If it is true that the Rox like picking the brains of league coaches I wonder what they are hearing about Harden? Howard? DMo? Others on the roster? Enquiring minds want to know...if there is a consensus on any of those three? If so, what would it be?
The flip side of doing a lot of interviews is you pretty much get a TON of free consulting advice on our team.
Nah, Morey has been picking the brains of CFers all year long and he still couldn't figure it out. :grin:
It's not dumb, but most teams go for who they like and make a quick decision on the guy they want. The Rockets always interview a lot, then narrow it down to a few and end up with slim pickings or candidates who excite nobody. Remember the other 2 finalists: Lawrence Frank and Dwayne Casey? No wonder McHale got the job. Now we have to choose between a rookie and Adolf when it's not even sure the rookie would bring his tough uncle with him. Again, slim pickings and it seems to be about who they can get for cheap. Typical Leslie and Morey tactics, disgusting..
This is why I like that they interview so many people. It's really priceless to hear a huge variety of tacticians explain what would be the perfect offense/defense for this roster. Even if you don't get the person who has great ideas, you can feed what one candidate said to another candidate and hear what they think about it. With the draft coming up, you will also use all that info to keep an eye on certain types of players whether you can acquire them through trade or they fall into the second round. This is one thing they're doing right. For a second there I thought they were going to make a split second decision on D'Antoni, thankfully they've continued the search and my favorite candidates other than Walton and maybe Joerger are all still available, and Morey/Les will have heard everything everyone had to say about Harden, offense, defense, etc. At this point I can't really see a terrible outcome. At worst we will get D'Antoni + top defensive assistant, which is better than what we ended up with last time around. At least D'Antoni has had some success in the past and his coaching style has been a major source of inspiration for the top offenses in the league AND the team recognizes that he needs a defensive mind AND D'Antoni will value a top assistant since he is a top assistant right now. That's the WORST possible outcome. Consider that when we hired McHale, he had done nothing but failed with the Wolves. He ended up overachieving for 3 consecutive years, culminating in a WCF appearance last season losing to a historically good team in 6 games without two starters before the team imploded this season. We'll be fine. It's all about roster decisions now, and I hope they make those decisions in conjuction with the new hire.
Mathloom, I like your optimism. But can we really trust the Les-Morey tandem in picking the right coach? Remember last time? They also interviewed quite a few candidates and they ended up with McHale. To put a cherry on the top, they extended him for 3 more years THEN fired him less than a year after that. All these just tells me that they have no clue what a good coach is like. I'd give Morey a pass because apparently most if not all decisions on head coach hiring are Les's whim. But it is clear that Morey doesn't have the ability to dissuade Les from doing stupid things.
Yeah...i kinda agree with this, in the end i think the roster is more important than the coach, and i'm sure that Pringles with all his flaws is still better than McHale.
Rockets are just the smartest organization out there ain't they? Picking the brains. What are these other teams doing hiring a coach so fast?! Don't they know they have to pick the brains! Who needs to interview Tom Thibodeau, Frank Vogel, Jeff Van Gundy & Dave Joerger when you can interview Kenny Smith & Mike D'Antoni? :grin: Spoiler Brooklyn - Kenny Atkinson April 17: Nets hire Kenny Atkinson Houston - May 4: J.B. Bickerstaff withdraws from consideration for Rockets job Indiana - Nate McMillan May 5: Frank Vogel's contract not renewed with Indiana May 16: Pacers hire Nate McMillan Los Angeles - Luke Walton April 24: Lakers part ways with Byron Scott April 29: Lakers hire Luke Walton Memphis - May 7: Grizzlies fire Dave Joerger Minnesota - Tom Thibodeau April 13: TWolves part ways with Sam Mitchell April 20: TWolves hire Tom Thibodeau New York - Jeff Hornacek May 18: Knicks hire Jeff Hornacek Orlando - Frank Vogel May 5: Frank Vogel's contract not renewed with Indiana May 12: Scott Skiles resigns as head coach May 19: Magic hire Frank Vogel Phoenix - Earl Watson April 19: Suns remove interim tag & name Earl Watson head coach Sacramento - Dave Joerger April 14: Kings part ways with George Karl [Kings start a search] May 7: Grizzlies fire Dave Joerger May 9: Kings hire Dave Joerger Washington - Scott Brooks April 14: Wizards part ways with Randy Wittman April 26: Wizards hire Scott Brooks
I think at this point, Harden should be the player coach, it'll pretty much be a repeat of 2016, w/ 3 more wins, lol. God damn organization can't even pick a coach correctly. I can't wait till the offseason for FA's when it becomes a cluster ****. They'll probably be trying to interview FA's until preseason, imagine the prospects left then!!
There are pretty much no brains left to pick. All the good coaches are gone. You're left with the dumbass coaches like Mike Anthony, Byron Scott etc. At this point it's like you're picking the prettiest girl in an ugliest girls contest. And even if you find slim pickings, you have an egotistical, front running GM who believes he has all the right answers. He is just looking for another puppet who confirms to his beliefs and he can slap around
Pretty much, always so indecisive and Leslie not allowing Morey to do his job is just inexcusable. As if Alexander has any sort of knowledge about basketball.
