I read it, mixed feelings. Pleased with his attitude; regretful for the cards dealt on the ‘re’deal. Relitigating the Silas question (s): …was he the right hire for the Harden team? I thought so. …was he as mercilessly bad as a coach of the team he actually had to coach - - or was he horribly hamstrung by FO? Young guys lost significant growth-time under SS. However, none of the missing have made me go, ‘drat, look what he’s doing there!’ Christopher, a rotational player I thought, is now, years later, part of the Heat’s player development program, best in the biz. Will he ultimately emerge?
I'll still annoyed with Stone for keeping Silas the 3rd year when it was so obvious he wasn't suited for the job. Maybe it ended up being a good decision. I was happy when the Rockets hired him but after one season it was obvious he was not head coaching material. Been a fan ~40 years, even before moving to Houston. There are two Rockets eras I've tried to wipe from my memory: The Steve Francis era and the 3 seasons of Stephen Silas.
This is the key point right here: When people pile on Silas just remember that the Rockets were designed to lose. They had no interest in acquiring veterans during phase 1 because they wanted to tank for high draft picks while force feeding development minutes to the rookies. Jabari and Jalen weren't the phenoms we thought they would be and we're lying to ourselves if we think that better coaching could've helped Jalen Green become a Derrick Rose type player during his rookie year. It was a no win situation for Silas, so I don't agree with the hatred for him. I'm glad we have Ime, but I think those Silas teams would've also looked better if he had two or three reliable veterans to rely on. FVV as a point guard is much better than the KPJ/Daishen Nix/TyTy Washington mess we had at the position. Dillon Brooks is a lot better than Jae'Sean Tate. I hope Silas eventually gets another NBA head coaching opportunity because he had a horrible set of circumstances to deal with in Houston.
He performed his role as tank commander adequately, but I don't think he did our player development any favors. It feels like Jalen and Alpi's defensive capabilities in particular basically had to be rebuilt from scratch when Udoka got here.
i bet it's nice seeing the fruits of his labor, despite not being part of the group anymore. he started all of this. maybe one day he'll the the chance to end it.
Silas was not it but there was also no way he could have succeeded. He was here to take the tanking on the chin until we got a better coach/players. No actual good coach was going to take that dumpster fire after the harden split. He did an admirable job as a tank commander. salute.
People need to give Silas a break, yes he made bad decisions in terms of player development and didn't hold our lottery picks to some standards which set bad habits but without Silas, we would not have drafted so many of our key pieces because we would have had a better record. Maybe we would've gotten Ausar instead of Amen. I've watched a ton of Pistons games this season and Ausar is just straight up not as good as Amen. If Amen is S tier, Ausar would be A tier. Still good but not better. All I'm saying is, those years are over, we need to move on and Silas whether people want to admit it or not, sucked enough to help us get all these lotto picks.
Silas was an awful head coach. Completely terrible and he will never be one ever again, but he's a good dude and probably a decent assistant. Nobody would have won with that team though. Especially Silas.
Both sides took their chances, the organization got more out of it due to the NBA rewarding bad records with draft picks. Silas came away with nothing much, a broken reputation. Silas had no elite system or part that he was elite at, his plan of getting players open is not that revolutionary. And his execution of Defense was nonexistent.
I hope we don't see the same article every time this team has some success going forward. It's like talking to Neville Chamberlain about how the Brits performed in WWII.
