oh please..just because that happen means you take the chance every time? no you dont. tmac was not on the bench and put back in. completely different situation
This completely oversimplifies the situation. The coach who left his bench in also happens to be the coach of the team who's starters played horribly and got them down 20-30 in the first place. GS needed to do something to stop momentum. The Rockets had the momentum. Changing the players back to players who sucked the whole game doesn't make a ton of sense. There's also the fact that the game was still a +/- 10 point game, with 3 minutes left. Certainly winnable, but not exactly within "striking distance". Harden is the one guy you could say might have deserved to go back in the game. But again, I think McHale probably was on the precipice here, but it never got closer than 9 I think.
It was a completely different situation. One had 35 seconds, the other had over 3 minutes. Yes the complexion of the game was different, but the last few minutes of a close game is superstar time, and everyone knows it. The reason great players are great is because of what they do in the final minutes of a close game. Odds are we still would have lost, but what if Harden makes a couple threes? To start the game he got fouled on two different 3 pt shots. He made the team's first 9 points. How you start says a lot about your attitude towards a game. I understand the argument for keeping the deserving bench players in, but in my opinion, when you have the best scorer in the league and you have even a small chance to win a (huge) game, you have to take it.
For the record, if it was me, I would have put in Harden only. The rest of the starters would have understood.
At 11 points, it's a fine decision. I'd be more skeptical if it got to 6 without at least Harden coming in. But 11 points is the kind of deficit where, with different momentum and Harden already in the game, Clutchfans might very well be calling for him to come out and rest.
If Kerr puts his starters back in, I think you at least put Harden back in. The guy's been saving our butts the whole year, and even if he had a bad night up to that point (I didn't watch the second half), he's more than capable of turning it on full bore and making it interesting with that much time left on the clock. In the previous years, McHale would put Harden out there against worse teams in this situation when he legitimately was just not having a good game and not going to help. The justification was that Harden's the one you want with the ball in a situation that needs something spectacular. So now that he's having a spectacular year, he continues to sit? I'd have put Harden in, but only Harden. I don't think this is going to work as some tough love lesson that just makes everyone shape up and kick ass.
I really didn't think Harden played that bad on D that game. He had one hilariously bad moment on a backdoor cut, but other than that I thought he was okay. It is almost impossible to guard a perimeter player if the D behind you isn't stepping up, which Dwight was not doing this game. He got his hands in passing lanes, and had a nice block. Not a great defensive game, but I didn't think he was the worst out of the starters by any means.
Watching the game, I agreed with the decision to let it ride with the bench. However, I am back in the camp that at least some of the starters should have been re-inserted into the game. The injury question goes out the window because Kerr was taking that same risk by sending Green, Kla, and Curry back out there in the game we are all saying they had won. Going for it with at least a few starters t least shows your bench that you appreciae what they didand their comeback had a purpose. Leaving them out there running on fumes against rested all-star caliber competition basically says that you think what they did was a fluke and you are only out there because we have to have 5 people on the court by rule.
No popovich does the same thing. Remember the danny green game? I think it was 3 season ago when green's ass was glued on the pine in SA. The spurs were getting rocked against idr and pop pulled his starters. He put his third string team in and they proceeded to cut through the lead like a knife to butter. Green went crazy with inspired defense and three point shooting. Pop did NOT go back to his starters and the spurs lost that game. However that resulted in the emergence of danny green and he soon became the starter. Bottom line - if your bench guys cut your lead. Those guys have earned the right to finish the game. This also builds chemistry among the bench players and has added implications down the road. No reason in putting harden/howard in when they have been sitting cold for 6+ minutes. But yeah "mchale sucks yada markjackson is better yada we should trade dwert for brook lopez yadayada"
It was a dumb decision based on emotion. He wasn't sending a message; he was throwing the game. A nine point deficit with over 3 minutes to play isn't a time to bench your best player. Kerr wasn't sending a message. He was trying to win the game and the Warriors aren't even in the thick of the Western Conference seeding race. That's the difference between a good coach and an awful one.
I felt like forcing to Kerr to put his starters back in was a moral victory. Like 300 where Leonidas scarred the face of Xerxes. Seeing the look on Curry's face was priceless. You don't ruin that moment by matching Kerr and putting your starters in too. Be the better man and take the loss with honor.
Harden should have been in... the third stringers were starting to run out of gas for playing 9 minutes non-stop at that point. He could have made a difference.
I twas a bad game that was more than just one play. He played off Thompson too much early in the game. He left Green wide open for a 3 almost immediately after he was inserted back into the game in the second. I have no clue what he was doing on the Steph Curry play where Curry stripped it from Dwight, James picked him up and then proceeded to not really play defense on him while kind of shadowing him... it was confusing. Those are just a couple of moments. He had good plays, too. I think the team as a whole was just confused defensively. He didn't bench his best player. He had players on the bench for a long stretch already and the players on the court were the ones playing really well, not those on the bench, who had stunk up the joint (Harden excluded). Yes, and he made the right move given the situation his team was in. The team he had on the floor was losing margin like a leaky faucet. Hence, easy decision. The Rockets team on the floor was the one making the comeback... why pull them out? Except as noted what McHale did is exactly what many highly successful coaches in the past have done...
You can call McHale an awful coach all you want. You are entitled to your opinion. But to use this decision as a way to justify it is pure idiocy. As was posted above, Pop the God did the same exact thing, and many many coaches in the league would've done the same. Kerr doesn't need to send a message to his players. His starters played well, and had every right to that victory. Kerr can't let his bench ruin a game they dominated from start to finish. McHale had every reason to bench the starters. They played horribly, and were the reason we were down by 20+ points. They didn't deserve to be in the game, and the bench had all the momentum.
I support McHale's decision to leave the bench players in the game to finish it out. Look last month when we played WAS at home. The starters played, simply put, HORRIBLY. Our bench brought us all the way back to tie it up at 84. The moment McHale put the starters back in, WAS put up 8 straight points, and it was pretty much over with. Even though I'm not a McHale supporter by any stretch, I find it rather hilarious that he is being criticized for sticking with the bench when it was the bench who brought us back in that game (they forced Kerr to call TO to get his starters back in to finish the game). I understand, as a coach, it's "damned if you do, damned if you don't"...but I would much rather stick with the group who plays with hustle, effort, determination, and actually gets us back into a game. And in those 2 examples, it was the bench.
