When in the history of the "Miked Up Session" on TNT have we EVER heard a coach actually giving out real X's and O's strategy??? There is a reason why its always "you guys gotta push it to the next level" or "I need some Nasty". Hell compared to Scott Brook's miked up sessions, McHale sounded like Maximus Meridius(from Gladiator). Its because THATS ONLY WHAT THE NBA WILL ALLOW THEM TO BROADCAST ON LIVE TV. Do you really think teams are going to allow their playbooks to be broadcasted live over national TV for the world to see? Come on. If your complaint is based on McHale's TNT "Miked Up" session than you are oblivious to what those "miked up" sessions really are. And no, I am NOT a McHale apologist. Its just fans griping about the coach is so tired and worn out that I'm asking the people here who blame 110% of the Rockets woes on McHale to try harder to come up with a little better reasoning as to why its McHale that is the problem, and what EXACTLY you really want changed. If you want the Rockets to run a more traditional YMCA type of playbook... Great... show me what they should run instead... convince me because you folks are doing a pretty crappy job of selling me on the fact that its McHale that is the problem here (if there even is a problem).
we dont have a PF go to option like mchale was. SO read and react works best. You can only draw up so many plays for harden & howard. If we get a millsapp I think we see way more plays and coaching on mchales behalf
I don't need to hear it, I just wanna see it on the court. At a certain point, "Read and React" is gonna have to defer to "Design a Decent Set Play and React".
Read and react the whole ****ing game Bren. Nothing to fall back on. What's the worst that could happen? just setting nba world record of fewest points points. No biggie, we just beat the blazers.
nope I said you will see more plays, we have only one inside post guy with HOWARD and don’t have a pick & pop guy. We have perimeter players and a offense setup for shooting 3s there’s only so many plays you can run with our personnel. Are we not seeing more plays than last year since howard was incorporated ?
I enjoy every victory we earn, and even encouraged by some of the tough losses because of how hard we played. Sure, its takes little to no effort to clap, cheer, and be a "fan" as you may put it. In reality the so called fans are merely cheerleaders. I'm not a McHale proponent, and its clear. I have a right to call for his replacement as I see fit.
Personally, I want McHale gone. I have no real reasons grounded in factual data for him to be gone, but I do want another coach. The problem is, especially around the forums it seems like people have little to no factual data on why he is a good or bad coach. Are the Rockets doing well this season? In my opinion yes. The clips didn't fair so poorly under Del Negro either, so making a conclusion based on play isn't always easy. I think the situation is much more complex than people understand. It's evident the players have bought into McHale's "system". McHale isn't a heavy X's and O's kind of guy. The plays he draws up tend to be simple and tend to rely more on the player's athleticism and skill over their intelligence and bball IQ. Players like this type of play because McHale is a player's coach. I would say Rudy T and Spoelstra are also player's coaches (Spoelstra to a much lesser extent). For certain teams this works, for us the results seem to speak to it working, and arguing purely on the facts and cutting out emotion it's hard for me to say he should be fired. The question then comes up "can this team play any better?" and "would a new coach make this team better?" That's a hard question to answer based on the facts as well. This team has chemistry, if you can't see that then you either don't understand what chemistry is or you don't watch the games. To break that with a new coach causes yet another growth period, look at the clippers for reference. Even when you bring in a coach like Doc Rivers (to the clips) there is still a period of stagnancy. In the west, if you're standing still you're dead. There's little room for growing pains. So if we brought in a new coach this season chances are we wouldn't see results until next season at the minimum. Of course this is pure wild ass speculation, but when is the last team you saw fire their head coach and bring in a new guy only to win a championship all in the same season? It doesn't happen. Then we are left with another question "who do we bring in?" Jeff Van Gundy's system would be awesome with this team, along with Thibs. Growing speculation that Thibs and Chicago are not getting along also makes him an interesting choice. But to be fair, with both coaches it seems like it would be impossible to implement their respective systems this year. Thibs is still under contract, and sans another coach trade I don't see him coming to Houston any time soon. JVG would need more time to turn this team around, and another brother Gundy might also not be what Dwight is looking forward to playing under. Who else is available? The list is long, but each option inherently would have little to no effect this season, and essentially hiring said person would be the metaphorical waving of the white flag on this season for the Rockets. I don't think the players are ready to give up on the season, let alone Morey. So what is the best way to go about this? Keep McHale on and see what he can do. It's a gamble to say the least. If McHale and the Rockets get passed the 1st round, and heck, if they get passed the 2nd it's hard to turn around and fire the guy. It's almost irresponsible to do so. So you have to either hope the Rockets lose in the first round or just win the whole damn thing. As a McHale detractor those are the best possible scenarios. I don't think McHale can take us from contender to title defender, I really don't see it. That is also what makes this really complex, and there are a lot of moving parts. Players are inconsistent and rotations aren't completely set either. Part of the problem is the injury bug. It really annoys me how McHale is so dismissive of injury issues, but they do present a problem. If the starting 5 for the Rockets were actually healthy it would be much easier to understand where this team is. At this period in time, for the Miami Heat in their first season together they were 30-13. Yes, they went on to lose to the Mavs in the finals. Some people have mistakenly labelled this season as the shortened season but it was not. The Rockets are 28-15 in the West, a stacked western conference. We aren't as far off target as some would want you to believe either. Either way, the best thing for everyone to do is enjoy the Rockets as much as you can this season, no real changes can be made now. However, the off-season may be a whole other ball game.
