If Pop were to coach Harden he would use him more like he uses Ginobili. He wouldn't run the entire offense through Harden.
ok, he lost the team. my question though dude, is what causes a coach to loose a team in 10 games? especially after a very successful previous season?
Well, you have to look at the offseason and why the team wasn't prepared on day one. I blame Morey and the Houston Rockets organization for not identifying the need to replace McHale during the offseason because clearly something was not right. Players were no responding to each other, the team was a mess and it's McHale's job to either fix it or go to Morey and let him know what's going on before the season starts. He did neither of those things and just hoped that everything would magically fix itself through "playing harder, clap clap". There were real chemistry problems being swept under the rug, part of the blame lies with Morey to. The Lawson and Thornton deals backfired, big time. Any time you have to fire a coach 10 games into a season, it means something really, really bad happened. It shows a total breakdown in the communication process of the entire organization, and lack of professionalism. Just embarrassing for the franchise.
I agree that there were issues, but for one thing morey is on record saying he made a mistake in firing mchale when he did. None of the issues went away after mchale was gone either. It just seems like it was an overreaction to a poor record after 10 games.
How do you know he didn't? One of the main reasons we looked so bad was b/c Harden was noticeably out of shape. It could've very easily been a Kobe/Shaq situation where Morey was forced to back either Harden or Dwight.
If Harden was so out of shape then he should have been benched. Wouldn't have been a popular move but it would have been the right move. I think the real issues were locker room things. Remember when Terry was asked about the state of the team and he responded with something like "Some of us want to be here, and some of us don't." or, something to that effect? Well, that's on the head coach to fix that problem. If he loses his voice in the locker room then what's the next step?? How many more games to you let the team lose before addressing it?
LOL We got to the western conference finals because Harden was crazy good that year and Dwight was Dwight in the playoffs before his dramatic current decline. McHale was nothing to write home about
Benching Harden would've been the worst move possible for McHale. Our offense was overly reliant on Harden so benching him would've guaranteed losses since we didn't have anyone who could step up to fill the void. And then, not only would we lose, but McHale would look like an idiot for benching the cornerstone of our offense when we couldn't generate points. When the team's star has the ear of the owner and GM, the head coach has effectively been neutered.
I think Popovich would help Harden get to the foul line more. The Spurs really have perfected the art of flopping.
You can't blame the coach when things go poorly, then give him no credit when the team is successful. Besides, harden no-showed in another huge game that year, mchales decision allowed them to advance, even if frauden was a big reason for their success that year.
I do agree with that, but I still think McHale overlooked a lot of our weaknesses, on defense in particular. He didn't prepare the team well enough, and over relied on talent.
I vividly recollect the hiring process of McHale and Alexander and Morey stated that they went with a rookie coach because of attracting household names that play in the post. - Star big men. Which we did and we fired him thereafter. We replaced him with a clown coach JBB for a whole season. They could have gone with Dwyane Casey or others. The second time they could have gone with a defensive coach and they chose All Out offense. It does not baffle me but some decision making are just hilarious. I do not think it is Milkhair's failure but those people who are behind all of this are seriously wasting fans' time.
This. He'd be a mega star on the Spurs. Harden was spoiled and coddled as soon as he landed on Houston soil. The franchise made it about him instantly and he had them by the balls.
Then he wouldn't play. Popovich would never run the ball domination scheme that Harden lives by. He would have 50% of this years' output on the Spurs - if his ego could accept the role. Westbrook and Harden are the ball dominant breed of superstar. I'd like to see either of them on a more balanced team again, like the early OKC years.
The Rockets had no direction under Mchale, lets not rewrite history, D'antoni is a better coach than Mchale but he did make clear mistakes. Far less than Mchale regularly made though.
Pop tells star players what to do, not the other way around He wouldn't wait until the offseason to ask if maybe his star player would be ok with strategic rest or playing off the ball sometimes
