[Video] Kevin McHale after Houston's 118-110 loss to Denver 1/30/2013

Yes I did. Look, if you are having to rely on Harden/Lin to be incredible every single play of every single game to even be competitive, then maybe the rest of the team isn't all that good? Not that I believe that, but that's the point to be made here.

There are more than 2 players on this team. The offensive system should be able to sustain short periods of time without Harden or Lin on the court, with ball movement and solid passing.

My point is, this team is going to have to get enough consistent production from the entire team, and not just rely on Harden to do everything on offense, and Asik to do everything on defense. Guys like Patterson, Morris, Smith, Douglas, Delfino, etc. are going to need to improve as a unit if they are going to be a playoff team.

Oh, and the small ball thing. I dont know if you really want to soley blame McHale for that. There are quite a few individuals in the organization that really believe its a way to spark the offense when the team is struggling to make shots. When the coach goes small, its usually a sign of desperation to get the players going.

McHale is not a perfect coach, but he's just taking way, way too much heat by the fans as most coaches do in professional sports. Im ok with criticism, but it would be nice though to see most of it backed by analysis of the actual gameplay, and not just opinions of how they think he is as a person.

 

And you see nothing wrong with this? Should they play the Heat same as they would the Nationals? He deserves some criticism.

 

I just went through this last page and found this post to be pretty rational, if not an entirely spot on summary:

 

Of course the team should rely on their best players to play. If you don't rely on 3 or 4 of your starters, how do you win? I have no problem with him resting starters when we have the lead. The problem for me and for many posting here is the fact he rested them too long, and wasn't able to react fast enough to the situation. I think McHale has a good long and medium term vision, like every few games, maybe due to his previous GM experience, but his on court decisions can be quite iffy, which cost us a few close games we could have won. I think he can be a great assistant coach to prepare the team for games, but during the game, he's just not good enough to react to certain situations.

Small ball thing, he played small ball when we still had the lead I think. It wasn't out of desperation. He took Asik out to match up with Denver's small ball, which was more like a desperation from their end.

 

McHale is not an idiot and he is not dumb.

He is just an inexperienced coach who has not a clue in some game situations. He cannot adjust because he is quasi a rookie (200 games as a couch)....

Usually, he should be a coach assistent first in order to learn something.


And there's the rub:

An inexperienced coach is coaching a bunch of talented but inexperienced and young players.
Therefore McHale does not play the rookies. He does not have any clue how to improve these young guys.

 

are you stupid?

they already got their rest and we had a nice lead and the nuggets started chipping away at it along with the momentum. Despite the obvious, mchale in all of his stupid glory kept sitting both until the lead evaporated and the momentum firmly in the nuggets favor.

you dont try do play phil jackson where you dont call a timeout when your team is getting killed by letting them figure it out with the youngest team in the nba.

that's ok if you have a veteran championship squad led by the greatest player of all time and the greatest side kick of all time.

That's not something you do with the youngest team in the nba.

It was a stupid idiotic move by mchale.

 

That makes sense, except in terms of facilitation we only have 3 players that can do a passable job. Harden, Lin and perhaps Beverly.

This is just the reality of our roster. And I get that in an ideal world our roster can sustain itself without Lin or Harden on the floor, but against upper tier teams it really can't. And we shouldn't expect it to especially when playing critical games for play off seeding.

Essentially, what McHale *SHOULD* have done is compress the rotation to a play off Roster with what he actually HAS on the roster, not what he *wishes* the Roster should be... and that's that Douglas is NOT good enough in terms of facilitation to carry the Offense during critical games.

If you want to argue he needs practice, then great... do it against Non-conference, Non-playoff teams. Do it in blow outs. Do it in practice. Do NOT do it when the game is tightly contested and we're playing a team that we're fighting for seed position.

It's really simple. Lin+TD or Harden+TD or Beverly+TD. Beverly has his weaknesses but he has better court vision than TD by miles. TD is a pure shoot first combo guard, with more emphasis on shoot than pass.

The small ball thing is fine if you want to do it when you're offensively behind or struggling, however we were neither Behind OR Struggling when he went with the small ball line up.

Here is what happened in the 3Q.