Great... Than SHOW ME how you would design their sets? -Where should the players be -What screens should be set and by which bigs -back cuts? -off the ball movement -etc. -etc. If you want to take a hard line stance on what McHale is running, show me the sets they should be running instead. Its the golden age of the internet right now. It can't be that hard to find clips of basketball plays can it?
Exactly. You don't think setting plays for our shooters will help. Pick and roll, moving without the ball just the fundamentals.
I agree to this post. I also dont think he's the greatest coach in the world, but fans on here are waaayyyy too short sited to instead of just b****ing about it constantly, actually think about the best course of action and REAL adjustments that can be made to help the team both now and moving forward. As for the basketball side of things, I really want to challenge folks to show me what the Rockets should be running instead. It would really add some quality to the GARM to actually relate basketball performance to ACTUAL basketball every once in awhile instead of the tired old arguments recycled on the GARM after every game.
I don't know if this has been discussed yet, but next year is a team option on McHale's contract. Do you think the Rockets will pick it up, extend him outright with a new contract or decline it and replace him with someone new?
It's only a matter of time until we break out the old heart arguments like we did in the days of Tmac. I hated Tmac, and I used that argument a lot, but I think in getting older I've realized the sport is more complex than I once thought it was.
The Spur's playbook is the league worst kept secret, but try stopping them. Their pick n' roll offense and corner shooters are run nearly on every play, but its their execution that makes the difference. This is the NBA, there are no secrets weapons or secret plays. Every coach at this level have access to the same type of information. Phil Jackson had his triangle offense, MDA has his face pace offense, McHale has his read and react. Read and react is basically lets "wait and see."
1. yes you beat me to it when I said we have howard now as a post option. p&r was something mchale was doing last year. I just feel like howard doesnt want to run it as much, even tho we do see flashes of him doing it for alleys even tho the picks are often lazy compared to asik's. howards known for not liking to run it so I didnt get my hopes up saying it was going to DEADLY p&R with harden like most people did. 2. we could run high pick & rolls with a PF & pick&pop but do we have that option at PF currently ? ppat was a guy you could run that with. Jones can set screens but if you throw the pop pass to him he doesnt have the jumper to get it done at a high % so he will just look to pass it to another 3 shooter like harden which can then lead to a late harden ISO I know mchale could do better but you guys that are so frustrated need to understand 1 & 2 are not clear options this yr. If we had those 2 options McHale would be able to do way more with our offense. So what he does now is R&R which fits our perimeter players that we currently have.
I think the team has adjusted by going inside-out. We start the game scoring in the paint via Howard or our rim runs or transition, and only shoot 3s "within the offense". We're not just bombing away from the 3pt line, but we're taking them as the defense collapses and we get open. Of course, there is a huge difference between POR and OKC defense. What's good about last night is when we started to miss in the 3rd, we fought to get offensive rebounds and were able to keep the offense going. Parsons and Bev were huge in the 3rd qtr because they took up the scoring when Harden and Howard could not. Sets would be good for those times that the team looks lost vs zone or defenders who can stop Howard and Harden. Just to have an option or two available. We'll see if they have learned when the same situation comes up again. Last night the team grew up a little in front of a national audience. Bev and Parsons gave Harden and Howard a lot of confidence and took some of the pressure off by playing very well.
My main argument back in the T-Mac/Van Gundy days was that "I just can't buy into a team winning a championship when they HAVE TO rely one player simply getting ridiculously hot to win games". The Rockets offense back then vs. what it is now is night and day from an isolation standpoint. Back then, Juwan Howard or Jon Barry would never have the opportunity to go off for 35 points like Terrence Jones did the other night. I couldn't stand T-Mac back then because I thought he was selfish but I look back now and realize that it was just really, really difficult for the Rockets to score back then, and he was their only hope for getting 89 points in a 48 minute game. Now this (probably mostly new) group of fans want JVG back, and the Rockets to go back and play old school YMCA basketball. So that's why I'm telling folks to show me exactly what they prefer otherwise, and their reasons why because if you want drastic changes to the coaching staff that will do what they want (not what the FO believes in), and run more set plays because I've seen the other side of how the game can be played... you should be careful what you wish for. People need to go watch some film on the old JVG/T-Mac Rockets era.
The offense under Gundy was horrid. Heck that's why I was on board with him getting canned. I think the defense he could bring to this team would be amazing, plus this is a younger team that needs more focus. I just don't understand what McHale brings to the table on defense. I think McHale loves to echo the idea of effort, this team needs to put more effort, put hands up, run to the play, this team needs a lot more emphasis on the fundamentals. He isn't wrong about that but as a coach in the NBA it has to go passed fundamentals alone. I agree, a team that allows 60 points in a half doesn't have the defense to win championships, even if they score 74 points in that same half. I also think if Gundy came in a lot of people would cringe at the 89-86 scorelines we were used to back then. It's 6 of one, half a dozen of another.
LOL at anyone who still thinks McHale will get fired anytime soon. We are 28-15, 5th in the West and 1 game behind the Clippers and might steal homecourt. We will go for around 55-56 wins which means we met our expectations and there is no reason to fire McHale.
I agree with most of what you are saying, but my concern with the read and react is what happens in crunch time when defenders are playing with 100% effort. Then again, only the elite offenses with excellent chemistry excel during those times. I remember reading in one of Phil Jackson's books that crunch time offense is the very last thing to develop between a team. It takes years of experience and chemistry. Hopefully our O develops this in the next couple of years.
