First 10 Crunch time plays in last 5 minutes ran by the Heat & Spurs last year in the finals- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjZvEPbqMmg 1- Heat - Lebron Iso from the high post. Takes to rim. 2-SA- Manu/Duncan high p&R (clear outs from rest of the team. Rockets run this all the time) 3- Heat- Lebron Iso from the high post. Takes a jumper 4 - SA- Two man game with Parker/Duncan. Sort of a fake P&R to get Parker an open jumper 5 - Heat - Lebron/Chalmers P&R- Lebron is a decoy going to the rim to get Ray Allen an open 3 6 - SA- Duncan 1 in 4 out post up 7- Heat- screen set underneath to get Wade a posted up. takes contested turn around jumper 8- SA- Ginobil fast break score 9- Heat- Double screen to a R&R P&R with Chalmers & Lebron 10- SA double screen to get Danny Green free at the top. option to shoot or dump in post ............... So are these plays being run any more complex than that of what McHale is running in Houston right now? Is the execution always perfect even with arguably the two best coached teams in the league? The main difference I see is- A. the defensive intensity & attention to detail is otherworldly B. the talent level to get shots off in these sets C. Quickness and decisiveness in what they are running (only have a split second to get shot off some times) D. Possibly a bit more talented shooting on the perimeter (can be improved) to get enough decoy's in your sets to get defense to hedge their bets, and E. better chemistry with other players on the court. F. Lebron James' greatness Maybe the creativeness of McHale's plays isn't the only problem the Rockets have to overcome to compete for a title.
You don't think McFail will be in deep trouble if the Rockets lose in the first round again? I don't see how(barring a catastrophic injury) you can justify his return for another season if the end result is the same as last year pre-Howard.
its not people want to have this perfect system running plays but truth is teams dont have that. What they do have are reliable players that they can go to with the same plays. The problem is personnel. Pacers, heat, spurs run the same plays down the stretch. Only time things change is out of a time out. They stay with what works and the rockets just dont have the personnel for different plays, here’s the newest article Why the Rockets should stop posting up Dwight Howard By Matt Moore | NBA writer January 21, 2014 10:50 am ET http://www.cbssports.com/nba/eye-on-...-dwight-howard
i'd have to agree with this point. but i'd also say that changing the coach is probably the easiest problem to remedy, because there are no salary cap restrictions, draft, trades, etc to struggle with. morey and les would simply have to choose from one of a number of candidates superior to mchale available on the market this summer offseason.
I liked his timeout speach... "Loose ball are ours, rebounds are ours...go get them..." hahaha...if it were just that easy to collect a 7 figure paycheck...
To be fair what is he supposed to say? His style of coaching is emphatic on effort, if you lose a game it is because you didn't hustle or put enough effort into it. During a game very little coaching goes on with a lot of coaches, it's mostly cheer leading at that point with some minor tweaks to the game. McHale isn't a big X's and O's guy so he will hammer home the effort stuff and act more as a cheer leader. Heck, I think if we overheard some Phil Jackson timeouts they might sound exactly the same as the one from McHale...
Can we quit it with the McFail and Haren nicknames? I can MAYBE see it if were against these guys, but this is our own team. I don't get it. Is it supposed to be funny or insightful? Have some respect for our own guys man
my understanding is that they don't broadcast anything from the coaches pertaining to specific game strategy at all, and that's why all these coaches sound about the same on the mic from game to game. that being said, i wouldn't be surprised if mchale actually wasn't adding anything else of value during timeouts besides this exact rah-rah rally talk.
I think McHale will stay on as coach next year. Rockets are #5 right now and are only 1.5 games or so out of the #4 spot. It's conceivable they could get into the top 4 with CP3 still out with injury. If the Rockets bow out in round 1, the blame will go mainly to Howard and possibly Harden, not to him. If the Rockets get to round 2 or beyond, McHale will get the credit. It's possible that he could have a successful season and get dumped like Del Negro and Hollins, but I think Houston's management will take the point of view that it's a personnel issue not a coaching issue.
