I am not a fan of mda. But he is not a really bad coach. Not worse than mchale. But the thing that wories me is that they might chooses an pure offensive minded coach when clearly defense is our main problem. So my problem is not perse with mda but with the philosophy of only focussing on offense. Also I hate smallBall. And this is also a coach who uses it a lot.
we're not heading for a bottum spot in the standings.. but we're heading for a 6-8th seed until Harden walks to the Lakers.
what a relief to wake up to this. Finally some sanity. Thanks OP, you're completely right. thanks for this post.
The team had a train wreck of a season, featuring the firing of the coach after 11 games, poor coaching from the interim coach, uninspired play from the stars and hoorible play from the role players, contributing to constant criticism from local and national media. We have a poorly constructed roster. Now looking at the go forward we don't have a first round draft pick. We miss on the top coaching hires and we ignore the popular local coaching candidate to presumably hire the unpopular coach whose history ignores the teams biggest problem area.and whose offense doesn't match the team's offensive star or the rest of the roster. And people wonder why people have lost hope or at least confidence?
I don't deny that D'Antoni is a good coach on the offensive side of the floor. But what also can't be denied is that he failed in New York and LA when he didn't have an MVP Steve Nash running his offense. He never got the Suns to the Finals. He's never gotten any of his teams to play consistently at the defensive end. And most importantly, as the Rockets head coach, he won't have anything close to the personnel here that he had in Phoenix. This hire just doesn't make any sense for the Rockets at this particular point in time. When they're coming off a season where defensive effort was their biggest shortcoming(well that and simply giving a damn), why hire D'Antoni? When they're devoid of any great outside shooters, why hire D'Antoni? When they have only one playmaker on the roster who just set an NBA record for turnovers in a season, why hire D'Antoni? And when they're looking a potentially lengthy rebuilding project if they don't get very lucky in free agency this summer, why hire D'Antoni? Like I said in the other threads, this reeks of a decision based on marketing, not on building a contender. The Rockets' prospects are likely bleak over the next few years, so it looks like Les decided to hire a coach who will at least ensure the team is scoring a lot of points which he believes will lead to higher ticket sales and ratings.
Did Jeremy Lin make D'Antoni too? Under MDA he was suddenly doing the same things as Nash and had all of his diehard Lin fans thinking he was coming to Houston to be a superstar...
maybe I need to get a grip, true that nothing is set in stone, yet MDA is one of the worst options for a team that needs a coach who can hold players accountable, that commands respect Sure he won with the Suns but Nash is very easy to coach and as long as Nash can keep guys like Stat and Marion happy with his passing, MDA did not have to worry. MDA has not coached for months or even a year or two, has not had success for a very long time He is assistant coach material not a decent head coach. The Rox need a decent coach and decent players to attract more stars. This organization just cannot catch a break with Les acting like a tyrant
... until Melo came back from injury. D'Antoni didn't make Linsanity happen. Luck did. Lin was at the end of the bench. D'Antoni never even thought of using him until he was forced to because he had lost all his PGs. Linsanity saved the season for him. Once Melo came back to dominate the ball again, Linsanity ended. One would think a great offensive coach would make the offense even more potent with his best offensive player back from injury...
Yes, because everyone knows the best coaching candidate is always the one who's house is geographically convenient. I love JVG as an analyst, but I still have vivid memories of those days when CF would explode because his team's lack of offense -- despite featuring T-Mac in his prime and Yao -- would struggle to get to 80 points. <BR>
I know he is known as a great offensive coach but when is the last time he had a great offensive team?
He rode Dirk's coat tails in Dallas and went to 2nd or 3rd round I guess He played 2nd or 3rd fiddle, was not bad
Offense is not really hard to teach this years Most players coming out young like shooting, short and long range. Defense however is not easy to learn
I just disagree about the personnel point. We have a running and gunning team minus Dwight Howard. Lakers were a terrible fit for MDA and Knicks got good once JLin broke out. That reasoning doesn't make sense to me... So would hiring a defensive minded coach mean we would have to step back offensively? Maybe, maybe not.
A running and gunning team? Yeah, but none of our gunslingers can come close to hitting the target. We don't have any shooters on this team. We have one playmaker. We have hardly anyone who can finish around the basket. About the only area we're guaranteed to improve next season is free throw shooting once Dwight and Josh are gone. How is D'Antoni supposed to run his offense with what we currently have?
