Those quotes on Melo... He all but says he doesn't necessarily like him but thinks he's a good player.
MDA: Hey, I've struggled before. It's part of the game. You gotta find ways to keep guys on the bandwagon. Sometimes it gets tough but this is actually coaching. ZL: You're 1-5. James & Chris have only played in 2 games together. I'm not writing serious analysis of the Rockets until we get those guys on the court together for like 6 or 7 games. Are you of the same mindset or are you already worried? MDA: You have to be worried. ... Opener, we laid an egg. It's like "Oh wow, OK." We weren't ready. Next game we played well & after that, it's just gone downhill. You worry about these things. Even if we were 4-1, we'd be worried about different things not working. Our goal like the other 29 teams is to try a win a championship & we're not even near that. You worry about things you can change & try not to worry about the things you can't. When James comes back & Ennis comes back & we have a full roster, things will be better. Will we be good enough? That's what you worry about but it's normal. Early in the year, you worry about everything. ZL: There was much noise about the switching defense. I watched your last game, Portland. It seemed like there were matchups you were trying not to switch into but it's not like you stopped switching. Is there an overhaul that will happen or what's the state of that? MDA: No because that's where you get in trouble. You never know until you go down the road a little bit but when we went to switching last year, last couple of years we were trending 12th-17th and we go to switching, we were 3rd. That got us to where we could compete with Golden State. We do think that's the road we gotta go down. Where's the problem? We're not executing our switches. You still have principles you have to do and there's too many times we have slip-ups. Someone said we're like 30th in points given up in the paint. That's not a good stat but last year we were 28th and still 3rd. Yeah, that's something we have to work on. It's not the switching. It's easy to highlight it. Lillard's out there & Clint Capela is on him & Lillard jukes him or whatever & hits a three, he does that against everybody. That's what he does. What people don't realize, he does that against everyone. If you give him daylight, that's what he does. If he's on, he'll score. It's other little things. It's not executing a switch properly, low man isn't there, not boxing out, not getting back & matching up. It's normal basketball but people want to see something explainable. ... ZL: When did you find out Trevor was leaving & did you try to talk him out of it? MDA: No I didn't. I knew Trevor wanted, rightly so, to get paid. It's a business. He wanted to get paid. I knew that with our current structure of salaries & tax, it would be tough to meet his needs. The last time I saw him I think was the awards show in LA. "Trevor, first of all for you & your family, I hope you get paid. Second of all, if you don't, please come back & let's keep this going on." It's just not physically possible to do that. ZL: When did you learn about Jeff Bzdelik? MDA: You learned the same day I learned. Maybe 3 days before we opened up training camp. I talked to Jeff a lot that week. You gotta do what's best for you & your family. Selfishly, yeah I want you here. That's not fair to him. I wanted him to be happy. Do what you think you need to do. That's what he wanted to do. You have to respect that, pick up the pieces & move on. [Wife/Marriage/Family talk] ZL: Carmelo Anthony is on your team now. When that happened, is there a conversation? MDA: Not like that. The only thing I want, I don't have to love all my guys, whether I do or not is irrelevant. I want the team to be the best & each player to have the best year they've ever had fun wise & production wise. ... Sometimes it comes down to where your ideas of what's good for the team isn't good for the individual & that's where you have conflicts. A coach looks at a team like a pyramid upside down, the whole team is along the base and the point is the one player and the player looks at the team as a regular pyramid, the point is him on top and the whole team is on the bottom. It's naturally a conflicting view and sometimes those views run into each other. You try to be honest. They won't love you for it. You don't take it personally. You just go on & try to do the best. ZL: Before the '16-17 season, story goes you went to the team, 'We're gonna play this way. Y'all want to play a different way, you'll have a bad season. You want to have a bad season, play that way. You want to play my way, we'll play my way." Was it that blunt? MDA: Pretty much. I got cocky, which usually you get in trouble for that. I had numbers to back me up. Before I was flying solo so I'd go into NY or LA and "This is the way we need to play." I'm talking to guys making $25M and winning championships. They're going "What, why would we do that? Why bring a failed system when no one has ever won that way?" and when things go a little bad "See, I told you! We can't play that way!" so that's where the conflict arises. In Houston, it's great. It starts with Daryl Morey & the analytic guys but also the owner back then & the owner now also believing in a certain way we should play. James believed that way. Now it's easy. We got the numbers to back it up. You can exaggerate anything but it just shows how we want to play is the way to go. That's what we think. Golden State proved it. OK, you can win that way. We're gonna push the envelope further and we'll see what happens. ZL: When did you hear that Alvin Gentry shout you out? MDA: As soon as he did. It was on TV or I read it. We've been friends forever. He's great. ZL: For those who don't remember, Gentry shouted out of the coaches office drenched in champagne, "Tell Mike D'Antoni he's vindicated!" MDA: It's funny because we went through...that's a big mistake I made in Phoenix. We didn't go far enough. I was timid. We could have dove in but didn't know how deep the pool was. Probably kept us from winning a championship. We should have gone all out. Then after 4 years of it, we reverted back to the old NBA way of playing basketball. ZL: Shaq. MDA: You can say Shaq's name but the way it was, post-up player & being bigger. That was a mistake on my part, losing the faith. If I had it over with, that's a big regret I have.