12:00 Harden, Lin, Asik, Parsons, Patterson 57-58 (1 point behind)
7:07 TD enters game for Lin (4:53s played) 68-64 (5 point lead)
6:05 Delfino enters for Parsons 70-64 (6 point lead)
5:20 Morris enters for Patterson 72-64 (8 point lead)
3:56 Greg Smith enters for Omer Asik (small ball) 74-68 (6 point lead)

Line up is now Morris, Smith, Delfino, Harden and Douglas

2:15 Omer Asik enters for Greg Smith 76-75
0:52 Chandler Parsons enters for James Harden 85-78 (7 point lead)
0:00 86-83 (3 point lead)

So, we start out with our best Defensive line up which gets us a lead

1) sub TD for Lin (lose some facilitation, gain some perimeter shooting and trade on ball defense for Help defense)
2) sub Delfino for Parsons (lose some defense and interior offense for perimeter offense)
3) sub Morris for Patterson (gain some interior offense, lose some defense), then
4) sub Parsons for Harden (lose facilitation and general offense for improved defense)

Every single sub except for the Parson/Harden sub with 52s progressively weakened our interior defense and somewhat weakened our perimeter defense, while simultaneously periodically weakened our offense and facilitation. It also increased our foul rate dramatically (Morris and Douglas are particularly foul prone). All while increasing Parsons and Harden's minutes substantially (increasing fatigue and reducing energy for the 4th quarter).

The end result was at one point we had Delfino, TD, Smith, Morris and Parsons on the floor... one of our weakest 2nd unit line ups.

It's not like we traded Defense for better Offense. We just gave up both.

As for the 4th Quarter...

10:41 Carlos Delfino enters for Asik (86-88)
6:16 Asik enters for Patterson (88-101)

We went Small Ball when the game was almost tied, THEN we went BIG once we were 13 points BEHIND.

It's the OPPOSITE of what we should have done if we're going to subscribe to the small ball = offense concept.

With the game close or a small lead (<10 points), we should have gone with one of our strongest line ups like Lin, Harden, Asik, Parsons and Patterson (1.03 OFF, 1.09 DEF).

Instead, our starting line up was Douglas, Morris, Delfino, Asik, Parsons (1.00 OFF, 1.02 DEF).

And then he SAT ASIK at 10:41, leaving us with Douglas, Harden, Delfino, Parsons, Patterson (1.03 OFF, 1.43 DEF) for another full minute. (No score change, still 86-88)

And then he finally brought in Lin leaving us with a line up of Lin, Harden, Parsons, Delfino, Patterson for 5 full minutes. (1.25 OFF, 0.95 DEF). A good offensive line up, but Not very good defensively.

McHale finally brought in Asik again at 6:16, but we were behind 13 points at that point.

Lin, Harden, Delfino, Parsons and Asik is one of our best offense heavy line up that still has decent defense. Unfortunately, at that point with 6 mins left it would have taken a miracle to get back in the game.

And with Harden approaching 42 mins and Parsons approaching 38, there just wasn't that much gas left in the tank.

I do believe McHale erred in terms of floor line ups. I do believe his timing of minutes allocation was not very good.

McHale didn't fully utilize Lin or Beverly.

McHale ran Harden for 42 minutes instead of shaving some time off so he could be better rested for the 4th quarter (using a secondary line up spear headed by Lin+TD and or Beverly+TD)

And the timing of sub for Asik and the corresponding line ups when he sat Asik were giving up too much on both sides of the ball to be reliable.

All of those aren't on the players, they're on McHale for once again misallocating minutes in terms of rest, the timing of rest, and the line ups on the floor.

And let's not even get into the whole "small ball" argument. McHale's use of small ball defies logic.

 

i think i finally figured out why harden won't pass it to parsons or lin. yes, he will pass to asik, delfino, morris but frequently the ball gets "sticky" if he sees parsons or lin is open.

harden came from a team where he was the "third banana" behind durant and westbrook. evidently in his eyes, the only players on the Rockets talented enough to leapfrog him, not every night but some nights, to be the featured player are lin or parsons.

so harden continually aims to suppress lin and parsons from having a big game so he can maintain being the "top banana."

 

damn bro

 

It's post like this makes people hate Lin fans.

 

is it really so absurd of a theory?

anybody who watches the games closely can see i am right.

i am a rockets fan, not lin only fan. in fact, i think harden has been willing to pass to lin because he has usually been playing quite poorly.

 

fixed.

 

This is good insightful feedback I like to see in being critical of McHale as a coach. Good response, and obviously very well thought out.

My previous posts were more or less a challenge for those going BatSh#$ crazy rational put in to perspective when being critical of his game plan other than just knee jerk reactions to X player not getting minutes at the end of a close game.

I think that McHale is far from a perfect X's and O's gameplay coach, but that should be expected given the short amount of time he has spent on the bench. However, if you look at the end result, he's got this team right where they are supposed to be, if not over exceeding their abilities at this point in time.

Also remember that McHale was originally brought in to coach a completely different type of team, and with a completely different style. He deserves credit for adapting such a successful system virtually on the fly, and bringing along such a young team at a super fast pace.

