writing for the NBA must be challenging. players, coaches & Mark Cubans pay dearly for offending expressions. i don't expect anything other than fluff PR pieces out of nba.com. kudos to Jason Friedman for making this informative & interesting within those constraints.
That's not being fair to what McHale actually said. McHale isn't asking every player to have Bird-level commitment and devotion. He's just saying many players do not push themselves once it stops being comfortable for them. And that it's easy to be comfortable with the NBA salary, so that their threshold for discomfort can be very low.
Wasn't criticizing. Just thought it was interesting. I'm sure Bird used to berate McHale along a similar vein, but that said, no one can question McHale's devotion to the game when he was playing with broken feet.
McHale played on a broken foot for two months in 1987 playoffs and probably cut his career short because he wanted to help his team win another championship. You can't criticize his work ethic, or desire just because Larry Bird was a freak.
Enjoyed reading this article. Wanted to reiterate some of McHale's thoughts: ------------------------- Sorry to be an old stick in the mud, but in all my years of playing and watching basketball, these things are so true. You can watch teams with loads of sick athletic talent race up and down the floor, throw in dunks on the break, jack a bunch of 3's, and win a bunch of nothing. And then you can watch teams which can do all the things that I just mentioned above but they also come down the court looking to get in the paint...every possession. Doesn't mean the shot will come from the paint, but it means they are going to probe the paint....and a much higher percentage of their offense is going to come from the paint area. Those teams win the most. It's just that simple. They're grinding, they're being the aggressor, they're forcing the D to foul. It's the formula for winning basketball. This goes back to the thread talking about the mid-range jumper. Mid-range jumpers do not break down the D. They bail out the D. You have to have an offense designed to get the ball to the rim, and if that doesn't work, then you throw it out to good three-point shooters for a 40% three-point shot. You can argue that the paint is not the rim. That's fine. Bottom line is more often than not, when you get in the paint, you are getting clear to the rim in the NBA because of the size and athleticism of the players. It's good to know McHale is thinking along these lines.....still. Oh, and for all you guys that thought Dalembert was an upgrade to Chuck Hayes....yeah, I remember. That was a huge downgrade, guys, and the single move that probably prevented us from getting to the playoffs and making some noise.
This is why Im really glad that the Rockets have management that typically does not care what the fanbase thinks and makes decisions even when they know its going to piss them off. I saw the Dalembert move as a freak occurance, and something just did not fit based on their history of moves and signings. This move had to be a compromise made to shut somebody up... whether it was Les, McHale, or people around the organization who kept on saying that "all you have to do is put a 7 foot shot blocker on this team and they are in the playoffs." Little do they or we as fans really know what we are talking about most of the time. We still pay way too much attention to what someone looks like on paper and now Youtube highlights. I think you are right about the loss of Chuck Hayes. Maybe he wasn't as tall or long as Dalembert, but what he did do is guard more space in the paint by being in the right positions always, moving his feet, and rotating nicely off of picks. -Also note- The best person on the team at doing these things is none other than Patrick Patterson. The guy who the majority of clutchfans posters want gone from this team. The only positive thing that happened from the Dalembert signing was the fact that Morey was able to negotiate a great contract in the deal which made him a trade asset this Summer, and allowed them the ability to move down in the draft to get Lamb.
Highlight > right click > start speaking. That was long, but pretty good. Only downside was that there were no surprises. He knows what it takes to win, but he doesn't know how to get his guys to listen for 82 games.
You're making me miss JVG's defense. I loved that ideal of "No paint, no threes" that we lived by. Those teams had suck written all over them, but they were scrappy enough to beat anyone. Too bad Jeff didn't know jack about offensive systems. (note: those teams would've been better if the refs actually called fouls for Yao)
