Les Alexander: Rockets are contenders and do not need to get out of the first round

The point is that by giving the extension prematurely, Les has taken the option of a coaching change off the table for the next few years. I'm not saying he needs to replace McHale now. What I'm saying is if the team flames out in the first round again, we're stuck with the same head coach heading into next season because the odds of Les giving him a $13 million payoff are zero.

There was no rationale for extending McHale 3 years right now. The only reasons were A) Les was afraid of losing him after this season(which he did concede) or B) he thinks McHale is doing a good enough job to deserve another 3 years as head coach(which he also publicly stated). If it's the former, then Les is a moron because no other contending team would try to steal Kevin McHale out from under us. If it's the latter, then Les' standards are very low these days since McHale hasn't won a single playoff series thus far.

 

So true.

It would be one thing if Harden was actually any good at those isolation plays, but clearly he doesn't have the requisite skill level.

I also rather like the comparison to the Kobe show. A top 20 player of all time with 5 rings. Terrible, terrible show.

 

A. how many quarters did it take mchale to double team lamarcus aldridge? on the contrary he did absolutely nothing. in fact he didn't even get up off the bench the first 2 games. stotts was on the sideline clawing and scraping for wins on the road, while mchale did nothing but hyperventilate in his chair.

B. the sad thing is that even byron has been to the finals as a head coach. mchale will never ever do that. so let's go back to game 6 final possession. as headache-inducing as his play had been, lin had actually pretty much shut down lillard during that 4thQ. mchale then inexplicably subs him out on defense. taking it further, he doesn't control the defensive set which leads to players making up their own gameplan on the fly. next, he doesn't instruct jones to pressure the ball (even while standing right f'n in front of him!). mchale is simply not wired or equipped to be a crunchtime head coach. forget having good judgement under pressure, he is like a zombified deer caught in the headlights.

C. harden iso on matthews was not working the entire series. turnovers and bricks is what it was yielding game after game. and yet there was little to no expansion of the offense incorporate player movement, bring harden off staggered picks or backdoor picks - nothing. how many minutes did the great offensive machine dmo play against portland? it's a wonder how a supposedly random read&react offense resulted in such pathetically predictable low percentage shots possession after possession. if stotts and mchale had been switched that series, do you honestly believe portland would have won?

 

Look, its a point, but not really a valid one given the nature of the argument. At the end of the day... Les can opt out at any time, and fire McHale if its the right move to make. Firing a coach is always on the table.

What Les is gambling at, with his pocket book... not the salary cap's $, is that the reasons why he wasn't fired after last season wont drastically change after this one.

We can't judge Les on something that hasn't yet happened (failing in the playoffs because of direct result of McHale's stupidity). He made a gamble with his own pocket book that is out of character based on his previous processes with handling coaching contract situations.

We can only guess as to why (maybe there actually is talk of a team like Cleveland, or Kevin Love/Lebron's team contacting McHale's people, etc.). Or maybe it was just so McHale's agents would stop bothering him and the Rockets ownership about $ and power when they wanted him to just focus on basketball now. Who knows the exact reason, but it does seem like there is a reason behind the scenes.

But its besides the point. The point is, what could Les have done better over the past 21 years to take these really good 50+ win teams and make them win more championships. If the ONLY excuse you guys can come up with is to have NOT given McHale an extension (that he can technically override at any time by firing him), I personally think you guys are grasping for straws.

 

To your first point, I'll say it again. You're incredibly naive if you think Les is ever going to fire McHale before this contract extension has even kicked in. He will be the Rockets coach for at least the next 2 1/2 seasons. I could see Les eating the final year if this team is going nowhere, but he is not gonna cut him loose with 2-3 years left on the deal and be stuck paying McHale nearly 9-13 mil to not coach.

