run PnR in practice till the Rockets were blue in the face. I would have half courts sets of 3 on 3 with Harden, Howard and Parsons on offense against Brewer, Smith and Garcia on defense; and Lin, Asik and Caspi on offence against Bev, Jones and Dmo on defense. Just run the play over and over and over and over again until they learn how to SCREEN properly, pick and pop, pick and roll, pick and step back shoot, pick and drive for a layup, pick and kick out for a wide open 3 on help defense, pick and lob for a dunk/layup. Let Sampson coach the defensive players to play different defenses to try and stop the offense without letting McHale know what the defense plans on doing, so that McHale can learn to coach the offense on how to read these different defenses and what to do in every given situation. Running full practices and different plays every time down the court, playing full court, isn’t going to really lock in our tops players head how to execute these PnR plays under different defenses each time. The repetition in practice will make our half court offense improve tremendously (and our defense since this is the hardest play that we seem to have defending so far this year), without wearing the players down or possibly getting injured by running full court in practice just winging it. We don’t really have a problem with our fast break offense, even though we haven’t been getting that many of them, because our players are naturals at it. But the PnR was supposed to be our bread and butter half court offense, and it sucks or is non existent right now. I blame this completely on the coaching staff and them alone; and therefore McHale since he is the head coach responsible for the entire coaching staff. If the Harden, Howard, Parsons trio and Lin, Asik, Caspi trio are practicing this non stop in practice on offense, they will figure out how to make this powerful weapon work for them against different defenses. Occasionally switching in Bev and Brooks for Harden and Lin on offense will help to make sure that every important ball handler on the team knows how to run the PnR properly, and help them all to learn how to better defend it as well. Let Harden try to guard Bev on the PnR so that he can learn to fight over screens and stay with his man, and let Lin guard Brooks so he can learn to stay with quicker guards. This offensive and defensive problem with the PnR all stems from bad coaching and not enough repetition.
... remember that I'm still on a learning curve as head coach, so I should remain open minded while demonstrating great leadership and strong decision making. Also, as long as I continue to have the opportunity to coach the incredible talent assembled on this Rockets roster, I would be less cryptic, and develop stronger communication with players, media, and fans. I have winners' blood flowing through my veins, and I have the rings to prove it, so I must remember to tap into that mindset at every moment. And, if I ever lost the confidence of my players, I would put a reasonably quick transition plan in place for the sake of the team and the fans. Until such a time, I'll keep reminding my guys that "we're trying to win games here."
If I were McKale, I would always say "we need to get stops", "the ball got sticky" after every loss to inferior teams
This was supposed to be a discussion about the PnR offense and defense. NOT a McHale bashing thread. Does anyone have an opinion about the PnR issue?
continue to be a great figurehead for the Rockets organization. Use the deep respect I have earned around the NBA to recruit more players like Howard. Allow all of the Morey hired assistant coaches to continue running the day to day practices, film and strategy sessions, and player game prep. Continue to be a "Leader of men" which I was hired to be by Morey and Les. Never read Clutch Fans.
I thought and think the same thing. The question is, why isn't that happening? That's why I gave my opinion and solution in the opening post. I guess I'm asking for other's opinions and solutions on what we can do to change it to make it better.
P&R takes time to develop. Both players need to share an understanding of each others tendencies and the current defensive situation. Practice may help somewhat, but when seeing the same defenders play after play in practice the P&R will be tailored to those players. So P&R really needs game time to develop.
Start DMo with Howard and split the pf minutes even with TJones, while it is still early in the season. If I couldn't do that I would call up JVG and ask him to come be a real coach. I don't like a lot of the things that Mchale does but I think he should be able to coach through his third season to see what he can do. There's still a lot of mixing and matching with the line up to figure out, and I'm sure it can be a little challenging.
One of the biggest issues with trying to run more PnR offense is that Howard wants to shy away from the PnR and more post-up plays (which are ugly to say the least) -- a big reason as to why he left LA and D'Antoni's offense, in addition to his aversion of playing with Kobe.
I agree and that's why I suggested having Sampson coach the defensive teams and have them use different strategies without the offense knowing how they were going to defend them, so that they offense could get an idea of different looks against them. Of course, you can't replicate the actual talent of other teams defensively, just their strategies to a degree.
This is so true. But doesn't McHale have a duty to inform and sell Dwight on the fact that his post ups are as efficient as the PnRs they would be running? And they don't have to run PnR ALL the time, but at least be efficient at it to run it for when they need a major bucket.
