Because it became a moot point with McHale's performance last season? Or maybe because people just had better sense.
Is it? After seeing how GSW played, it's not a moot point after all. A more competent coach maybe able to give Rockets a better fighting chance.
GSW won the championship blowing every team on its way by making one major change - hiring a new, competent head coach. They were first round fodder the year before under MJ and suddenly an all time great team.
Well, I guess I could rehash all of the points previously made, but I will just mention one of them. If GS's starters had lost 120 games due to injury they would not have been near as good as the Rockets last season. Pick any two GS starters and remove them from the playoffs and the Warriors would not have won that 'ship. That is pretty obvious even to the most casual observer.
But GSW has a ton of high basketball IQ players, current and former all stars, borderline allstars. Houston has a bunch of low IQ (not just basketball), nowhere near all star level players and Harden with Howard (who may or may not fall in the previous categories). I am not defending McHale, I'm just saying Kerr was a great fit to GSW more than a great coach overall. McHale is bad coach but somehow he's a fit in Houston. Weird
But they didn't lose anybody except Bogut and Lee. The question is why??? Would you stop and think about it a little bit? It's not pure luck for sure since a lot of team is affected by this injury bug one way or another. Who do you think decides on who will play and for how long? Who do you think got the power to temporarily shelve a player or limit his time to recuperate better? There are lots of IFs everybody is raising about GSW but fact is those IFs will not win you a championship. Team management is very much akin to project management. Risks should always be taken into account to properly predict the outcome in the end. Success is always predicated by successful planning.
Lee was not a starter. PT decisions in most organizations is a team decision with the training staff, the coaching staff, the front office and the player all having input. Coach Thib got fired because he overrode the front offices desire to limit playing time. Injuries are asynchronous events which cannot be predicted. Case in point: Jones missing 50+ games due to "freak" injuries.
In the end, even you had admitted that it's still the Head Coach who's making the final decision. Right? Predicted? It's science. Part of GSW strategy (a Kerr move) is to preserve Iggy as much as possible to keep him fresh for LBJ. That's a head coach decision. Also, it's the head coach decision on who will be composing his assistant coaches, down to the very last member of the coaching staff. Yup, GMs can take charge but if the head coach doesn't agree, there's nothing the GM can do except to wait for the coach to lose and fire him... just like Thibs...
Who did Golden State even beat that was at full strength? All of the Griz, Rockets, and Cavs had sustained major losses to their lineups whereas the Warriors remained healthy. Steve Kerr did a tremendous job, but anything short of taking care of business would have been a giant failure on his part. They disposed of short handed teams like they should.
This is getting funny... Then you should ask yourselves, why was GSW able to do that? how did they keep healthy all year long? Is it part of their strategy? Have you seen them play? Why do you think all players even their bench players were effective?
Health has to do with luck mainly, work ethic in preparing your body, and the training staff. Portland barely had injuries last year and then a bunch of injuries this year. Did Terry Stotts somehow get stupid overnight and do things to injure his players? The Rockets had amazingly be a relatively healthy team until this year. Did McHale tell them all to get injured? The funny part of this thread are the people who can't get past the head coach as the sole arbiter of success for a team.
This team was always able to put up buckets. I'll give Kerr credit for really making this team focus on defense but it definitely took a little bit of good fortune for them to win it all this season. We'll see if they can sustain their excellence and health over several seasons. Watching them win only showed me that the league is currently wide open. To the original point of the thread we're in a strange situation right now where continuity is probably more important than switching to a whole new system. McHale bought himself plenty of good will to keep this team together. Their best basketball is still ahead of them.
Morey chooses all of McHale's assistant coaches but one. Not McHale. I thought that was common knowledge.
Nope, they're not. But they are a large part of a team success and failures. If you watch the series, you'll see better why. Those plays, those substitutions, those schemes, they are decisions made by head coaches and his staffs. Just making your whole team buy in to your schemes, it's already a big responsibility for the head coach. How many times did you hear the word "sacrifice" amongst GSW players? Have you seen how Harden and the rest suddenly lost their will to win? Would you agree that a better coach who can "condition" his players' mind be a better coach? I'm not saying McHale's the worst, but if you want to step up the next level, McHale's isn't there yet (or won't be).
They stayed healthy due to luck. You could argue that their health was due to limited minutes, but how many minutes did Dwight, Beverley, Dmo, and Jones play?
Golden State was also a team that had largely been intact for multiple years. Draymond only got to where he got because David Lee got injured early on (Kerr admits to this). The team also had the best health of any contender (Some may call this luck, but Kerr's Suns were also ridiculously healthy when he was the GM). The Rockets on the other hand dealt with injury trouble the entire year, had massive turnover in the offseason and even during the regular season (Golden State did not make any major trade). In my opinion, its apples and oranges when trying to compare Kerr's job with McHale's. For all those McHale haters, I'm not sure any old coach could have weathered the injury storm we had while winning the toughest division in recent history while also advancing to the Western Conference Finals.