To your second point, that's what concerns me with Les. He presumably didn't fire McHale after last season because he was happy(or at least not disappointed) with the result. Which means the team finishing with 54 wins and the 4th seed was sufficient. The first round loss was not a fireable offense. Now to us fans, I'm pretty sure the vast majority of us were PO'd that the team failed to advance to at least the second round. Personally, I think last season was in large part wasted because of this.

So that begs the question, what is Les' expectation for this season? By giving McHale an extension before we even reached the halfway point, was he signaling that the regular season success thus far is satisfactory? That playoff series victories are the cherry on the sundae and that he really only cares about the team winning 50+ games? He sure seemed to indicate that in his remarks(not to mention the extension).

To your third point, are you kidding me? You wanna run down the list of stupid moves made by this organization going back to the late 90's? The squandered draft picks(Rhodes, Drew, Turkcan, Boki, Head, Royce)? The horrible free agent signings(Mo Taylor, Moochie, Cato, Maloney, Price Krispie, Lin). The players we let walk away(Posey, Dragic). The bad trades(Pippen for a bunch of role players, Glen Rice, Eddie Griffin for 3 first rounders).

You know, part of the reason it took too long to finally put together a quality team around T-Mac and Yao was because of the mess left behind by Rudy since most of those boneheaded moves came during his tenure. To that end, it looks like Les has learned his lesson and has gone to almost the opposite end of the spectrum with Morey. I just hope they're not so obsessed with acquiring that elusive 3rd superstar that they allow quality role players like Brewer to walk with nothing to show for it.

 

Doubling a post player against one of the best 3 point shooting teams in the league. We are talking about the Houston Rockets here. The team that lives and breathes all things 3 pointers. Forget McHale.... think Houston Rockets basketball philosophy. Double a mid-range shooter, or give up wide open 3's vs one of the best 3 point shooting teams in the league?

That's a Houston Rockets philosophy issue. That goes much deeper than Kevin McHale. They knew exactly what they were doing by continuing to allow LMA to iso from the high post.

LMA beat THE ROCKETS. Stotts didn't do something magical to take advantage of McHale. LMA was otherworldly, and the Rockets gambled on him not being that.

Ok rule of thumb... any suggestion going a coaches way shouldn't probably be for them to be relying on Jeremy Lin's defense for pretty much anything. I am a Jeremy Lin fan. Love the person, and the story, but I will never judge a coach based on whether or not he should be trusting Lin as a defender to win a playoff game. History shows he probably shouldn't.

First- D-Mo has been great this year. Last year.... not so much. Mostly it had to do with fouling every 30 seconds, but for whatever reason... D-Mo wasn't ready last year. If you are making a case that D-Mo would have been a difference maker in the playoffs last year after failing to even earn minutes in the regular season, please don't get offended by this, but you are being dillusional.

Love D-Mo and love his progress this season. Last season he wasn't ready. Hell... he wasn't even ready this Summer with team Lithuania where his play even struggled then, and in the Rockets preseason.

Per R&R offense: I don't know what happened to Harden specifically & the Rockets offensive style of play even MORE specifically in the Portland series, but I have my theories. I personally think that Harden is the engine that drives the Rockets offense, and the Rockets really scrapping their style of play to dump the ball into Dwight play after play (as great as he was) really took the best player, Harden, out of his game when he was needed most at the end of the game.

You hear McHale say it all the time. Harden is at his best when he is "playing downhill". The slow it down, dump in the post offense just really kills James Harden's offense, and facilitation.

The Dwight post up game is something we need to watch moving forward. How does McHale deal with an obvious situation where Dwight needs to adjust his gameplay offensively for the betterment of the team, and the teams best player? Is James Harden's offense something of a regular season fluke? I dont know.... but his offense is soo good in the regular season (and in the past in the postseason with OKC) that IMO it needs to be explored as a primary offensive attack in the postseason.

Point is... we are talking about things alot more complex then just calling a timeout and drawing some nifty Brad Stevens (love this guy) play with a crafty back-cut or stagger screen. We are talking more about driving the engine that is your superstar's optimal play & adjusting another superstar's offense against his own will.

