I just feel Dwight Howard is not a good example of effort for the rest of the team. Anybody who plays any kind of sports knows he doesn't bring 100% effort every night. In team sports, whenever you have a lazy teammate, you keep wondering why should you be sacrificing for him. It's natural.
No, I didn't say that at all. What I want is for this team which is more talented to play with the heart of those teams.
There is not a single team that brings it 100% every single game. None. Even the great Bulls teams lost 10-15 games a year, even when they were by far the best team every single time they stepped on the court. The reality is that the effort of this Rockets team has been overall consistent and very good. Over the course of the season they have dealt with injuries and won, new players being brought aboard. Teams like the Bulls (a high effort team) lost 6 of 8 and struggled defensively. The Spurs have had bad stretches. So has Memphis. Right now the Rockets are playing with their second best player only being 50%. Dwight Howard isn't being lazy. He has a serious, chronic knee condition that makes it hard to plant and pivot. Even at 50% he is better than any other options we have. The issue isn't heart and it really isn't coaching. The issue is a completely stacked West (with teams like Memphis/SA/GS that have played together for years), a serious chronic injury to Howard and a rotation that seriously needs a second creator like Dragic or Lawson. I am not even mad at Morey... going into this season we needed a secondary creator and depth. He has addressed the depth issue exceptionally well.
Actually, I think there isn't enough credence given to the "heart" or "effort" aspect of basketball. It's related to my view on Head Coaches in the league -- most simply do not move the needle much one way or another (there are exceptions and great/terrible coaches, but I mean most). Head Coach's biggest job? Managing personalities. These are guys who grew up having everyone fawn over them. Most are divas with huge sums of cash, surrounded by Yes Men who want to feed off of that success. Now they're all packed into one locker room, with a new pecking order. It's unsettling. Like many sports, esp. when played at this high of a level, the mental game is a huge part of everything. Just look at Dwight's in-game FT's vs. his practice FT's. This isn't to devalue the actual talent, physicality and X's & O's of a sport like basketball, but to point out that these other factors DO in fact matter quite a bit. Personalities matter; motivation matters; mental toughness and "heart" matter.
For me, the concern is not so much that they're losing. It's that these losses are piling up at a much higher rate lately(10-9 since their 19-5 start) and it's due to the same mistakes being made over and over again. When they lost back-to-back games at the Spurs and at home to the Wizards, I didn't panic. It was frustrating since missed free throws and turnovers led to the losses(i.e. they beat themselves). But the games were close and those were problems that could be corrected. But since those losses, we've also seen the starters repeatedly get off to slow starts. Even in that massive blowout over Miami, recall that the Heat had a 4-point lead at the end of the first quarter. We've seen the defensive effort slip considerably. It used to be nearly impossible to score 100 points against the Rockets in the first month and a half of the season. Now they're giving up 120 to teams like the Magic who average 95 a game. The turnovers continue to plague them. Stupid easily correctable mistakes like Josh Smith's long jumpers and turnovers off of midair passes are not being addressed. And on far too many nights, it seems like they're not even mentally engaged in the games(see New Orleans, Golden State twice, and Orlando). Shooting slumps happen. So do injuries. And the difficulty of the schedule fluctuates. The Rockets like any other team have had to deal with these hurdles thus far. What I don't like to see and what has me concerned is how for the better part of nearly a quarter of the season, they've had the aforementioned issues and have failed to correct any of them. These things don't magically go away by just waiting or hoping. It takes adjustments by the coaching staff and a renewed focus by the players. I don't see that happening.
Turbo relied on his athleticism. That's why he declined so fast. Clutch has good fundamental skills and can last until he is 90 years old.
I think calling McHale gutless, and cowardly is stepping over the line. There are a lot of people that don't like him as a coach, but it sounds like you have some kind of personal vendetta against the man. It's hard to think of McHale as gutless and cowardly if you remember him as a player, or if you consider what he's been through in his personal life the past few years. I'd like to think we at ClutchFans could express our displeasure with someone without using words like gutless, or cowardly. McHale seems to be popular with people who actually know the man, including present and former players, so I think he's probably a decent human being. I've noticed that you have made it your mission here to criticize McHale every chance you get. And you are not alone in your criticism. However, I do feel that you need to back off on the personal insults. I like to think that Clutchfans is the best fan forum to be found anywhere, and has some of the most knowledgable fans anywhere. So, I would like to suggest to you that the harsh personal insults just makes us all look bad. This isn't SpursTalk, this is ClutchFans.
with regard to mchale not standing up for his players with the refs, i and a few other here have (rightly or wrongly) characterized mchale as a coward -- specifically in the 1st half against the warriors a couple nites ago when there were a bevy of bad calls against us and mchale just sat in his chair.
This is the January doldrums of the NBA season. It's cheap to say, as a fan sitting in his armchair, that a player should be completely engaged giving a 100%. But, it doesn't seem realistic to me, nor even desirable. If you're completely zoned in for January games, will you have any gas left by the time you hit the playoffs? I think the mental fatigue of trying your damnedest to win the first 82 games will make it that much harder to get the next 16. Bubble teams (like the Scola-era Rockets) can be focused in January, because simply making the playoffs is the goal. Players with something to prove (like Beverley) so they can get the big contract when they're free agents - they can be focused in January because their motivations are not aligned with the team's (though they should correlate at least). But, teams that get penciled in as postseason locks before the season even gets started (like these Rockets) don't need to focus in January because their berth is assured and they just need to make sure they can bring their A game when it really matters. And that requires rest. So, I'm not concerned if they mail in some games now. After the ASG, teams will start focusing again on wins to set their seedings for the playoffs. Contenders will start climbing the standings and the pretenders will fall out. I'll start worrying in March if the Rockets look to still be mailing in games then.
I don't know if gutless is the right term. But I do not like at all how he never stands up for his players. When's the last time he received a technical during a game? That's not just a symbolic gesture. It's strategic when a coach gets T'd up, especially early on in a game. The refs are only human and when they're called out like that by a coach, it impacts how they officiate the rest of the night. Also, he routinely throws his own players under the bus in postgame press conferences following losses by saying they had no energy or didn't run plays or weren't moving the ball. He never takes responsibility himself, which he should BTW since it's only his freaking job to make sure they play with energy and execute the plays he supposedly gives them from the sidelines. Hell, even when he does sort of take the blame for something(like when they didn't foul intentionally at the end of regulation at Denver, allowing a game-tying 3), he managed to also point the finger at a player by claiming he told Bev to foul and he didn't listen.
This team is not championship caliber at this point. Regardless of heart, or playing hard we just don't stand a chance against teams like the warriors or a healthy thunder squad.
I agree with everything you said until you just arbitrarily added the heart part on the end. Motivation and Mental Toughness is a thing, heart isn't. And also to whatever coward left me this Anonymous rep: I'll have you know sir I am indeed getting quite old, otherwise I would probably know what "POF loner" is. (And thanks for the rep!)
I don't even know what you are trying to argue. "Heart" is a word for all those things. It's called metaphor... unless you believe when people say, "He's rock solid in this game" they mean that the guy is as hard as a piece of rock.
