Whom bears more responsibility for the Rockets poor play to start the season?

It is the coach responsibillity first and foremost.
Harden bears a blame but it's the coach job to hold him accountable.
And the rest of the team also plays like crap so it makes the coach fault even more.

Once again in two days you have demonstrated your lack of knowledge.
Since they aren't elite in your mind then please give me 15 names of better defensive wings and pgs than Ariza and Beverley. Go.

 

Poll results are horrible. Rockets aren't scoring enough with Harden on bench for him to bear the most responsibility. If coaching is the problem, McHale isn't the person who decides whether the coach should be fired or not. McHale didn't put together a roster devoid of shooting. Granted, McHale has done some weird things the past three games (i.e. practically scraping only thing causing previous wins for things that haven't worked all season).

I like Morey, but he bears the most responsibility for the slow start.

 

I don't know if McHale has more support on this board than I would have guessed or if Harden has simply pissed posters off just that much.

Both, I guess.

We might have had the worst one-two punch hit us this year. We're all only human, and these aren't good excuses that I'll bring up, but neither man looks engaged out there.

Flip Saunders passed away (Rest in Peace), and maybe that affected McHale in such a way that he won't admit. Lamar Odom had his incident and that put Khloe Kardashian in the spot of caretaker (the only two MVP Harden games this year are the two that preceded the night James went out with Khloe in L.A.; coincidence?)

Harden's our Seabiscuit. Starts out in the middle of the pack and keeps his eye on the leader, then makes his move. When he goes up against a War Admiral (OKC, SAS), he'll jump hard from the beginning: lose sight of the competition in this case and you'll never catch your opponent, so you must stay in front of him. But he's a champ only when challenged, otherwise he tends to laziness.

But I voted McHale, not so much to hate on him, but he obviously didn't have this team prepared for the season. At all. Waaaaay too laissez-faire style. Granted, last year he could count on Harden's inspired play to save his job most nights; but now that Harden seems elsewhere (note to James: we aren't trading you to a Los Angeles team; you know that, right?), McHale is completely exposed. He looks shell-shocked. Literally shell-shocked.

Still, McHale could have sucked it up and actually come up with some kind of gameplan when it came to integrating his new parts. I did fear before pre-season, Who's gonna get the minutes? What's the rotation gonna be? There's about twelve guys for the pg, sg, and sf spots.

The addition of Ty Lawson, too, was supposed to be such a boon, but all he's done so far is exacerbate the laziness / apathy of Harden and McHale. Harden was probably tired of carrying the team: "look, I have help." McHale's star was getting worn down: "Look, James has help."

Except Lawson doesn't know how to grab the reins. He keeps passing off to Harden, while Harden keeps waiting for 18-9 Lawson to show up.

But integrating Lawson, and Thornton for that matter, and everyone else? That's on the g**damn coaching staff. And revolving-door roster or not, they're not up to the challenge.

 

McHale and it's not even close

 

Again, the blame falls solely on Mchale/Morey. Either you surround him with elite defenders to cover up his deficiencies or get a real coach to keep him focused & engaged on that end of the floor.

It took a summer with Coach K to get Harden playing good defense, it begs the question why was it his National Team coach & not McHale that was able to improve Harden's defensive effort & attentiveness? No doubt in my mind a coach like Pop, Thibs or hell, JVG would convert Harden into at least an average defender.

 

Just so you know communicating with each other on the court is the backbone of every defence and this again is NOT on the players. It's the coach job. It is one of the most basic stuff and first things teams train and practice on in training camps.
So that too is the coach responsibillity not the players'.

 

i may not agree to 100%, but this is a really good post.

 

Ariza & Beverley just aren't in the same caliber of defenders like LeBron, Kawhi, Allen, Wall, Rubio, George, Butler, Klay, Chris Paul, Bradley, Conley, Draymond Green etc I could go on and on. You're a massive homer if you think otherwise.

 

the question we should ask ourselves, is who out there right now coaching NBA ball is worse than Mchale?

 

Soo.. you gave 6 wings, 1 pf and four pgs. And who is Bradley? Avery Bradley or Bradley Beal? LMAO
Still waiting for you to go on and on and name 15 wings and 15 pgs who are better than those two. Provide names.

Not to mention than 9 of those players are stars on max or near max contracts...not role players like Ariza and Beverley. But please go on.

And calling me a homer is highly hillarious.

 

Byron Scott..Hoidberg and Donovan probably too. For sure Minny's coach as well.

 

Ease up Homie!! Albeit the truth...it hurts!

 

I wasn't implying it was the players' responsibility. I'm blaming the coaches. That was the point of that last part of my post. The excuses being offered up by McHale are ones I've never heard in nearly a quarter century of following the NBA. At least not if we're talking legitimate excuses.

I'm not kidding. I've never heard a coach cite a lousy training camp as justification for a poor start to the regular season. You know why? Because that's essentially a coach indicting himself and his staff for not preparing their own team to play. Now granted, McHale probably doesn't think of it as him blaming himself since he's loves to pass the buck to others. He probably just assumed everyone was gonna come into camp in shape and focused and pick up where they left off. But that doesn't always happen. And when it doesn't, it's the coaching staff's job to correct it.

Also, it's ludicrous to be told after 3 straight bad losses to horrible opponents where the team played no defense that they're not communicating with each other at that end of the floor. One bad loss? Ok. It happens. But 3 consecutive games? That's entirely on McHale. If they're not communicating, figure out why! It's not that complicated. Either one or more players are just halfassing it out there or they're genuinely confused as to what they're supposed to be doing. The former can be remedied by either chewing out or benching guys and the latter is what practice and timeouts are for.

 

some strong cases made here for blame to go around from harden to mchale to morey to other players.

but let's keep in mind that neither harden nor morey are going anywhere.

and nobody's trading for lawson or jones anytime soon. while bev and brewer aren't even eligible for trade for another month.

mchale, on the hand hand, can be replaced by a bag of chips immediately (les' pocketbook notwithstanding) and probably yield better results for us..

 

It's the star players that have the most power in this league. It's the superstars that lead the other players. Michael Jorden, Larry Bird, Magic Johnson. These guys were the leaders of their team. What kind of leader is James Harden?

Who do you think leads the Cavs, LeBron or the coach? The superstars have to set the standard. Because Harden chooses not to play defense, he is a poor leader. Because he is a superstar he still possesses the power, and is still the leader of the team. But, he is a poor leader.

We can change coaches, but Harden will still be the guy with the power on this team. No coach will ever have the power to hold Harden accountable for what he does on the court. The only person that can hold Harden accountable, is James Harden.

Getting a new coach won't do any good until James Harden decides to be a true leader. He needs to set an example by playing on both ends of the court. Harden is the only person that can fix this mess.

 

This does not make them less responsible. Who will likely get the axe if things don't improve is very different than who is responsible.

 

The teams we've been losing to... we should be able to beat them without Harden. The off-ball plays they've tried to draw up for Harden are 3 years too late and piss poor. Outside of Dwight and Thornton, no one is executing anything on the court consistently.

 

from a practical sense though, all we can do is change what is possible to change.

harden and morey might in fact be more responsible than mchale, but all 3 undoubtedly share in this abominable start to what was supposed to be a contending season, which both the owner and the fans have all invested heavily into.

we have to start somewhere to right the ship....

 

The ugliest Kardashian.