The tired line of we didn't have energy, try hard enough, didn't hustle, is beginning to get old. What is our strategy to win this series, if someone knows, please enlighten me. I fail to see that in any McFail and failettes strategy. I would love to have Alvin Gentry as a coach with Sam Cassell as lead assistant. I'm tired of seeing one of the most talented teams in the playoffs get beat by a team with 1 superstar. Are you serious.
McFail still doesn't have strategy when James tries to one on one and the Cippers zone up just as Doc did when the Celtics played against Kobe during the Celtics lone championship. Either we have the dumbest team in history or a coaching staff that can't get through to the players.
Coaching job doesn't stop at game planning. How a team play isn't just a function of the players. The Coach control the flow of players onto and off the court, the time they play, the play calling, if any, the defense they use, and on and on all of which are more than just tactical but psychological and mental as well. A very simple example is this - if Harden made one of those careless pass as he did, or said two, timeout. Get in his face to stop attempting lazy low risk pass, bench him, whatever is needed. Instead, it continue and continue and continue until it's too late. The player should know, but sometime they don't know how stupid they are playing. The coach should know, but what good is knowing if he doesn't do anything about it during the game.
Only Clutchfans can rationalize 20+ turnovers being soley the coaches fault. You guys seriously act like McHale went out on the court and kicked the ball out of bounds. Look, yeah... its partially on the coach for not having his team prepared enough mentally (I guess), but what is he supposed to do. Call and timeout, and take the ball out of James Harden's hands to do what exactly??? What's McHale's better go to option? Dwight Post Ups? That worked out well last postseason even when Dwight dominated, and it took the rest of the team out of their normal style of play & marginalized Harden who could never get going. I get the McHale frustration guys, but you are seriously looking at one single scapegoat when completely losing sight of the entire picture- A. The obvious lack of consistent defensive backbone coming from the perimeter & the PF spot. B. The weaknesses of the roster structure as a whole. MAJOR gaps. C. Flawed star players with weaknesses easy to spot & exploit. D. Style of play that lends the team succeptible to HORRIBLE losses. Only one of those four issues really resides on McHale. Yes, the style of play... I HATE IT alot of times, and wish the Rockets would go with another philosophy IN THE OFFSEASON, but we are at a place where you take the good with the bad at this point. They aren't going to change who they are and what they do on the fly. Their best chance of winning is to play their style of play that they have been leaning on for 2 straight years +. What you guys just don't seem to get through your heads is that this style of play, WILL LOOK HORRIBLE when the shots aren't falling. That's the nature of this style of play, but its designed for a team that knows its strengths, and wants to hide its flaws in order to manufacture wins. I have my doubts about it winning in the postseason, but I realize, like most of you should too, that the Rockets playing their game gives them the best chance of still winning in the postseason NOW. Changing their style of play completely in the second round of the postseason is stupid and only something fans think is easy enough to accomplish, and blame the coach for not doing.
A lot of people have an unrealistic view of what a coach can do with a star player. Coaches who get in star player's faces and bench them will likely end up ex coaches. Sure, there are exceptions, but those are for coaches who already have a proven track record with a team.
Our players should know not to make those careless mistakes and lazy passes from doing it in the regular season. When they do that, McHale should rip into them and bench them. It's too late to do that in the playoffs because we need our best players on the floor, but they should have learned to correct their mistakes earlier. Similar with the other flaws like lack of defensive effort and intensity. Bench them immediately in the regular season until they learn that you need 100% effort to get on the court.
You made a wrong assumption. I don't scapegoat anyone for the last lost. Nearly everyone is to be blamed. Anyone that think the last lost was solely on one person or on just the Coach or just the players, IMO, isn't seeing reality. Coach and the team don't operate in that way, they are interdependent on each other. However, the Coach has the control to change thing when things aren't going as expected. And things were going, as McHale put it, at a 7th-8th grade level of plays. Yet, what did he do? He continue to allow the players to play at the 7th-8th grade levels.
I hear this often. I don't accept it. What keep a Coach is W-L records against expectation. A Coach that doesn't dare to Coach, is a weak Coach.
I agree, but there are limits to what McHale can do. If Harden, Ariza, Smith, and Terry are all making dumb turnovers(and they were), then what is his alternative? Play Pepperoni for 35 minutes and let him be the primary ballhandler? Good luck with that. Preparation is in large part the coach's job. And McHale fell short on that front Monday night. But execution is in large part on the players. In that area, they failed miserably.
Dobro, Who's saying the coach is being solely blamed for the 20+ turnovers? It's mainly on the players, sure. Maybe just a little more discipline and verbal jackslapping from the coaching staff; but I would put this game mainly on Harden's malaise. Mainly. Count dough ko has it right.
I've never been a McHale fan. I'm not screaming from the rafters or angry about it. But ultimately, if you're not a great X's and O's guy, you better at least have your team ready to play. Bottom line business and all that. But let's worry about all that after the season. Rockets are going to win tonight.