I think Leslie Alexander wants to hire the coach because he probably holds it against Morey for vouching for McHale to get an extension and wasting his money. And to be honest, can you really blame him for that at the moment?
I don't know if I'm optimistic. I think there's more to hiring someone than picking the best person. Here are some things I overlooked when we picked McHale: 1) Most important, understanding millennials. Coaches are traditionally very old, and their golden years conveniently fall into the average age range of fans. However, the players are younger than we are. I see the value in a Thibodeau 10 years ago. That is all the players knew, and their influence over coaching hires was limited so they kind of had to do whatever the coach says. It is TOTALLY different today. Like it or not, James Harden can get a coach fired and that puts him higher in the hierarchy. James Harden is not Michael Jordan. The average franchise player has huge influence today. We must accept this, it is not going to change. No one can change it anymore. WE HATE IT I KNOW WE HATE IT. I know every fan over 40 has his blood boiling just reading this right now. It doesn't matter. This is the situation, and it is going to progressively increase in occurrence. Instead of fighting nature, let's ride the wave. Fighting nature costs a lot of money and has no chance of long term success. You can't change the course of these things, and if you do it in a cocoon within a controlled space it will implode eventually. That's life and that's basketball. Players loved McHale, at least until this season. He knew how to connect with these guys despite being an old timer. That, IMO, is what allowed him to overachieve despite his weaknesses. A coach that understands the wave can motivate players for a decade. A coach that wants to fight nature by being a hard-ass disciplinarian from the 90's will motivate his players for 2-3 years tops. 2) Communication with owner and management. You need a coach who neither stands his ground nor accepts everything management says. You need someone who fundamentally understands the immense value of accepting/suggesting ideas within a team/organizational context. This person should have principles and red lines - the person should be willing to walk if there is not enough exchange of ideas and communication. Skiles, for example, did the right thing and showed that it could and should be amicable when this happens. That's what secure and confident coaches do. An owner/GM/coach in ALIGNMENT with each other on an average plan will beat an owner/GM/coach not aligned on a beautiful plan any day of the week. 3) Delegating. No coach is good enough on their own. They need to be willing and able to choose the right staff in conjuction with the GM. They need to give those people real ability to execute and generate ideas. They need to accept players current strengths/weaknesses in the game plan, while putting in place a plan to develop them beyond what they currently are for the future. They need to be flexible to the roster, rather than implementing the same system on whichever team on whichever year. 4) If your coach takes a few YEARS to agree to update his offense to league standards, that coach is already a failure. Today's offensive system doesn't win a championship. TOMORROW's offensive system wins a championship. If your coach is just getting around to meeting league standard after a few years of hitting a wall, you've already failed. This is why I was totally opposed to Thibodeau. By the time he realized how horrendous his offense was and how his defense was eating up his own offense, he simply upgraded to a standard offense. Extremely unimaginitive, wasted years of players' primes in the process. 7 seconds or less is DEAD. It has evolved two or three times over. We need to be looking for who might create the next evolution in offense and/or defense. JVG has never had a go at defending the Warriors/Spurs/Hawks offenses. D'Antoni's outdated SSOL has not been tested against the league's best defenses. MAYBE they would succeed, but they both have the "I TOLD YOU I WAS RIGHT" tone and I hate that. It shows that they think there is no difference between where the NBA was and is, D'Antoni thinks the Warriors are running his offense and JVG thinks the Hornets are running his defense. It's not true. These coaches and players are better. Sorry for the long post, but it's these outlying under appreciated factors which people overlook when they think management is not picking the right candidate. They were considering these things with McHale and I didn't see it and it was a succesful hire. We went to the WCF within 3 years with a dysfunctional duo and a tactically weak coaching staff. Those other factors can make the difference and I believe that while the current candidates do not have proven wins, they DO have a lot of the qualities that are usually overlooked. WE shouldn't hire them just for that reason, but interviewing a variety of candidates will allow us to judge everyone with a 360 view. If our MINIMUM option is D'Antoni with a strong lead assistant, this organization is signalling to me that they know what they're doing. I'll give them a chance and I say this as my favorite candidate was snatched up by the Lakers and my next favorite candidate (Messina) looks like an unlikely possibility. Sometimes we don't get what we want, but if the organization did it's due diligence then you have to grow up and accept that we can succeed in many ways, not just the way we prefer.
This ^^^^^^^ You will never get honest feedback about your roster while someone's job depends on it. You might get some honesty about what they would do with it, but even then they will tweak it to what you want to hear. I find it staggeringly stupid that they didn't interview JVG. At least ask him if he would do anything different offensively. I'm sure they asked MDA the same question on the defensive side.
It depends on who is conducting the interviews. Les,Morey,both ? At the end of the day, coaches want some roster control. Whether its final say or bigger voice in all the moves. I think it takes alot to coach with Morey the gm. The high roster turnover makes it a distraction.