If you think this is just some simple timeout & adjust solution I personally think you are wrong.

 

on the contrary, in my second post which led to this expanded discussion, i only cited a cursory tongue-in-cheek list of reasons for why mchale is unqualified as head coach despite the other good points he might bring to the table. and among the negatives i left out is this team's lack of identity on offense.
for the first part of this season they have developed a pressure trapping D that yielded good results, and even though we have yet to see if it can be maintained and stay effective thru the course of the season and playoffs -- it's still a lot ####ing better than previous years under mchale.
but still on offense, we have no identity. at most times they want to push the pace both in halfcourt and transition. and then in between they want to post up dwight/dmo. if you're going to do that then the coach needs to find a way to control the tempo and get the perimeter players to slow down, get into the right spot on the floor, and methodically get the ball into the postman. instead we are generating an obscene number of turnovers because the spacing is consistently jacked and the players are never on the same page together.
and this lack of identity on offense is most exposed whenever harden sits. without him creating something out of nothing for us, the offense typically grinds to a halt. we have nothing we can run or go to with confidence to get a timely bucket. still no adequate player movement or screens to generate open looks. and unfortunately for us, drive and kickout only works so many dozens of times per game.
the team's lack of discipline is another glaring problem that's on the coaching staff, but quite frankly i don't even feel like going into it. you've already said you believe that mchale is a bottom tier coach. the only question then is either why this team doesn't deserve a better one, or if there are better ones available out there. i would say we should be going all out to put the best competitor on the floor, and that if GS can grab kerr and PHO can find horny (just to name a couple), then surely morey, the master at finding obscure gems in the rough, can land us a much better head coach.

 

I thought JVG was not extended because Les wanted to have a more "uptempo" style. And Adelman's departure has been argued many times and I don't want to go back into it.

Anyway, the only reason it was "4 coaches in 21 years" was because of Rudy T's long tenure. Both JVG and Adelman were one and done. Ironically, it was how Rudy T was let go that set me and some other old timers off. The guy should be a Rocket for life. He's not a perfect coach with some of the flaws I really didn't like. But he should be respected for his lifetime contributions to the organization and at least give him some nominal position after his illness.

I don't disagree with what you say here. Nobody criticized how he runs the business. We are talking about whether he really cares about winning. Unlike some of his critics here, I believe he cares about winning, just not as much as we fans do. His highest priority is to build an attractive team. If he had to choose between attractive and winning, I'm pretty sure he would choose the former.

 

i wasnt the biggest fan of Rudy T but thought it was botched up how he left. Dude was sporting purple and gold afterwards. I dont know any Rox fan who thought that looked right

 

I approve this message. The nail has been hit on the head.

 

You guys are a trip. Argue about how bad you perceive McHale all you want till you are blue in the face, it doesn't matter. Obviously Morey and Co. are happy enough with the direction he has taken this team, to give him the extension.

I mean it's not like our team has improved every year under his reign... oh wait it has? Literally every year. Win% by year .515 (2012); .549 (2013); .659 (2014); .690 so far this year.

Well then surely it's only because the players have just had more time to gel, and know how to play better together right?... Oh yea we have probably more roster turnover than any other team in the league.

Well we just have more talent than everyone else, and this summer we made some blockbuster moves to improve the team... Except we actually lost 3 players that were supposedly holding the team together, and had some talking heads asking the question "do the Rockets make the playoffs this year?".

It's hard to argue with success, and McHale has been successful. Yes he hasn't had success in the playoffs (yet), but really there is only 1 disappointment, and that was a 4-5 match up with Harden playing like absolute crap. It's hard to win any game in the NBA when you're best player is playing poorly, and even harder to win a series. If there were a better coach available that Morey and co. thought would bring playoff victories to Houston, I can guarantee you Morey would've brought him in already.