Yes he continued to put the ball in James Harden's hands, and continued to play Corey Brewer and Josh Smith. These are guys that have exploded in the past and are soley responsible for the Rockets winning games they shouldn't have been winning. It just so happened they all had horrible nights at the same time. -Corey Brewer is one of the most unfundamentally sounds "skilled players" in the league, but what he is he's very good at. That is being a track star on the basketball court. He wasn't that on Monday. -Josh Smith is one of the dumbest basketball players on the planet, but has all of the natural talent of someone on the level of some of the greatest players of all time. He's going to have games like Monday, and he's going to have games like game 3 against Dallas. You have to live with the bad in order to get the good. -Then there is James Harden. This guy we've seen it before. He's 99% great, and the MVP of this team. He does EVERYTHING on offense, but he has games where he just doesn't seem to have a care in the world on defense, and just can't get anything going on defense. However these are the three guys that give McHale the best chance of winning an ugly game like on Monday IF... at least Harden gets it going much less Brewer swings 10 points in a row like he's done before in the past. So again I get it. Call and timeout and do something different when its not working for you. But what is that different thing this team is going to do? Hakeem isn't walking on the court for all of us. This team's best shots of swinging a game on the offensive end happen to be very flawed players. Some better than others, and some flawed more than others (Josh), but that's the tools that McHale has to work with. The only thing differently they could have done offensively IMO is dumping the ball down to Dwight more. Its an option, but I just don't trust the Rockets to win a series with that type of play, and marginalizing Harden. If the Rockets are going anywhere in this series, its because James Harden of the postseason turns into James Harden of the regular season. He's done it before (game 3 in Dallas, and the SAS series when Harden was with OKC), but its been rare. McHale or no McHale, the Rockets aren't going anywhere in the Harden era if he doesn't figure it out.
No, absolutely not. But, right after 1 or 2 7th-8th grade pass (or let's call it extremely dumb and stupid for a pro bb player), bench that particular offending player for a few. Do something so the message is clear. Didn't happen. As for execution, you know this team does bounce back, and do a great job at it. It takes a full day or more for the team to re-orient or whatever to do that. Why must it take that long? Why can't that "bounce back" occur within the flow of the game?
Its an exaggeration but its derived from the truth. Nobody is going to say "I solely blame McHale" but they will it in other ways. Its cathartic to blame the coach. He should have done this, and that, and "this and that" only really comes out to something like "oh they should have been more prepared" or "should have made adjustments". Its just way too easy to blame the coach for everything. The truth is it goes deeper than McHale not giving the Any Given Sunday halftime speech or having enough Orange Slices ready during timeouts to inspire the players. I'm not looking for anyone to take away all and any blame away from McHale, but I do hope people can look objectively at the big picture more often than not. Hard thing to ask for with a Houston sports fanbase but I have to at least ask.
This team wasn't built for on Xs and Os. It was built to have star players carry the team. If Harden and Howard don't lead by example, then it all falls apart no matter what coach you have calling the shots. At some point our fan base has to wake up and understand there is no single scapegoat for poor performances. You all claim Harden should be MVP because he carried the team but when the Rockets fail, it's all McHales fault. If it's Hardens team, then when they faulter, it's on Harden. How many times has Harden last looked like a MVP candidate and the team lost? His numbers and ability to affect the game in wins versus losses is the difference for this team. Based on point differential, the Rockets vastly overachieved this year. All we can cheer for is the team with a MVP Harden to show up in at least 4 of the next 6 games.
To your first point, I'll just reiterate what I said. What was his alternative? He can't bench everyone. Sure, he could replace Terry with Pepperoni and he did. And Pablo actually did play pretty well offensively. He also pulled Ariza a few times in favor of Brewer. Along with T-Jones in favor of Smith. The problem there is that Brewer and Smith played like crap in Game 1. What can McHale do about that? Bring in Capela and Nick Johnson. I don't think so. You dance with the ones that brung ya. It's not like Doc Rivers did anything special to make Austin Rivers and Matt Barnes score 17 and 20 points respectively. They just stepped up and played well in Paul's absence. The Rockets players didn't. That's ultimately on them much more than the coach. As to your second point, sometimes they do bounce back within the same game. They did it in Game 3 against Dallas. They gave up 36 points in each of the first 2 quarters. They gave up 27 in the 3rd. Think there weren't adjustments made at the half? But when the entire team save for Dwight is playing like garbage like on Monday night, what can McHale do? This isn't like that Pelicans regular season game back in January where he could bench his starters in order to send a message. This is the playoffs. He has to roll with his usual 9-man rotation and hope they get their act together as the game wears on. Unfortunately they didn't.
Actually I take it back. FTW Rockets FTW will come out and say "I Soley Blame McHale" Between him and McHale, and BBHollic and Jones I don't know whose worse.
The San Antonio Spurs had star players on their team. They have had one of the greatest players to ever play his position on their roster for a while now. It didn't hurt that they had a coach who knew a thing or 2 about X's and O's.
If I have any complaint about McHale right now, it's how they manage Harden's minutes. There's a distinct pattern to Harden's minutes and it's held over into the playoffs. Against the Mavs, it wasn't a big deal. I feel like he's going to have to play somewhere north of 40 minutes in this series and McHale has to do better at recognizing times in the early 2nd or early 4th when to bring him back...instead of holding fast to the typical pattern.
