[Poll] Do you believe McHale getting fired was the right move?

I should have added that it's a combination of these two.

Yes, the players stopped listening/responding to him.
No, this is a problem with leadership/effort amongst all the players.

 

It was too early. Team Chemistry not there. Team shooting poorly. Team not playing defense. All of this would likely resolve itself. However, I reckon some accountability was reasonable. It's wake up call.

What u don't want to see is the team fall back into the Harden run offense. IT is effective, but not the long term solution. Run plays for him, not through him. This will get everyone into a flow and shooting open shots.

Some problems that will not resolve themselves naturally include rebounding without Dwight. That remains an issue.

Defense was the biggest problem early on. I mean it seems like Everyone is shooting wide open shots and Hardens man usually the guy wide open.

 

exactly this.

it's not about right or wrong. practically, if the players had stopped responding to their hc, morey and les probably felt let go of mchale was the only move they could make atm.

 

He gave you a big poll. Do you feel satisfied or do you need something bigger?

 

It was the right move since he had lost control of the team and he was incapable of righting it, but he was the fall guy for the players.

 

I think he deserved blame. But alot if people did. I even deserve blame for being wish washy about my fandom after a horrid start. But do I think firing him was correct? Not really. Do I think it was a possible move? Yes.

 

Excellent points. Also the team's still trying to envolve Lawson. We also need Dmo back to improve rebounding & stretch the floor. As I've said before, this team isn't going to reach it's full playoff capacity till after the AS break.

 

For the last time, YES!!! McHale never had this team prepared for the season. He made no adjustments between games after it was clear there were issues with the 3 consecutive 20-point defeats. He never held any of the players responsible by benching anyone who was underperforming. And his rotations were all over the map with players getting DNPs before suddenly being thrown into the starting lineup(Thornton, Harrell) and small ball lineups when the Rockets were getting killed on the glass.

I'm not absolving the players of any blame. But this notion in the national(and even local) media that McHale was some sort of innocent bystander to mutiny by the Rockets locker room is laughable. He helped create this mess with his incompetence and lack of attention.

BTW, he should've been fired a year and a half ago when Lillard hit that 3-pointer. Whether Les and Morey backed away from that decision because they didn't want Dwight to gain the rep of being a coach-killer or they felt McHale would help recruit Bosh or Melo, we'll never know. But it was a mistake to accept the kind of mediocrity we witnessed in that Portland series and then reward it with a premature 3-year extension.

 

I think the explanation of "the problem" isn't so black and white. There are many factors at play here. If the coach loses the team's respect and can't get it back... that's a huge problem. A lot of that is on the players, but a lot of it is also on the coach. If you don't have respect you can't get buy-in. If you don't have buy-in then no matter what scheme you're running it's not going to work. Good coaches demand respect and get buy-in. Last season the rockets bought in to defense first. That's all they talked about. Harden came in shooting just as bad as he has this season, and the offense sputtered along just like its sputtering along now. The difference is that the players bought into the defensive mindset and gave all out effort. They ran out after every rebound and constantly attacked the basket, slowly bleeding out teams over the course of 48 minutes. They won so many games by just sticking around last year. They made every game a war of attrition that tilted the scales in their favor. In crunch time, when both teams were dead tired, the rockets had them right where they wanted them. They had the ultimate "we're too tired to do anything else so let's just ISO" weapon in James Harden. By then defenders were too tired to move their feet so they swiped wildly at the ball, as Harden slashed by them in sudden quick, unexpected bursts of speed. This was ugly, sloppy, grungy basketball. It was rockets basketball.

This season the team came in without that mindset. When they started missing shots they hung their heads and slumped their shoulders. McHale tried to reign them in, but the team had lost sight of what got them to the WCF in the first place. They remembered the clutch buckets, the fancy post moves, the dagger threes... but they forgot the hard work it took to win... the little things they had to repeat over and over again night after night.

But one has to wonder... how much of that defensive mindset actually came from McHale? How much of it came from J.B. in the first place? With so much chatter about him leaving for a HC position somewhere else in the offseason it makes me think that McHale leaned on him heavily.

Then there's the other factor of how the team is built. This isn't a good shooting team, or an elite offensive team. They weren't an elite offense last year either, and they got far. It is completely reliant on one player to create for himself and others. The team had ONE other player who could create his own shot last year (DMO) and he was hurt at the most important part of the season and still is now. Ty Lawson was supposed to fix some of that but he's going to need the ball in his hand to get comfortable, and you can't rob the entire offense of its identity by taking the ball out Harden's hand. Make no mistake, he is the engine of the offense.

Lawson off the bench makes a lot of sense, at least for now so he can get comfortable, and get back to playing his game. But I also believe that getting DMO back will solve some issues too. Last season when the offense went stagnant we could always drop the ball into DMO in the post and get a high percentage shot. The offense, to me at least, looked the best when it was facilitated through the post (inside out). I think J.B. sees that (as indicated by his willingness to "run it again" with Harden in the post in crunch time) and will try to get Harden and DMO touches in the post on a regular basis. The key is to establish a balanced offense that tires opponents out, gets the ball in your best player's hands, and consistently creates high percentage shots.

 

No but why was Harden the issue? Was Harden sending a message to front office that coach just wasnt working out? If so that's kind of low but at the same time it wasn't working out. I'll answer in April.

 

Well honestly it was the right move by front office sending a message to these guys that what has become this season is unacceptable. Really sucks it had to happen that way but at least we have a FO who actually cares of what they're putting out there.

 

Is firing Kevin McHale the right move to address Harden's lazy summer of diva-hood?

 

He's not the best coach but i don't think what was happening was because of coaching. I think our players are jsut cold.

 

I'd vote yes but because he's never been a great all-around coach, not due to the reasons listed. The personnel here warrants an elite coach IMO. Not sure firing him in-season was a great idea but it's definitely something that needed to be done if we didn't add a Durant level player. McHale isn't good enough on his own, he'd need more great players to carry him. He doesn't make basketball easier on his players on either side of the ball. That's bad coaching.

 

We need a Coach to push Dwight and turn him into a knight that can ride the dragon not kill it.

 

Who's the dragon?

 

All of the above

 

Yeah now Harden can't scapegoat anyone else, gives us every reason to trade him if he plays with zero effort again

McHale's offense is disgusting also, so I don't care much. He depended on Harden to bail out his non existent offensive plans way too many times in the past.

 

This year's collapse was not his fault, but...

This doesn't mean that McFail is a good coach. He was never going to lead us to the promise land. Threadmill coach if you want to call it.

 

It was the right move but also problem with Morey and the team construction/chemistry