Good motivator? Please. All he does is clap and yell "Let's go, guys! Let's go" "Keep it going, Keep it going".
So many egregious errors this game. Seriously it's like nothing changed at half time. We get our asses handed to us in the 3rd quarter. Then what happens in the 4th? McHale goes into his IDIOTIC mindset of, "well this lineup got us the lead so far!" and he keeps Brooks in there for the first SEVEN MINUTES while Brooks gets torched by Jackson and misses everything in sight at the other end. Lin, who had not been great thus far in the game but time and time again has proven that he has another gear to go to in the 4th, gets his chance only with 5 minutes left. The other thing is pulling Dwight for the whole fourth quarter until 5min left. You can tell Brooks' entire gameplan was to flagrant foul Dwight every time down the court and see if he could get a response out of him. First with Adams then with Ibaka and Perkins. Well, it worked. McHale did not step up for his player at all, and Dwight got manhandled. Call it "Hack-a-Dwight" in implicit form. Instead of intentional fouls they just grab on every loose ball, Utah Jazz style, and see what the refs will call. I'm actually more pissed about McHale's lack of ability to step up for Howard by keeping him in the game after Adams fouled out. We should have gone to Dwight every play and forced OKC to literally foul all their big men out. We were at home. The refs were not gonna call some BS offensive foul crap on Dwight for his 6th. We should have tested them. Man this game is 100% on the coach. Ridiculous.
Looking at the reality tho, the Rockets need some serious identity identifying team chemistry. Not sure if it's the coach to blame, the players, or the assistant coach. But a collapse like tonight will percentage wise go to the coach, not to the players, IMHO. McHale never acts quit to solve problems... he always waits until it's too late. Dwight, Harden, Parsons, and Lin seriously need to get their act and chemistry together (if we want to blame the players), because it's almost all star break soon... and our Rockets teams is playing like Houston's weather: extremely bi-polar.
There is only one play in the great Kevin McHale's book when thing gets tough: sit Lin and run Harden ISO.
Take it a step further: Rockets are the only team to score 70+ points in the 1st half and follow it up with less than 20. They are in a class by themselves.
This sums it up… Oh, we need a play? Just Give it to Harden... (BTW- We turned the ball over after this play)
Have to give him a little props in some way, so that my post doesn't get labelled as no substance by a certain poster here.
Love how Chuck called out Mchale for only talking about offense when it's defense that is clearly this team's biggest problem. I get the sense that the TNT cast feels Mchale is a bad coach but they would never acknowledge that out of respect.
He was a phenomenal player and they played against him. They won't call him out due to respect to him
they also may not want him fired just they don't have to deal with him back in the TNT studio again either
Seriously, it's a lot of things, but McHale sometimes looks like he's bored. Maybe he's in chronic pain or maybe it's something else, but Les should be chewing someone out tonight. I know it's Jan, and crybaby Assik is not playing, but there's no excuse for the way the Rockets played in the second half.
I've tried to stray away from this thread, but after tonight game... it's made me a believer.. McHale is just to soft to coach this team, he doesn't make adjustment, and plays a bad line-up for too long, and the worst part imo, is he can't get this team to play a full game of basketball.. just 1 good half.. Dwight has regressed defensively, and I think McHale is the blame, our guys is taking on his personality and we're under preforming.. we need a defensive minded coach and a better bench..
