors fired Mark Jackson and hired Steve Kerr, and we all know what happened. But I think the Warriors success had as much to do with Draymond Green as it did Steve Kerr.

 

Can you please provide the year that Rick Adelman was inducted into the Hall of Fame?

 

coaching's impact can be vastly overstated, esp. when things are not going so well or "as expected". and this is particularly true if a team is filled with mostly veteran players.

as to gsw, it was irrelevant for a long time, until mark jackson. i've always been curious to see what if they had kept him for another yr. or 2. of coz there's no way to know now.

 

funny that the season we bring back pretty much every key piece from the previous season and even added one (so no roster upheaval), the players get comfortable and play ****ty.

 

Depends on who you replace McHale with. I don't think the Spurs would've been anywhere near as great as they were had Popovich been patient with Bob Hill and not taken his job. The Mavs didn't get over the hump with Nellie or Avery. It took Carlisle to get it done. Ironically, Carlisle himself was canned after taking the Pistons to the ECF and then Larry Brown won a title the following season and came within 12 minutes of winning a 2nd straight one.

It's not just this season's horrible results through 10 games that have me concerned with McHale. We've had the same problems for 4+ seasons under him. Careless turnovers, inexcusable losses against bad opponents, late season collapses, stagnant offense, huge runs given up to the other team. It doesn't matter how good the roster is. It's the same thing every year. At some point you have to stop blaming the players and start wondering if McHale is simply incapable of doing basic things a coach is supposed to do.

 

when he signed to coach the t-wolves his son joined him there as their analytics guy.

 

that description would fit every rockets incarnation this century.

 

Players' development is the crucial component. Warriors are better this year b/c Curry has actually improved his range, and thus make their team even scarier offensively. That has nothing to do with Kerr or the great Luke Walton.

The Rockets can get a new coach if they want, but the same problems persist, and that starts with Harden.

 

Good points. I'd add Kerr getting Iggy to buy into a sixth man role, too.

 

No. Mark Jackson utilised a system FULL of isos that didn't fit with his players' strengths. Kerr onthe other hand uses a system that does.
At the start of last season noone thought that GSW would be a legitimate contender. They thought they had an outside chance.
Using Green and getting Iggy to buy into coming off the bench are also due to coaching.
It is very hard to convince a player as good as Iggy to come off the bench for the likes of H.Barnes because he would make the bench better.

Ofc GSW is not all due to coaching. But downplaying the importance of coaching is a big mistake.

Right now what does McHale offers to teh Rockets? The one thing he's supposed to be good at, being a players' coach he fails at.

 

Another two examples of the importance and the effect of coaching is going on right now if you pay attention.
First the Bulls.
"We didn't have good defence because of Thibs, we had good defence because of our players."
"Our players have developed already into good defenders, we used Thibs for what he's worth, now we don't need him anymore. Time to fix the offence"

Said hundreds of Bulls fans.
And now the Bulls are a terribly defensive team. And the reason it isn't more eyepopping is because their opponents have been unlucky in hitting wide open shots. But it will show in the following two weeks at most.

Second example :Charlotte.
Last year Clifford used the famous "Alfence". Have Kemba dribble the ball jack up a midrange brick and/or pass it to Al Jeff. Result one of the worst offences in the league , worst shooting 3s in the league,and one of the slowest paces. Every possesion was a slow torture.
This year because of the inflatuation with playing fast and because he is in the hot seat, they play fast shooting THREES, use Al Jeff off the bench or in specific situations and here we are.
They play much better than last year.

 

Do teams really hire a high profile coach during the middle of the season?