The majority of the games that featured TT. I am not too upset about it. It is still early in the season. Plus, they stopped it sooner than i thought they would. Thank goodness.
during the game it is very as much players vs players as much as it is coaches vs coaches, and so far the Rockets' coaches are not making the playoffs
8-5 record. So by my count that's 5 losses on McHale and 8 games where our superior talent overcame the ineptitude of McHale. I expect this trend to continue. All wins will be in spite of McHale, all losses directly pinned on McHale. A good number of CFans posters would have us at 12-1 minimum with a 73-9 record essentially guaranteed and multiple titles a foregone conclusion. WTF is Morey waiting for? He reads clutchfans, the coaching talent is obviously right here.
I don't like his 7 and 8 man rotations, not strategically using someone like Brewer and underusing D-Mo and developing him. I don't like that he doesn't emphasize Lin should have chemistry with Howard, that is an important offensive element to the team being ignored (he should watch the Linsanity games and the Lin/Tyson Chandler chemistry and connection and how to exploit it with Howard and see that Lin has one with Smith and is developing one with Jones). I don't like shooters off the bench over-handling the ball, Delfino did it when he was a Rocket now Garcia and Casspi do it. There doesn't seem to be enough in-game adjustments, there are few set plays, players minute management and over playing Harden is a problem. For the staff, let's see at 25 games how the perimeter and PnR defense is, if it improves.
Games we absolutely lost because of McHale: Fakers - He started the Twin Towers which spotted L.A. a double-digit lead. He left Harden out there pretty much the entire 2nd half when it was obvious he was spent after bringing the team back in the 2nd and 3rd quarters. He never adjusted to Harden's fatigue(and resultant ISO-ball) or Hack-a-Dwight. And he left Dwight out there with less than a minute to go and the Rockets needing to inbound the ball. Which led to Parsons passing it to Howard, an intentional foul, 2 missed free throws, and only a 2-point lead which set up Blake's game-winner. Sixers - You're up 3 with only 6 or 7 seconds left and a foul to give. You're missing your best player in Harden. You have a game the next night in NY. And you just got burned by the Raptors in the last game by a game-tying 3-pointer that forced a 2nd OT(where your ass was saved by Jeremy Lin). How in the hell do you not foul intentionally?! Even if it becomes a foul-shooting contest, after you foul the Sixers twice(remember, the Rockets had one to give), they'll have maybe 2 seconds left to run a final play. This was all on McHale. Games we probably lost because of McHale: Mavs - Certainly part of the blame lies with the players. The bench was awful. Harden resorted to ISO-ball too much. Howard should've kicked the ball back out to use more time on a couple of those offensive boards. And obviously Dirk did make a lot of crazy shots. But McHale never made any adjustments that entire 4th quarter aside from bringing back his starters at the 9 minute mark. He never made any defensive moves to force the ball out of Dirk's hands. He never drew up any plays to attack the zone which he had to know was coming at some point. Games where McHale didn't help matters: Clippers at home - Running the Twin Towers lineup out there after the Lakers debacle was inexcusable. And not surprisingly, the Clippers ran out to a 18-8 lead. McHale immediately subbed in Lin and took out Asik, and the Rockets reversed that 10-point deficit, but it forced them to expend a lot of energy and likely prevented an even bigger deficit for L.A. which allowed them the opportunity to come back and win in the 2nd half. Overall, I'd total it at 3 losses that are due to coaching. Even if we excuse the Mavs game, this team at worst should be 10-3 right now. That would put them right up there with the Spurs and Blazers. Instead we're stuck in the middle of the pack. I understand McHale won't be fired anytime soon unless the team's record falls to around .500 or below, but he's holding these guys back with his incompetence.
So early in the season they were saying there's a deficiency or need at the PF position. It turns out, Terrence Jones can fill the need there so this is another coaching blunder (talent he was not able to recognize in the beginning) but don't expect mcfail to acknowledge his mistakes. Now , we could have a lineup with no serious deficiency in any position pg, sg, sf, pf, and c. But then Mchale suddenly decides to play beverly more minutes than Lin. We have a solid lineup stacked in every position. The only void in the team now is the coaching position.
