Pretty sure Rudy still works for the Lakers and has no interest in coaching due to his health. When he was coach and Larry Smith was his assistant, I used to get free tickets and locker room passes. I miss those days. Larry Smith's son was my brothers best friend. I met JaRule in the bathroom of the locker room once. haha
Lmao@George Karl being too hard on Howard & Harden. That's exactly what a good coach is PAID TO DO. Our fans are clueless at times
We arent concerned about their feelings for the sake of their feelings. If you piss off your star player, they can turn to team cancer real fast..
Agreed. What's funny is that the perception of having a "too harsh" of a coach would be a bad thing for Harden is technically wrong since he's been singing praises for Thibodeau all summer and how Thibs is basically getting him in line to play defense. Great players (or players who aspire to be great) sometimes need a coach that won't take any crap regardless of star status.
Funny you note all of these problems with McHale with no hard facts to back it up. Are you an insider? Are you actually in the huddle seeing McHale not being able to hold his players accountable? And as for the strategist bit, we were actually among the best teams coming out of a time out. I'd think that means that the players are executing the way the coach wants them to. I think the issues you see as fans -- occasional hero-ball by Harden, stagnation in the offense, bad team defense at times -- are all hallmarks of a young team that hasn't had time to gel. Compare that to a team like the Blazers who've had the same starting lineup for two years, and you can see why they played better team offense and defense against us in the playoffs. That's why management is sticking with McHale. All of us aren't actually familiar with any of the issues first hand. Management and the players are. Who do you think can make the better judgement here?
lol Exactly. He has given us one of the best records last year in team history. And with crappy role players.
Way to generalize facts? We are one of the best coming out of a timeout on OFFENSE. Can you enlighten us on the DEFENSE part of coming out of a timeout?
Karl is the best option available. If we go by this standard, we will end up with another friendly coach, who will get us absolutely nowhere. Howard will be requesting trades, Harden will be still taking plays off on defense, and the team will continue running absolutely no plays on offense. This is where getting a Mchale-like coach will put us. So would you rather have another "likeable" coach who's clueless with his rotations and in game adjustments? Or a veteran coach who'll ruffle some feathers and hold everybody accountable? (Including the Harden). Karl may not be as friendly as Mchale, but he's just better in every category you think of.
JVG couldn't build an above-average offense around Yao and McGrady, both better offensive players than Howard and Harden. I love the man, but that ship sailed long ago. Karl would be the best choice. His teams in Denver were always up-tempo, FT-shooting machines. His teams in Seattle were nails on defense (that said, I don't see how he'd motivate Harden to consistently D up when he was never able to convince Melo). He'd probably be the right change in personality from McHale. That said, as long as we aren't having personality clashes, let's see if McHale improves. This will only be his fourth year beginning a season as his team's head coach, and only the third full training camp. What so many impatient fans are (I guess) too stupid to realize is, coaches generally get better with experience. Doc Rivers was a bad coach for a while. Pop couldn't coach offense for years. Coaches evolve.
I'm not sure if you have watched the playoffs against Portland, but if you did you wouldn't need proof of how bad Mchale is. He's horrible. The Lillard shot was just the cherry on top, but he was horrible before that. I am no insider, but do have common sense. Even national analysts were questioning what the hell this guy was doing. You want facts: -Took him 3 playoff games to figure out what a double team was against LMA -Took Parson's out the game when he was scorching hot, Portland ended up winning that game. When asked after the game why he did that, he really had no answer -Kept putting Lin in the game when he went full r****d mode in the 4th quarter. Lin single handedly cost us 2 games (almost 3). Every Rocket fan across the world saw it coming but Mchale -The last play w/ Lillard smh. Anytime you're in a situation with .08 seconds, common sense tells you to face guard the shooters to make it difficult to get to their sweet spot. Not only did he not do that, he had 6'8 PARSONS guarding Lillard The players were confused on how to guard it, which is a reflection of the coach. Mchale just sucks
coaches are not paid to be harsh, no matter how capitalized your claim is. Some are, some aren't. neither is better or worse, just personality. psychologically, some people do better with positive reinforcement and some with negative. you now have to understand the personality type of our stars. James seems to do better when pushed harder, while dwight has a history of not getting along with hard nosed coaches. In order to get the best out of both of them, you need someone who is versatile enough to pull off playing the good cop and the bad cop. mchale is completely the good cop. Karl, while light years ahead of mchale as a strategist, has a history of "losing the locker room" due to his demanding leadership style. dwight didn't like playing for SVG, what do you think will happen if he had karl? we can agree that mchale is not a good coach. we can also agree that karl is a very good coach. Edit, one more thing we can agree on is that we can't get a softy coach like mchale again or harden will start taking naps on the bench. but we will have to disagree on the points that: a) coaches are paid to be harsh. and b) karl and dwight could coexist in harmony. my point is that we need someone in the middle because either extreme won't work for our stars.