I like his take and it's definitely true, we are not going to win now and we need to hire a coach for the (near) future. Just say no to Anto!
I disagree that we're not going to win now, I think that's just something people who hate Morey say. However, I agree with the overall take that we should go for a new coach. The top teams are too cutting edge for us to be throwing around 10 year old systems.
I am always in favor of giving opportunities to fresh blood instead of retreads. If people only wanted to hire experienced people, nobody would ever get a job out of college. I would still be unemployed. You get experience by someone giving you a shot. Somebody had to give pat Riley, Phil Jackson, Rick Carlisle, etc there first shot to prove themselves.
Look at Tyron Lue and how he made key changes to get his team A1 for the playoffs. They look better than the Warriors currently
Good thing we dropped that draft pick because we were going to "turn the corner" against Golden State. I'm really glad we have "playoff experience" instead of that asset. At least we have Sam Dekker.
I would have preferred the pick too, however there is tremendous value in James Harden feeling just how hopeless it is for him to try to single handedly beat a great team, for him to feel how much it DOES matter that he doesn't play defense despite what he provides offensively. There is value in James Harden watch Steph Curry become MVP. There is value in James Harden watching the guy who he believes he is better than sit out the series and still lose. These are lessons that star players need in order to grow. For sure, some players get these lessons and don't learn. But you have to get these lessons to learn. Olajuwon had these lessons. Jordan had these lessons. It's absolutely valuable.
Win now ruined Yao and T-Mac's chances by getting a bunch of talentless over the hill vets instead of grooming young players around them. T-Mac was only 25 when we traded for him. Yao was 24. Are you kidding me? Win NOW?!? The injuries were just a bad run of luck, but doesn't change anything. We should have built a team to grow into their primes together. We started getting the idea with Brooks, Landry, Lowry...but the injuries to our stars robbed us of at least a 4 year window of contending with prime stars and young studs. It's now over for Dwight and Harden surrounded by a bunch of over the hill former athletic players. Where did people get so impatient. Build a team around your star and let them grow for 3 or more seasons. People act like the window is closed at 28 now or something. Hakeem didn't win til 31.. We lost in the first round 4 straight seasons before winning 42 games and missing the playoffs in 91/92. Fired our COTY and did we panic and try and sign a bunch of stars and veteran coaches? No. We let the young assistant in Rudy T with no real coaching experience take over as head coach and we stuck a rookie that no one wanted into the starting lineup and nearly advanced to the WCF. Let that team grow and drafted a rookie pg and gave him heavy 6th man minutes and we won it all. They were patient. Thorpe had been there since 88, Maxwell since 89, Kenny since 90. Olajuwon of course, that's 4 of our championship starters that had been growing on the team for years. In 95 LE$ lucked out. Trading OT for Drexler was a good trade because Drexler was simply a better player and a HOF'er, but LE$ got greedy and impatient when it came to star chasing after that. Now everyone wants to be impatient like Les and go star chasing when it's clearly not working because we didn't have a foundation to build and groom over several years first. Just building a contender overnight worked for Miami and Boston because LeBron and KG were top 10-20 all time talents. Harden is not on that level and unless you can get Durant, no free agent is going to make you a heavy favorite to win it all in a league with several all time great teams. We need a smart young head coach to grow with a young team around Harden.
You're forgetting that the game has changed since then. Dream was operating in the last part of the "BIG MAN" era & Charlie won a coin toss to draft him. Yao played during the change over from the "pound the ball inside game" to the "no hand checking, perimeter game". He also played for the Chinese National team when not playing in the NBA, hence the injuries. Also,Boston and especially Miami have changed the winning philosophy to the big 3 or at least big 2 winning combination. Therefore, we're chasing "stars" rather than building through the draft, because Les doesn't want any loosing seasons. So we're going to continue laong this road as long as Les owns the Rockets.
Oddly about as well as experienced-proven blood has in most of the post-championship era: just above .500.
Rockets aren't even close because 1. losing too many assets and getting nothing in return (2016 1st, Parsons, and probably Dwight, Jones, and D-Mo) and 2. bad contracts/fits (Ariza and Brewer). Add a new coach and there is no way all the pieces come together in just one season.
