The next coach of the Houston Rockets is....

Bring in Snyder and Conley. That duo helped develop Mitchell and brought structure.

 

Tilman is too cheap to pay Silas to NOT coach next year. lets not forget it was his cheapness that broke apart a 65 win team and ultimately led harden and morey to lose faith in being able to win here.

if Silas was fired before his contract ends I'd expect Lucas to assume control until Silas is off the books.

hopefully we're both wrong. there is an unusually large number of quality coaches on the market right now and it would be great if we could take advantage of that. realistically we won't be offering the best chance of winning, or most money, but if we are the first team to announce a coaching vacancy we can scoop up a big name before better options materialize.

 

This is revisionist history. I’m not a Fertita fan, but it was Harden’s insistence on Westbrick over Paul that screwed this team. It’s not cheap to buy out a 40m contract or to take on CP3 to begin with or pay Harden the max. Fertita made a bunch of poor decisions and has made more with the selection of Silas as head coach, but being cheap is not really that much of a problem as he has showed a willingness to spend up to the luxury tax, which is pretty much the scenario for 85% of the league’s owners.

 

I was a big fan of becky Hammon as an option before Silas was hired. however, I'm leaning towards a retread this time around. I think Jalen's had some bad coaching his first 2 years and I don't want to risk that trend continuing under another rookie HC for the next 4 years. just give me someone who we know can win some regular season games, teach the young guys some basic principles of winning nba basketball, and help us make the playoffs at some point during their contract. after that we can upgrade to a more revolutionary thinker.

 

I don't think its revisionist to say he did not spend to retain the 65 win team. when we got worse the following season harden was frustrated and gave an ultimatum, upgrade the roster or trade me. The fertittas were sour on Paul calling him the worst contract in all of sports at the same time James had a rift with him for underperforming. Morey said later he thought given the full summer he could've worked things out between harden and Paul, but Tilman and Patrick wanted a shiny new Westbrook either out of their own naivety or desire to retain/appease harden. Morey also said he thought if he held out a little longer with the thunder he could've saved a couple of picks in the deal, hinting towards someone else (Patrick) wanting the deal pushed through. this might've bought the fertitta's more time with harden but was a big reason morey started to consider leaving as well.

had we retained our FAs, or spent the MLE to rebuild depth following our 65 win team, the request for rus might not have come up. and although harden insisted on him as a Paul replacement I tend to believe morey that he could've smoothed things over, especially if given the chance to spend to upgrade other parts of the roster, rather than being stuck with only Paul's contract and picks as devices to improve talent.

fast forward to hiring Silas.... another piece of evidence of tilman's cheapness harming the team. morey and harden wanted to retain MDA (for better or worse) but tilman offered him the cheapest HC contract in the NBA with performance bonuses. it was an insult and he walked. this brought harden and morey a step closer to leaving. morey was recruiting Lue and JVG as HC, when both were removed from the search because they were too expensive, morey stepped down. between being forced to let ariza and MDA walk, not given the chance to retain Paul, not being able to spend more than vet minimums to fill the roster, and not being able to hire a decent HC, morey had enough and left. the cheapest HC in the league was hired (and we got what we paid for).

harden, with his GM and his coach chased out (both major blows to his loyalty to the rockets), and without any real roster improvements, decided that he had enough here too. it all stems back to being cheap.

now when we are concerned with doing what's best for jalen, the right thing to do would be to bring in a competent coaching staff for his third season. however, that requires paying Silas to not coach while paying for an expensive new coach like Quinn Snyder for example. I doubt Tillman is willing to do that. we will either retain Silas through the end of his contract (and waste another year of development for jalen and jabari) or promote someone from the existing staff like Lucas in order to avoid paying a new coach. I hope I'm wrong here but I'll believe Tillman is willing to spend after I see him spend.

all that being said, you're right that most teams almost never spend the tax and its unfair to assume Tillman should've. but that doesn't excuse him from not spending on coaching. and by not spending in a situation where most owners should/would (after being up 3-2 in a conference finals), it signaled the championship contending years were over and it was time for everyone to jump ship, and they did.

 

Well said, you went in dropping bomb after bomb

 

Thanks for this information. I don’t know for sure if this is exactly how it all played out, but I do agree that Fertita has been a crappy owner. I think he will replace Silas at least I hope so. Empty seats and a super frustrated fan base have got to goad him to some kind of appeasement to the fans even if he is cheap. I have a bigger fear that he may try to move the team to Las Vegas, but hopefully the league would block that.

 

That 17-18 team had a one year championship window. The window was shut when cp3 started playing like he was washed up in his second season in Houston. It had nothing to do with not re-signing role players like Ariza.

 

unfortunately it had everything to do with it. replacing ariza and Luc with James Ennis and MCW was a huge loss. yes luc was injured the following season and wouldn't have contributed, but we didn't even use the MLE to replace either one. we only used vet minimums.

why was lack of depth more to blame than Paul having a down year? because we were the 4th seed with 53 wins. if we won 4 more games we would've finished with the top seed in the west. in a season where capela played 67 games, Paul 57, gordon 68, rivers 47, nene 42, and house only played 39 because they didn't want to guarantee his contract until later in the season when it would be cheaper (they kept sending him back to the GL to save money, even though he was at times our 4th or 5th best player due to injuries), yes I think ariza or another MLE player (or both!) would've made a huge difference in 4 more games instead of relying on guys who were on their last nba contracts.

why would finishing with the 1 seed make a huge difference? we lost to a healthy warriors team in the second round. had we finished first with the warriors second we wouldn't have met until the WCF's. by the WCFs the warriors were completely banged up with injuries while the rockets were healthy at least through the second round. KD didn't play in the WCFs due to a calf strain, and iguodala (who was still good at the time) missed half the WCF with a hamstring injury. we were able to go toe to toe with them at full strength, and if they were without KD and Iggy it would've been our year, even with Paul taking a step back.

so yes, resign ariza, use the MLE, convert house to a minimum deal instead of sending him back to the GL to keep him on 10 day contracts, it all gives us a good chance at just 4 more wins which gives us a good chance of playing the warriors in the WCF without KD/Iggy rather than in the second round with them.

it all goes back to tilman being cheap and tearing apart the team a year too early.

 

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.

 

They should immediately remove Silas AND Lucas, but trying to bring in a current asst coach (ex. Cassell) during the season might be tough. So unless they're fine with Hollins, Abdelfattah and whoever, just let Lucas run it and see how they respond down the stretch.

Would be doing back flips if they somehow landed any of Cassell, Atkinson or Snyder (in that order) this off season.

 

Becky Hammon

 

What about Mark Jackson?

 

Maybe. If he's willing to take on such a project like this team.

He does have great experience as a pg and how to play that position. Probably can do a lot to shore up the mistakes our guards make routinely.

 

Technically it was the head honcho's acquiescence to this plan that screwed the team.

 

That would be nice. Not sure how they are doing with the whole Udoka the Mack thing.

Technically they are not married and rumor is that they have/had an “open marriage”. But who knows? Those things tend to change as people get older, especially women.

 

I think Silas gets canned tomorrow

this can’t continue

 

Rockets have no plans to fire Silas. I’ll say it again, Stone is best friends with Silas. He’ll keep him until forced by Tilman and he truly could care less about the team. He owns it for the revenue sharing and doesn’t need to fill seats to make money.