I lost my hate for McHale a long time ago, I really like McHale as HC, he has done a great job with what he has had, and we've added some quality guys, while not giving up a ton. Anyway, I'm happy right now with our record, he may not be a X and O coach, but the players love him, so I love him too.
I was more wait and see on the McHale hiring after losing Adelman. Given all the factors I rate McHale as a good but not great coach yet. Coaches do learn and improve. 2011-12 34-32 Lockout season. Scola, a rookie named Parsons, and Lee were top 3 minutes played. K-Mart missed a 1/3 off the season and Lowry missed 19 and was as he put it immature. Dragic was forced to start with Lowry out and showed he was a NBA pro. Patterson was 22 and coming off the bench. WE LACKED PLAY-OFF TALENT. We missed the Play-off but finished WAY higher than most thought. Great 1st year considering all. I don't think Phil Jackson could have done better :grin: 2012-13 45-37 The core drastically changes for good. Parsons the only big minute player to return. We sign Lin and Asik to start. Then OKC got stupid and sent us Harden on Oct. 28 right before the season started. So now everything McHale just built had to adjust to your new BEST player. Patterson was paying off and the team was rolling. Then Pat was traded so we could get cap space. It was a good regular season in the tough WC. The team made the play-offs lost to the Thunder 4-2. Overall a really good coach job for all the youth on the roster and new faces. OKC had been there done that with their core. We needed more experience. 2013-14 54-28 DH12 chose Houston over LA. So the core was being altered. McHale found ways to get Omer on the court when he was healthy (he missed 34 games). A 22 year old TJones claimed the 4 spot. Bev missed 28 games. The bench was underwhelming. Casspi and Garcia combined to play over 2300 minutes and shot a combined 41% and lacked offensive punch. Lin started 33 games because of injuries mostly and the other 38 games he came off the bench as the only viable threat to help the team score. Brooks was under-played IMO but don't know if he would have made you win more than 2 games. All in all McHale still got home court in the first round against the Blazers. The Blazers were HOT and Webster out played our best player Harden. If Harden shoots his offensive average (45%) we win that series in 5 or 6 despite LMA playing out of his freanking mind. Harden shot (37% for the series). He was 8-28 Game 1 we lost by 2 in OT. Game 2 he was 6/19 we lost by 7. We won Game 3 in OT Harden was 13/35 surprised we won that one. Game 4 Harden was 9/21 not bad but we lost in OT by 3. Game 5 We won by 10 Harden was 5/15. Howard won this game early for us. Game 6 Lillard got us (Parsons). Harden finally had good game scoring 34 on 9/15. My point is McHale isn't to solely blame for us not being better thus far. He could have coached better in the series but players get paid to play and Harden needed to make just a few more shots, who knows maybe he only need to make 1 more shot in Game 1 and we could have advanced. I also blame McHale for not cutting Hardens minutes and learning to trust Brooks for 8-10 minutes a night. Might have helped in the series. All in all a good regular season with a sub-par play-offs for Harden and slightly McHale. This year it is much of the same from Morey with roster tweaking. Most experts picked us to finish 6th to 8th. Some had us out of the play-offs. Could still happen but you won't find anyone saying we are gonna miss the play-offs now. We are currently 32-14 which gets you 3rd in the Western Conference. We are 16-7 on the road only the Hawks are better at 17-5. This is a very good team. McHale is using D-MO this year. We just added Josh Smith. Now TJones is back. Harden is FINALLY playing defense. We have a very solid bench. Brewer is really good. McHale is improving with his play calling out of time outs. I'd like to see Canaan when guys are cold from the perimeter. But otherwise McHale is doing a good job. Let's see how this team does in the playoffs. Hopefully Howard gets that knee right by the play-offs.
