45 wins with 2 winnable games to go in the regular season and securing a playoff spot, this is also one of the youngest and least experienced team that is close to securing the 6th spot in the western conference. The coaching staff needs a lot of credit. Sure they have made some mistakes in some games with questionable rotation decisions (they are human just like players) but remember, it takes time to develop an understanding of peoples strengths and weaknesses and understanding how fast an individual can come back 100% from injury. Hope we keep not only the core players for next year, but our coaching staff also (Kevin Mchale, Kelvin Sampson, Bickerstaff, Finch and Cooper). I'm sure due to our success this year, other teams would be looking to recruit them out of Houston. So here is a thread to show your appreciation on a stellar job they have done in over achieving this season.
Thanks les, dm, for everything. Coaching staff gets a nod. I have nubs for fingers and a bald spot from all the head scratching from witnessing all the games this season
Mc3Rings and Sampsmart did a great job considering the fact that they were given a completely revamped roster filled with players with both minimal NBA experience and youth.
I've said this before but we should not be thanking Mchale for where we are now. He had a talented roster from the beginning. Many people act like he deserves credit for bringing the youngest team to playoffs but it was actually the players bringing the team to playoffs, and the coach has only been holding the team back with his questionable decisions, obvious isolation plays, bad substitution patterns, and refusal to give rookies playing time, taking out Lin and Harden at the same time, etc. For ****'s sake, we have the top 3 SG in the nba, and one of the best rebounding centers, did some of you honestly think we wouldnt make playoffs with players like these? You can call me LOF or troll or whatever, but I've watched every single rockets game this season and I swear Mchale cost us about 6 to 8 games with his idiotic inexperienced coaching. Its not Mchale we should be thankful, its Morey.
I think the coaching staff did an outstanding job. I was not a McHale fan when we hired him, but he's won me over. You can't argue with success, unless you're and idiot. It looks like Sampson is gone next year to be a head coach.
TLDR summary: I hate Mchale for benching Lin, and will never give credit for anything good he does. I will use every thread (including appreciation ones) to vent my displeasure until he is either fired or Lin is cloned into the entire Rockets starting roster and each clone plays 48min/game. Then, will I argue that Lin shoots too much, passes too much, drops too many passes, doesn't play enough D, and is being overused.
Thankful to morey, yes. coach holding the team back to the tune of 8 wins? lol. so what you're saying is that mchale's terrible coaching lost 8 wins without taking into account the fact that his "terrible coaching" may have lucked into a handful of wins. you also have no way of knowing whether or not a replacement coach would even have had the team in position to win the 8 games that mchale supposedly lost single handedly. factoring this in, even if we concede the fact that mchale cost the team wins vs the average replacement coach, the number is surely lower than the alleged 8. on top of this, there's no actual proof that an average replacement coach would perform 8 wins above mchale's win total. we can all make up ridiculous numbers, but there's no way to prove anything. one would have to go back in time repeatedly and somehow replace mchale with different coaches to see how this season would have gone for comparison. and after all of that, even if we come to the conclusion that YES INDEED coach mchale is somehow 8 wins below average replacement, we'd still be in 6th seed in the west. congratulations.
TLDR summary: I will point my finger and call out anyone who doesn't like Mchale as a LOF. I will let my bias against people who cheer for Lin cloud my judgment about people's realistic views on Mchale. Because the person does not think Mchale is a good coach, I will pretend that person has qualms about Lin's restrictions that the person never even thought about, and just make myself look like a conceited douchebag. I will also thoroughly embarrass myself by using stupid TLDR joke summarys.
you make a good point about not being able to know whether another coach woulda done better. I also agree that there is a chance Mchale's decisions migh have lucked us into winning more. Rating coaches are as subjective as rating teachers, because there isn't really a 100% foolproof way of knowing if the coaching was good or not, just as how we dont know if a teacher's teaching was good or not. That being said, the closest thing we can use to measure a coach's performance is the actual games themselves. As the audience, we can see how the game unfolds and what variables translate into performance. Many veteran posters criticized Mchale's decisions during many games. This alone might not prove anything, but we do have a rough estimate that Mchale's decisions on the game floor werent exactly optimal, and better coach would have made more decisions that correlated with common sense. So when people say Pop is a good coach, we don't know for sure if he is, but we have a rough estimate that its true. Likewise, we dont know if an average coach woulda done better than Mchale but its more probable than not. Only looking at results(Rockets is 6th seed into playoffs) is a bad reasoning to congratulate the coaches like OP has, because, using your logic, we dont know if we would be higher seed or not if we had a different coach.
McHale is learning, as is everybody else on the team. Great team effort to make the playoffs. Everybody should be appreciated!
We don't need a coach who is learning, we need one that is finished learning i.e. experienced, for coaching the most inexperienced team
