He was hired to be a yes man for Morey. At the time he was brought in, the Rockets had talent, but not a lot of it thanks to the career-ending injury to Yao. The problem(if you can call it that) is that Adelman was such a good coach and competitor that he maximized what this team did have and helped them win just enough games(low-to-mid 40's) that they didn't make the playoffs yet wound up with a lousy draft pick. Enter McHale who would have less of a sense of urgency to try to win now and would allow the younger guys to have more minutes so they could develop. Only problem(again, if you can call it that) is that the Rockets just a year later landed James Harden in a trade and a year after that managed to convince Dwight Howard to sign as a free agent. Suddenly we've gone from a team with an eye on tanking to a team expected to contend. Only we're stuck with a coach who's clearly not up to that task. The irony is Adelman would be a perfect fit for THIS roster, but he's now coaching McHale's old team. I just hope Morey cuts his losses short and replaces McHale soon. There's no sense it wasting an entire season in a vain attempt to see if he suddenly turns into a decent head coach, cuz it ain't gonna happen.
The front office was preparing to trade for Pau Gasol & sign Nene. The coach needed to prepare to be in a rebuild mode, but they were never planning on being truly bad. They still had veterans like Scola, Martin, etc. on the team that McHale thought highly of when coming in if the trade fell through. Adelman would have actually been the perfect coach for Gasol with the corner offense. The parting of Adelman had to do with roster turnover. He was tired of it, and it had lost him his credibility in the locker room. Apparently during interviews there were two things that Adelman wouldn't agree to that were speculated on. One was continuing the plan of trading his guys, and the second was to make changes to the assistant coaching staff. Adelman's offense would actually be the worst system for Dwight and Harden. Harden is not a player you want running around back cuts for open 2 pointers. He's a drive a kick attacking guard. And why would anyone want Dwight Howard AWAY from the basket???... Also, have you ever seen an Adelman team be very good at defense. This is the same coach that made the statement that our best defense is our offense(he's right but still... he's an offensive coach all day long). More than likely if Adelman would have been running a system much like the one that he ran with Yao and Tracy which isn't that much different than the system being run now in the half court. I'm not saying Adelman isn't a better coach, but to say he's a perfect fit for this team isn't necessarily true.
We need to fire McHale. He is a terrible coach. Rockets made a stupid decision to fire Rick Adelman because it was just unfair to coach medicore roster at that time. If Adelman coach this year's roster, we will have no problem. Might have been 82-0 with Adelman. His offense system is so beautiful to watch.
Brett Brown might be a rookie NBA head coach but he was coach of multiple championship teams in Australia, Australian head coach and San Antonio Spurs assistant coach. He definitely has a better coaching resume than McHale.
This is not about Mchale. This is about our lack of a starting caliber PF. We need to make a trade ASAP
That's BS. The Lakers won 3 straight titles without a starting caliber PF. The Rockets won their 2nd title without one. The talent on this roster is not the problem. They have plenty of it. But if you don't run any quality plays, then it doesn't matter who you go out and trade for or sign. We can't even execute a freaking PnR. Seriously, watch the games. Aside from Asik, no one ever sets picks. We call timeouts and then have Harden run ISO-ball and jack up a prayer with 2 seconds left. We don't intentionally foul when we're up 3 with just seconds left. When we need to make a shot to tie or win, instead of going to a hot Jeremy Lin, we have Parsons bricking a fadeaway that doesn't even draw iron or Garcia taking a 27-foot prayer. This IS about McHale. No, it's not his fault that Parsons' confidence is shot or that Garcia's in a terrible shooting slump. It's not because of him that Dwight can't make even 40% of his foul shots in home games. But he does bear responsibility for the things I mentioned above. And I didn't even get into his idiotic decision to keep running the Twin Towers lineup out there after it became clear it wasn't working. He's burying this team with early losses and wearing out the players with poor minute distribution. We can't afford to wait til next summer to admit this isn't working.
So if that's the case, being that his position is based on low to no expectations as most have posted, then its time for McHale to go. The downright boneheaded decisions by this guy so far can't get anyone with even a little bit of bball knowledge to believe he can coach these guys into a deep playoff run
...because after battling with Adelman, Morey wanted somebody who would shut up, take orders and let him orchestrate big picture moves without any static.... /thread
I know this is a bad thread. But this is as good as any McHale thread and ignoring the intent of the OP, I take the thread title as a real question. Here is my theory (not a totally new idea). McHale was hired exactly because he was inexperienced as a head coach. Morey was looking to hire an unestablished coach. But McHale had an advantage over other "young" coaches because he was a HoFer, commanding certain degree of respect from players. Morey needed a coach who was open (I wouldn't say a "yes man") to experiment on his theories based on analytics. Most established coaches who already had a proven system would not be very open to some of his ideas that sound like novelty to an old-school coach. The only experienced coaches I can think of who would entertain innovative approaches are Don Nelson and George Karl. Neither of them were available. The result is that the coaching approach seems to have no direction and decision making seems haphazard. That is probably precisely what Morey wants, at least at this stage. Morey wants to experiment on things that he thinks may work. The TT lineup was one of them. If it didn't work, they'd just pull the plug and try something else. I don't think a coach like Adelman or even JVG would agree to do that, unless the novel idea happened to match what the coach liked regardless. This is in line with Morey's approach to drafting players. He has been drafting high potential players (White, Jones, Motiejunas, etc.), hoping that if anyone of them reaches the potential, we will have hit the jackpot. So far, none of them has, but still might. If the TT worked, we would have been killing in the league. I think it is a smart way to operate. Once you find your stars, you build around them. Once you find a winning formula, you stick with it. But before that happens, you just keep throwing things at the wall and hope that something sticks. And McHale is a good throwing partner because he doesn't have anything that has stuck already.
He was hired because Morey thought he was an idiot who could tank the team, unfortunately he's just stupid and put together enough for a playoff push.
After the Doc trade, can we trade coaches for coaches? Because, I would trade McHale for Brad Stevens! It would be great! McHale, who I am honestly like, goes back to coach his team the Celtics! And even though Stevens is a rookie coach, I really like what he has done with the Celtics so far. He seems to have them, young players and Vets, playing hard and can draw plays. Asik, McHale, and DMo for Stevens, Green and Bass/Lee!
