Yea I think he has been given orders. No fking way he would use theis and wood right after not using that sht line up during the win streak
Where my Silas fans at?? I see people talking reckless after the game the other night, it’s time for the squad to put on their capes and assemble.
Great job by Silas last night. The absence by dehydration thing really worked for Sengun. He must develop that idea into something more concrete, more permanent. Looking forward to a variation tonight.
Stephen Silas could have had a conversation with himself, allowing a chance to step back, assess all that had changed around him and how he felt. But when moving from crises to crises, it is best not to slow down but to just keep moving. He had spent two decades preparing for a job that dramatically changed almost from the moment he became Rockets coach. It did not change for the better. He never had to come to terms with the changes, never had to convince himself to embrace challenges very different from when he was hired to coach a contender and ended up guiding a rebuild. The changes were not just to a roster that featured a backcourt of James Harden and Russell Westbrook on the day he was hired and moved on to Jalen Green and Kevin Porter Jr. a year later. It is not even just about the spinning revolving door of a roster through his first season that set NBA records for the numbers of players and starting lineups. Goals and measures of success had to evolve. And Silas had to coach not just players finding their way in the NBA, but himself. “I guess when the changes just come in so quickly, you just try to adapt, adapt, adapt to that,” Silas said. “And then this summer when it looked like we were going to be drafting high and drafting multiple first round picks, yeah, the thought comes into your mind like ‘OK, we’re probably going to have to do things in a different way. I’m going to have to do things in a different way.’” There were decisions that he called “the nuts and bolts.” He had to find priorities for shootarounds and practices. He had to reorganize video sessions. But Silas also thought about how to lay a foundation the Rockets could build upon, starting with his “non-negotiables” and then how to navigate the early season losses he saw coming when he knew much of his team did not. “What’s the best way to communicate?” Silas said. “What’s the best way to teach? What’s the best way to make this thing go from the start, which is probably going to be really, really hard, and then get it to a point where we’re improving? How am I going to actually implement this?” That is as much a message about letting go as a reminder to hydrate. But Silas, the son of former NBA All-Star and longtime coach Paul Silas, had spent a lifetime around the game. The organization can measure success by growth, and he tries to think that way, too. But he has been long conditioned to let the scoreboard be the judge. It has not been kind with the Rockets 10-23 as they head to Charlotte, where he spent much of his career as an assistant, to face the Hornets on Monday. “My dad says we’re in the win business and as a coach,” Silas said. “We’re all competitive. We’ve never been in a game where it doesn’t matter whether you win or lose. So, when you’re the leader, you got to internalize all of it and be disappointed when we lose and figure out how we’re going to fix it and make it to where for the vets and the young guys, everything is important, not just the development. “I’m disappointed when we lose; that will always be. But I do understand the circumstance of we’re young, and we’re learning and we’re going to have bumps in the road. It’s my job to hopefully navigate those and get us to a place where we’re not only improving but maintaining our improvement.” It became apparent how far the Rockets had to go when the first month losing streak reached 15 games. Silas and his staff knew the early-season schedule was going hit hard. The veterans seemed to see what was coming, too. Most of the roster had to find out the hard way. But for Silas, knowing a storm was coming did not make it easier to weather or to clean up the damage. “I thought it was going to be rough,” Silas said. “I did not think it was going to be 1-16 rough, but rough is rough. Whether we were 4-13 or 1-16 it was going to be hard with the travel, with the caliber teams that were playing, with our youth. And knowing that, coming in every day, being consistent with the group, laying the foundation, having non-negotiables that they need to learn about me was very important.”
