I won't claim to have any great insight on the assistant coaching dynamic, but I seem to recall the team regressed under Sampson. Never impressed with his coaching at NCAA level either. Like many college coaches, his fame was created through his "aggressive" recruiting tactics. I say let Finch coach the team and pick his staff next year. He's proven himself around the world as a good coach. There's no reason he can't be a good NBA head coach. McHale is a legendary figure in basketball, but to me seems more suited to an assistant role where he can work on player development. Can't trust that guy with strategy and tactics.
NBA is a player's league. The players win or lose the games. Coaches are just facilitators, their job is to support the players. If the coach started to think hes the center of the team, and act like a dictator, then problems will happen. Popovich is a tough coach and a good coach. Besides he is exceptional, he is lucky to have Duncan.
a guy like tom thibodeau gets maximum effort from his guys on a night to night basis. It seems like the Rockets only get motivated to play when they are playing a big opponent or if they are down by a lot and need to catch up. That's bad coaching there. While I like McHale's approach to bball (old school, blue collar), he lacks something with either the X's and O's or leadership which is why this team, while young, has trouble starting games and closing out games (although they've been better about this in the 2nd half of the season). I bring up thibodeau because like last night against the heat, he gets production out of his 7-9 rotational players. And rotates his players well.
I think most McHale's supporters have underrated our players talent or read too much ESPN. Bunch of "experts" picked Rocket even with Harden a lottery bound. And now with the success, everyone is saying it's because of the coach. Nobody realized that the prediction at beginning of the season was just too low. Who've thought the 3 bench players we acquired last summer were just underated. Everyone thought Asik was one of worst center, Lin's run was a fluke since he was still undrafted, Harden could not possibly be one of the leading scorers in the league. Those analysts were just simply wrong. I see our guys winning games with their talent and effort not becuase McHale knows how to use his players. The credit should've gone to Morey for finding those guys and more (Beverely, Smith, etc). Of course that's how I see it on the court. McHale might be a very good off court coach that contributes players style on the court. Who knows? All I know is McHale is a moderate in game manager at best.
The way Mchale is treating Lin is the worst thing I have ever seen in basketball. He is basically destroying Lin's confidence out of pride for making a wrong decision a year ago.
LOL at people thinking no credit goes to the success of a team. Do you think you can just throw players on the court and they will just coordinate and figure things out on their own? Yeah, even the Heat can't do that. SMH I would say similar to McHale. I've heard nothing but positive comments from the players about McHale this season about his coaching so until I hear otherwise, I will tend to believe them over a bunch of bias fans and non-fans alike. Even the analysts are giving a lot of props to McHale, so are you saying they are dumb too? Because if they didn't believe they could just say nothing at all. And funny you say about Chicago, we have almost an identical record to Chicago right now, however ours should really count as a bit better since we are in the West.
Yeah, McHale is great. Do I agree with everything he does? No. He's still a pretty solid coach. And he obviously cares about his team/job. One of my favorite coaches the rockets have had.
These people have been bottled up for weeks of winning basketball and they need lambs to sacrifice, damn it.
