Brooks is a weapon. There is no doubt about that. You put him on the Dallas Mavericks, where you have Terry and Dirk, and Brooks is going to do damage. On the Rockets, he struggled once teams learned how to neutralize him...by double teaming him and picking him up early with the double. His inability to pass out of that was his achilles heel. On Dallas, that wouldn't be the case. Look at what Jose Barrea did in the playoffs last year. So Brook just needs the right situation. That said, he would have never panned out as the day-to-day starting pg of this team. Lowry was the better fit for sure. And I think you have to agree there.
Their ability to get the most out of their players and the team and create a cohesive functional unit. That includes: Individual player growth Putting players in positions that fit their talents so they can succeed Getting players to buy into a team concept on both ends of the floor Getting players to play hard on both ends of the floor. Managing difficult situations Maximizing wins All of these things count for performance of a coach. Rudy T, JVG, and Adelman all had excellent performance while they were here. Teams hustled, played team ball as much as you could hope for, there was maturity and growth. My only knock on Adelman was I felt he could have handled the T-mac situation a bit better. But I still rate his performance very high. As for McHale - I just feel like its way too early to tell. The guy isn't experienced, and with anyone in that situation, he's going to make all sorts of mistakes. This year really is an adjustment year - I won't knock him for the full year. I want to see how he changes and adjusts over time.
Someone has this sig I always find it strange how people can evaluate a new coach with a new team so fast and so negatively. McHale is doing a great job, he mentioned that Sam D would be much better than his debut and he's been on spot. He's also playing people who are productive and benching ones who aren't.
I am still not sold on McHale, glad the team is beating the lessor teams, let's see how he stacks up at the end of the year. Right now, every single player that also played for Adelman has worse %s than they had last year....every single one. I miss Rick's offensive system a lot, and I am sure he would have loved to have Dalembert at the center spot instead of Chuck. DD
Still not time to say one way or the other. I could agree with you on your points except there is the point where the defense even regardless of Dalembert is better in every way. There are some doubts Parsons would ever play let alone start. That leaves Budinger starting and a significantly worse defense but slightly better offense. No way to know which one would be better since some rotations could be completely different for each coach.
Rick's high post offense would not work with Dalembert and Scola very well and I don't think we'd be running that. I'm not sure we would look that different from what we're running right now.
It would work fine with Scola, just not with Dally, or Rick would have had to adjust it. I am sure he would be fine, as Rick has had several systems that have worked and had to adjust his multiple times. DD
McHale's super small lineup in the 4th quarter was pretty clever today. I gotta say, I'm slowly getting on the McHale bandwagon.
What I meant is that neither Scola or Dalembert are adept passers from the high post. You wouldn't see the same sort of back-door cuts that we ran successfully last year with those guys needing to make the pass.
Scola is a great passer from that point, he hits cutters all the time for Argentina and when called upon to do it in Houston. Scola has no problem playing that spot, now Dally...... DD
I'm a big RA supporter. I think he's a hall of fame coach. However he wasn't coming back due to his relationship with Les. Out of all the possible replacement, McHale looks promising. He definitely brings the right attitude. A players coach that also commands a lot of respect. The fact that he can probably still score in the post on these young guys doesn't hurt.