But that being said, he does have much room for improvement, and if this team was prime to compete for a title this year, there is no doubt in my mind that Morey/Les would be looking elsewhere for a more experienced veteran coach.

People just need to wake up and put things a little more into perspective. Maybe say to yourself, do we really want to be like the Nets, or the Lakers who fire a coach every 30 seconds.

McHale's contract is up next year, and I believe there might be an option available at the end of this season too. At that point, we can start talking about other options for coaches. Firing him in the middle of the season just sends a bad message to the league about the knee jerk ridiculous expectations of ownership in this league.

 

Agreed.

 

Can't be a LOF unless he's Nostradamus.

 

The winnable game in Denver was unduly lost because the Nuggets were allowed to have a 17-1 run in 4 minutes and 26 seconds. The loss was lightly dismissed postgame as a "self-inflicted loss" by our head coach McHale, and none of the posts in the game thread except torocan's last long one has been able to give us a full picture of what really happened and the deciding causes of the loss.

I watched a replay of the third and the fourth quarter, and checked the play by play to verify what I am about to tell you.

But before I give you the breakdown, I want to say in summary that the 17-1 swing was a result of two decisions made by McHale:
1) Both Lin and Harden were taken out of the court and Toney Douglas was left to run the show alone, which allowed the Nuggets to have a 9-1 run.
2) McHale decided to go small by taking Asik out perhaps as many posters said "to respond to the Nuggets going small," and the size mismatch and holes in paint protection allowed the Nuggets to have another run of 8-0.

Some articles and posts in other websites said the loss was due to a 22-2 run by the Nuggets, but to narrow down the discussion here, I would just talk about the 17-1 run for this post.*

Here are the details if you are still interested in knowing more.

At 7:07 of Q3 when Lin was subbed by Douglas, we were up by 4 at 68-64.*

At 0:52 when Harden was subbed by Parsons, we were still up by 6 at 85-79, .*

In the 101 seconds when both Harden and Lin were out , the Nugs had a 8-1 run to bring the scores from 85-79 to 86-87, which included a 5-0 run by the Nugs since the start of Q4 before Harden was brought back in at 11:11 of Q4. The Nuggets had Gallinari (6'10") and Faried (6'8") to start the fourth quarter.

We were down by two at 86-88 after Gallinari made one FT on foul at 10:41, and Delfino was brought in at the same time to sub Asik. We had Harden, Douglas, Parsons, Delfino and Patterson on the court. Before the switch we were out-rebounding them by as many as 9, but they caught up in just two minutes. Note that Smith has been a non-factor the entire game since he only played two minutes in the third quarters.

Then at 9:43, Lin came back in while the scores stayed the same. The momentum however has already shifted to the Nuggets.

By 8:56 the Nuggets had another 6-0 run to bring the scores to 86-94 after McHale went small for 1 minutes and 45 seconds. Neither Parsons nor Delfino were able to stop Gallinari from scoring at the rim or making his 3's.

At 8:26, Wilson Chandler's layup brought the scores to 86-96, a 10-point gap we were not able to close till the end despite a 7-0 run ourselves.

In summary, between 0:52 of Q3 and 8:26 of Q4 and in just 4 minutes and 26 seconds, the Nuggets had a 17-1 run, which included a 9-1 run when both Lin and Harden were out, and a 8-0 run in the 2 minutes and 15 seconds since going small right after Harden came back in.

So the first 9 points were the result of leaving both Lin and Harden on the bench, while the next 8 points were lost because McHale went small.

At 7:41 Lin made a mid-range jump shot to snap the 17-1 run and brought us back to 88-96. We were down by 8 and Lin was back on the court for 2:04.*

Lin then got into his attack mode and scored 11 of the team's remaining 22 points to keep us in the game.

After the 17-1 run, we have out-scored the Nuggets by two points (22 to 20) till the end of 110-116.*

 

Correction: Should be 110-118.

 

I could!'t agree with you more. Everything you said is right on.

 

Basketball-Reference.com has been projecting us to have Pythagorean Wins (expected wins based on points scored and allowed) and Losses at exactly 28-20.

I strongly believe if it wasn't for the obviously wrong subbing and benching decisions made by McHale and Sampson (when McHale was away for a whole month), our record now would be 28-20, or even better.

The coaches might have been frustrated with the errors that our young and inexperienced players made when told to push the pace to a level that no other team's can even get near, but I doubt they have regretted the wrong coaching decisions they made, at least they have yet to say it in public.

 

Please post your comments after future games to point out the good things that McHale has done for us to win that game.