The non-negotiables range from playing hard and fast to being unfailingly prompt. Asked about their coach’s priorities, Rockets players quickly start with being on time. “Be on time, for sure, that’s No. 1,” Christian Wood said. “Play together and play hard and play free.” Wood said that when he first worked with Silas in Charlotte in the 2016-17 season, his coach “kept to himself.” “He has changed a lot since then,” Wood said through a laugh. “He is very much in charge. He knows what he wants.” His players know, too. “It’s like my main thing; ‘Don’t be late,’” Silas said. “But then there’s also things on the court where we’re trying to make sure we’re doing one or two or three things every single game. “I would say our No. 1 non-negotiable is the hard play. We have to be a hard-playing team. From the beginning of the season, everything people have said about our team whether we’re winning or losing is we do play hard. And that’s one of the things that I’m always preaching.” Having to prioritize one or two things can be difficult for coaches who can see dozens — to be kind — of areas that need to be addressed. If they tried to fix everything, they would repair nothing. Effort has with few exceptions improved. Ball movement that was terrible early in the season has been good. But there is much more that must wait to be addressed. Hanging paintings and moving furniture must wait for the house to be built, or in this case, for the foundation to be laid. “It’s hard. It’s so hard,” Silas said of picking his spots. “There are adjustments that I want to make. There are game plan things that we want to do. And in order for them to get to the point where we’re making those adjustments, they have to have a base. So, laying the foundation means being super bland. “Understanding that and realizing that and accepting that can be a little tough.” It can take a toll when still striving to win. Silas’s previous head coaching experience came with the Charlotte Hornets in 2017-18 when he stepped in for Steve Clifford when Clifford needed to step away for 22 games when he was burned out from pushing himself too hard. When Silas was in the locker room in Cleveland receiving the fluids that he deprived himself of that day, his phone buzzed with a question from someone that understood how he got there. “(Clifford) was the first person to call me when I was in the locker room and said, ‘What are you doing?’” Silas said. “And yeah, I put a lot of pressure on myself. I put a lot on my on my plate to handle, take care of, fix, show. But it’s important to delegate some of that stuff and lean on the staff.” Silas delegates much more than in his first season. Lucas and Will Dunn generally handle the defense while Silas, Jeff Hornacek and DeSagana Diop run the offense. “All young coaches, the first time you do it, you want to do everything,” Lucas said. “It’s really hard. You want to be in player development. You want to be in the training room. You want to be all over the place. As he got to know his staff, … the trust level has come. You have to develop a trust level in your group and I think that’s happened.” Silas repeatedly said he has “a great staff.” He said his conversational style with players meshes well with Lucas’ more emotional, sometimes confrontational approach. “His tone is more of accountability, which is a good cop,” Lucas said. “My tone is more cuss words, which is the bad cop. Our personalities mesh real, real well.” The record, however, goes next to Silas’ name. Silas said he never worried about his job. He is not on social media, does not read reports about the team. He said he never considered what 1-16 could do to a career. “I don’t think you can coach like that when you’re worried about my job or the perception or anything like that,” Silas, 47, said. “It’s very much connected to the guys. And where we were … knowing that we were young, knowing that we were going to go through some rough times, that helps me stick to the plan as far as, lay the foundation, lay the foundation, lay the foundation. “So, as we were going through those losses, they were heart wrenching for sure. But as far as my job status and stuff, I don’t really think about that.” He was unaware of the accompanying fan criticism of the starting lineup, and particularly of fervent calls for rookie Alperen Sengun to start or at least receive much more playing time than the 18.8 minutes per game he averages, the source of the harshest criticism of Silas. “I totally get it, but I didn’t know that that’s a big deal at all,” Silas said. “I mean, I’m trying to try to help him. Throwing him out there for 30-something minutes every night, it’s really hard. So, there are nights where he’ll stay on the floor longer. There are nights where the matchup or his foul trouble or whatever will dictate the minutes that he gets. But it has nothing to do with how I feel about him because I love him. “I love when he’s on the floor. And he’s going to be really good. And he has earned more and more touches and activity when he’s on the floor. I mean, he basically touches it 70 percent of the time when he’s on the floor.” Silas has even rewritten much of the Rockets’ offense to feature Sengun in post-ups, rather than to exclusively play the five-out style he favored last season and coming into this season. That, too, speaks to how so much this season must be about building for the seasons to come. If Silas had issues with going from coaching a win-now to build-for-later team, he had long since had to accept and embrace the tsunami of change. He said he never had to come to grips with that, knowing there was too much work to be done to stop to consider how he got there. “So much, like that perception stuff, the job security stuff, all that is very much out of my hands,” he said. “So, if I just concentrate on the players and the improvement of the group then to me, everything will work out.”
