On one hand, it's never good when your team has a player's meeting. OTOH, the Rockets are a young team and this may help them figure things out. And for everyone clamoring to fire McHale, just root for the Rockets to lose. Because if the Rockets don't meet Morey's goals of 2nd round, you can easily get your wish.
A lot of these team problems are mental, rather than physical. The players are athletic enough to defend most teams, they are not leaving guys wide open because they are slow or "not trying hard enough", but because they are in the wrong place or "ball watching". These mental errors can be fixed. A slow, clumsy defender cannot be fixed.
Athleticism can make up for bad defense but it doesn't mean you can be a good defender. Yes, the problem is mental. For example in one game Lin and Parsons are in the paint, Parsons rotates to Lin's man, who just passes to Parsons' man and Lin is still standing in the paint. That is bad communications and being switched off upstairs. The coaching staff pointing out effort every game I feel is a deflection tactics. Ignoring the fact the players just don't know how to defend so it doesn't appear to be a coaching problem.
I agree. Harden, like most men, needs a woman to light him up for being lazy. Big booties just won't do. Sometimes I wonder if Howard's laziness were a response to Harden's. It's like telling Harden "If you are not working hard on defense, I am going to slack off too and lose us the game."
Yeah, but what can the players do about that? Have a mutiny like Penny Hardaway and the Magic did back in the 90s? They can voice their concerns privately to Daryl Morey, but honestly the lack of effort isn't entirely on McFail. He can get in their faces more and bench players who don't play hard, but ultimately it's up to them to actually give it their all out there.
I love how every other player says "We" and no no one says a thing about it. When Harden uses it though...
I just hate how whenever we commit a turnover, our players yell at each other and throw their hands up instead of just getting back on defense... I understand they want to hold each other accountable, but they seem to lack the togetherness in engaging in the "next play" mentality. IMO they just need to trust in one another and understand that mistakes will be made on the court and just keep up a high level effort to be able to get through and learn from them. Lets drop these words and turn them into actions.
I wish for the Rockets to win and we move Mchale to the Front Office running the paper shredder or something :grin:
You would think that your head coach, who played a lot around the post as a player, would want to use and run plays for his big man. Instead there are games where Dwight is completely ignored. Whats the point of having supposed perimeter shooters if you're not feeding the post first.
I find it ironic that our number one problem wasn't even addressed or in the vicinity of this players-only meeting. Mr. Kevin McHale