Lastly I'm not sure how fans can evaluate a coach. We have no information on what is being delegated to who. How much of Morey's philosophy is blocking things McHale could want to do, i.e. midrange jumpshots. What players are refusing to do, i.e. Dwight PnR. We know nothing outside of what we see on the court. The only way to gauge a coach from the outside looking in is by how much they win, and since he has been here, McHale has done an excellent job at that.

 

Yea, I think most people here just don't realize how little a coach impacts a game. Some of this nitpicky nonsense is criticism no coach can stand up too. McHale isn't holding us back. This is a roster balance issue.

 

I agree with everything in your post with the exception of placing the blame on Rudy T. I attribute all of those bad decisions to Carroll Dawson who was the GM and to a clueless, inept personnel dept. There was no plan, no strategy, no fricking idea on how to assemble a team much less a contending one. That's why I won't be impressed with this team until I see success in the playoffs because you can't win a title when you continue to flame out in the first round.

 

It is so much better when Les doesn't talk. Too many martinis.

 

We should sign that guy

 

Im not sure what you are talking about with Rudy T. He left for medical reasons, and nearly 10 years later he replaced Phil Jackson in LA as the Lakers head coach. That's literally the only reason why he's still associated with the Lakers and not the Rockets. I remember something about the Lakers wanting to fire him, but instead made an excuse about his bladder cancer and offered to pay him everything if he stayed as a scout or something like that.

The guy is a legend in Houston. I haven't heard anything about animosity between him and Les. If you can find any articles or anything about this I'd be interested to see it.

Reg. JVG, I'm pretty sure that was all Morey, but yes Les did say something about wanting a more entertaining up-tempo style of play. However Les gets alot of credit from Morey just when he wants to pass along the praise. This is pretty common when Morey goes on interviews. It was Morey's first major move as a GM. Trust me... it was Morey's move.

Who cares if he cares as long as he's giving everyone else that cares the tools to do what they need to in order to win? It sounds crazy to say, but look.. He's a business owner. He's forking over the money... who cares? He could be in the Bahamas not giving 2 sh#$'s but as long as he gives someone like Morey who DOES care the tools he needs, why does it matter?

If he gives Morey, and McHale, and the the star players the assets they need to put a winning product on the floor, why should they care what the business owner thinks? Morey, the coaches, and the players want to win. Everyone in the organization from the CEO to the guy selling pizza at the concession stand wants the team to win. Its good for everyone to win. Nobody goes into a competition thinking they want to come in 8th place for some random reason.

Why is this such an issue I really don't know. Les WANTS to win. Everyone WANTS to win. Why he wouldn't I really don't know but everyone is putting way much into an old awkward man with bad public speaking skills saying some dumb crap.

I saw the roundtable discussion earlier today with Les dropping F-Bombs and repeating himself constantly. Look...Let's face it... Morey is running the show here nowadays. Les might not give two sh#$'s about winning, but as long as Morey does want to win, he's the one we really should be caring about.

 

Rudy T went down with cancer in the middle of the season. Mr. Mean took over as the interim head coach and everything went downhill.

After Rudy recovered from cancer, he went to the Lakers a year later (NOT nearly 10 years later). That was pretty classless on Les's part. There was never any animosity reported between him and the owner. But he was never offered anything after his illness. Why would Rudy T go to another team after spending his whole life with the Rockets? What's telling is that even after an unsuccessful short stint as the Lakers' coach, Rudy T never came back. Les Alexander never made any gesture to welcome Rudy T back.

You are as much speculating as I am who is really in charge, Morey or Les. I think it is pretty much public knowledge that the no-tanking policy was from Les. Whether Morey endorsed it wholeheartedly or grudging is hard to say. I think it is quite reasonable to assume that the owner has some directives to the GM as to what he wants for the team.

Who care? We would care IF the owner's direction is not the most conducive to winning. Again, I am only speculating, as you are too. If the signing of Lin, the chasing of the third star, etc. have something to do with the owner's will, then we should care.