The Twin Towers experiment I actually don't blame the coaching staff for trying out. If you have two players like Howard and Asik, it'd be almost criminal not to try to make it work at least some of the time. That being said, I think the experiment highlights something in general about McHale's coaching tendencies which is one of his biggest weaknesses - he doesn't make adjustments quickly enough and tends to let things play out for longer than they should. The Twin Towers experiment was done using way too much game time and not enough practice time. Asik basically didn't participate in the pre-season, and suddenly you want to throw out a completely different lineup during game time? Why not dedicate half your practice time to getting those guys working together on some fundamental strategies, and then sprinkle in the TT whenever you think it works well with game matchups? Why trot it out there for 3/4 of the game when your opponent is throwing out their small lineup to counter and your two bigs have no experience or guidance on what they need to do against those lineups? You want a steady ship captain, but McHale is the Snorlax of coaches. He makes decisions incredibly slowly, doesn't change his opinions readily, and refuses to make adjustments until well after it's too late to do any good. He might be doing this consciously as part of his coaching philosophy (as in, "they have to play to figure it out, so let them play through it"), but at the end of the day the results speak for themselves - it happens way too much and way too often. He's on the opposite end of the spectrum from coaches who screw around too much with rotations and plays and get in their players' heads. It's like watching a small child constantly attempt to pound a square peg into a round hole and wondering, "He's been doing that for like 15 minutes...is he slow?" This permeates all of his decision-making. He is slow to trust players, but once he does, they have an incredibly long leash, and he essentially rides those players into the ground. Harden should not be averaging 35+ MPG given he has been having a serious foot injury since the beginning of the season. Parsons was atrocious in the beginning of the season, and McHale never considered tapering his minutes down to a reasonable 30 MPG and letting other guys pick up the slack. I would love to see how the team drills for defense, too, because either they aren't working on it properly or McHale's inability to hold people accountable is translating onto poor effort on the floor. It boggles my mind how poorly the team is doing on defending screens and leaving their man, and regardless of what people think that is 100% a coaching issue. You pound the basic screen counters into everyone's head using drills, and then you force them to communicate and rotate properly every time. Then during games, if you see someone make a fundamental mistake on defense, you pull him and put someone else in who WILL do it properly. Wash, rinse, repeat, until the only guys who get playing time are the ones who are defending their man properly and at least communicating/rotating effectively on screens. Instead, all we've been hearing ever since last season is the same hilariously ineffective mantra of, "Guys just gotta fight through screens more." If that is literally what they have been practicing, then words cannot describe how incompetent the coaching is, because at the NBA level, that kind of stuff just doesn't work. Guys are too good at setting picks and guards are too good at running you through screens like the 36 Chambers of Shaolin. At some point, you will break and the team has to account for that and be ready for it.
Who says McHale doesn't hold players accountable? “Tomorrow night is an opportunity to get that taste out of our mouths,” Chandler Parsons said. “Today was great to come in here. We really competed. We really got after it. One thing about Coach (Kevin) McHale, he’s not going to let anything slide. If you make mistakes, he’s going to show them to you, you’re going to drill them the next day and you’re going to improve what you did wrong the previous game. We all watched the film and addressed what we need to get better. We came out in practice and drilled it in practice.” Asked those points of emphasis, Jeremy Lin listed “transition defense, defense in general, fourth quarter play, fourth quarter efficiency, rebounding. http://blog.chron.com/ultimaterocke...tween-games-gives-rockets-more-practice-time/ He's not a perfect coach, but we should give him credit when the team succeeds. McHale has experimented on the TT (scrapped), seen that Lin can flourish in the 6th man role (good), found his starting PF (TJones has delighted, but still needs to be tested against quality PFs), regained our high-octane offense (check). We still need a lot of growing on team defense and 4th quarter offense. We also haven't played true contenders yet. So hopefully those close losses will fuel our players' desire to be great.
NBA players care about one thing - playing time. Accountability revolves around that, not what the coach tells you during practice. Come on. Practice? We in here talking about practice? Also, the less I hear Jeremy Lin talk about practicing for stuff in the 4th quarter, the more manageable my blood pressure becomes. He and all the other bench players are the only ones who are actively having their minutes managed, and frankly that process is so arbitrary that I wonder if any of them really know what's going on.
This is how I feel. Until McHale starts benching guys consistently for lack of effort nothing will change. I know I been harping on Harden's lack of D more this season and he is not the only poor perimeter D player on this team. However, I'm hardest on Harden because I truly believe his poor D is from lack of effort, desire, and mental lapses which is inexcusable, especially from one of your best players. His lack of D is not from lack of ability. When he wants to play D he is MUCH better and focuses more. That's why I don't consider him a superstar anymore. His offense is good but his offense this year (TOs, poor 3 point shooting, etc) has not been enough to make up for his pathetic defense and is one of the main reasons Rox have lost all of these games they should have won.
You know what bothers me is that I'm not even sure it's about effort with Harden. He has been injured all season, and McHale has been giving him heavy minutes. Until Harden heals up, it's hard to know whether or not his lack of defense is due to effort or due to him attempting to manage his pain level throughout the game. If you have a foot injury, every step hurts. Which is part of my issue with how McHale has been managing Harden's time. Give the guy more rest during games and maybe he can recuperate faster, or hell give him a night off before/after a break day so he can really focus on healing up. Then maybe you can actually evaluate his defense properly - otherwise you have no idea because you can't get into his head to feel what he's feeling or think what he's thinking.
Good point. That's why Harden as long as he is playing this way should not be marched out there playing the same amount of minutes. He's hurting more than helping.
Should have switched Parson to Dirk at start of 4th qtr. Put jones on Marion, Harden on Calderon since Calderon stands around on offense like James. Pbev on Monta, d12 just patrol, give them 2's not 3's