MDA: You can say Shaq's name but the way it was, post-up player & being bigger. That was a mistake on my part, losing the faith. If I had it over with, that's a big regret I have. ZL: You organically arrived at this offense last year that was super ISO heavy... MDA: No, I don't even like ISO. ZL: But the math worked. You arrived there because your PnR attack was so devastating. ... Over the summer & even now, did you anticipate different looks, or teams going back to defending you like prove PJ Tucker can shoot threes or prove James Ennis can shoot threes or an evolution like that? MDA: I'm with Daryl all the time in the summer. Just talking about getting role players that can make a 3 standing out there. There's only certain ways you can guard our offense. We think the same about Golden State. The only way you can guard Golden State is switch. You can't guard them if you don't switch. Doesn't mean you can guard them switching either. You have a chance. That's all we want, a chance. A chance to be able to win Same with our offense. You cannot guard them traditionally if you have all the pieces humming & do the right things. What we're seeing now is the big dropping back at the rim. They want to take away layups, not foul. Threes, they're staying home on the perimeter. I was talking to the team yesterday. If they drop the big back and we set a really good pick, whoever has the ball coming off, walk into a three. We should take 70 of them. We can't beat our head against the wall, especially without James, to try & finish at the rim. It's tough. We have adjusting to do. End of the day, we'll play the way we'll play. We gotta find other ways to manufacture the three types of shots we want. ZL: Do you buy the idea...JVG doesn't buy the idea of fatigue. He's skeptical about sports science. We were talking about Harden & getting fatigued in the Spurs series & again last year. Do you buy he got tired & now that he's won his MVP, he'll let you dial it back? MDA: Two questions pop up for me. One, I agree with you he did get tired. Why did he get tired? That's where the science comes in. He needs to play a certain amount of minutes. Say you dial it back to 33-34 minutes. Now the playoffs come and he needs to play 40 minutes a night. Is he ready? Oh yeah, he's rested but I didn't train for the marathon, never ran a marathon my whole life but now I'm gonna run the whole marathon & well I get tired. Yeah, you're gonna get tired. The biggest thing we dialed back last year was that we had Chris. He can play the same minutes but not the same usage. Chris can make some plays & vice versa. Synergy between the two has to work. When it does, James will be fine. Every player will get tired. I don't know if you dial it back & rest a game in November, does it help in May? Maybe? Maybe it can prevent injuries at some point? You can always debate it. If he gets hurt in November & resting for two weeks, does that help? I don't know. Yeah, don't play him as much he won't get hurt. Yeah OK, I don't know if that's true or not. ZL: What do you remember about Game 7 Warriors halftime locker room where that's one of the most bizarre halves of basketball I've seen. MDA: Biggest thing was making the point we were in the game because of our hustle. We'll make shots. We didn't. Keep our energy. Do the little things. We'll eventually hit shots. We didn't ever think we'd miss 27 straight. We didn't have anything to talk about other than mentally stay right where we are with our energy & we'll be fine. ZL: Do coaches talk about the Warriors 3rd Q? MDA: We verbalize it. We verbalize it maybe during the regular season & first two games of the series. If we gotta verbalize it in the 7th game because you don't know, we're in a world of hurt. They know. Players are talking about it. At that point, useless for me. ZL: Were you there in Phoenix the day Boris Diaw maxed out the vertical test? MDA: ... He just did it. He's more athletic than you think. His game is so smooth. He's understated in almost everything he does. He's one of my favorite all-time players. ... ZL: Care about getting into the HOF? MDA: No. Rudy Tomjanovich isn't in the HOF. ZL: As a member of the Rockets, you're obligated to say that. MDA: No I'm not. I'm just shocked. ... It is what it is. It's a nice honor. That won't make my life one way or another. ZL: I wonder if this is on your radar. You're 1-5. MDA: That's on my radar. ZL: It's November. MDA: That's on my radar. ZL: If you need something to change your luck, it's November which means it's Movember. Can we bring back the mustache? MDA: That's a bad thought. Not going back there. Not unless someone takes 20 years off my life. I don't think that'll happen. Mustache on, I'll age 10 years. ... In 2006/07, Daryl told me yesterday we were 1-5. ... ZL: He didn't tell you the 2nd part which was the point differential was like -1 after 6 games and your PD is a little different than that. ... One player, not an obvious star player, that you watched play & thought it would be fun to coach that guy? MDA: There's a lot of them. J.J. Redick is one. He's great. Kyle Korver is one. We're talking through the years. Any stretch four. There's a lot of great players out there. I love shooters & guys that play hard. ...
"No we are good. We feel really good about our rebuilt bench and signings!" "Why is Carter Williams shooting .... Ennis just keeps jumping up and down." "This **** isn't getting any better anytime soon......." "Yeah so Chris.... uh.... it is up to you and James because....... these other guys kind of suck."
MDA be like: "In our offense we want to shoot the 3." "I would like players that can shoot the 3, thanks."
Thanks @J.R. for the recap! It's a great listen if you have 30 minutes to spare. Loved that Mike wasn't afraid to do a podcast while we're struggling with our record to start the season. He has a very stable and stoic view on things. Hard to not love the guy as a coach.
What defense would he implement. Clint is good. . but he is no YAO and at this point not even Pat Ewing . . .. . Rocket River
I think he would come in and not care about what others opinions are and hold everyone accountable. He knows he can make more in broadcasting so either his way or he will go back to commentating. He could straighten this team out
Lowe asks about Melo, which seems to prompt MDA to explain how he likes some players and some he doesn't like, and it's not important whether he likes them or not. Hilarious.
Pretty smart PR move by the Rockets to have/let MDA do this interview. Overall, MDA interviews well and certainly conveys a "confident, but ah schucks" type of vibe.