Depends on the way we lose. If we get sweeped and barely put up a fight then he gets fired or gets close to it. If we lose in 6 games or 7 games while fighting throughout then he stays. CHAMPIONSHIPS ARE NOT WON OVERNIGHT! Miami took two years to win their first. Dirk in Dallas played his entire career there before winning in 2011. McHale will at least get 2-3 years to work with Harden and Howard.
Out of curiousity how would the current cast of characters on this Rocket team perform in the triangle offense?
LOL. Yeah lets run the triangle with the team that can barely grasp the P&R. The triangle is just a concept of spacing on the court INSIDE THE ARC essentially, but it can take years to get even veteran players (both starring and surrounding) to understand where other players are going to be when they make cuts, and passing the ball becomes paramount. The Rockets current cast would look clunky as hell out there trying to run the triangle. The main effect the triangle would have with this current team is to take the ball out of the hands of Harden and Howard, and put more responsibility on Parsons and Jones to make plays on the weakside. -The Bulls teams in the 90's started utilizing the triangle because of the way teams were guarding Jordan. Harden is a much different type of guard than Jordan because his game revolves around getting to the rim going downhill & getting the spacing needed to do so by having the 3 point threat. Jordan's game mostly revolved around jump shots going away from the basket later in his career. This offense also will decrease the amount of 3 point options the Rockets would have on the court at all times when running their sets. So unless the Rockets trade Asik & Lin for Gasol, and want to take the 3 ball out of their arsenal long-term I just dont a reason to employ the triangle, and I dont think Phil Jackson is someone I can see coaching in Houston FYI... EVER. So no to the Triangle, and stop dreaming of Phil Jackson (one of if not the most overrated coach in NBA history). -If the Rockets did for some reason trade for Gasol (one of the last few great passing big men), the offense that they would probably shift BACK to would be the corner sets Adelman ran with Houston for years, and with other teams before them. Its a great way to space the court with two bigs. Only problem is, Gasol hasn't been a great shooter from the outside the past few years, but still.... that offense would be your best bet if they wanted to play two big bigs at the same time.
The Rockets lost in the first round in 6 games last year. If they lose in the first round in 6 games again this year, that's not progress. Especially with a superior roster. And enough with the Heat comparisons. You know what Miami did its first season with LeBron? They made it to the Finals. They were 2 games away(really a blown 15-point 4-quarter lead away) from a title. As for Dallas, more often than not, they made it out of the first round during the period of 2001-2011 when they finally won a title. And BTW, they went through 3 head coaches during that time frame.
All of the timeout clips shown on TV are like this for every team. They NEVER show ANY coach actually talking about the more technical stuff like switching up pick and roll coverage or running a particular play.
Great post! How about this as a theory? "The effectiveness of ISO plays go down the more the opponent team ends up defending against them within the same game since it is becoming more and more predictable." ISO plays are ok when used in moderation but we tend to go a whole freaking quarter with them at times (fine, that might be an exaggeration)
1. Defending Mchale by using the argument that he does run plays vs the bashers' saying he runs zero plays is extreme. Of course there are plays and the youtube link clearly shows them. One of the main points we have been trying to get across is that he has shown on many occasions that he cannot control Harden from veering away from his plays. A coach, to be effective, has to have the will to enforce his own systems and not let superstars take over whenever they want to the detriment of the team. Controlling your players is not equal to going to the media and saying "the ball is sticky". 2. Why have we not seen any post talking about his defensive sets? Everyone seems to notice that defense is the Rockets' main problem and the lack of structure. Reggie Miller's "lack of defensive identity" comment is not one that was plucked from the air, we have heard Steve Kerr, Steve Smith, Brent Barry, writers from around the globe, and hundreds of posters on CF mention this. Again, it is plain to see how sometimes there is effort, sometimes there is none, and it is on the coaches to amke sure people are accountable and sit and scold people for lack of effort. It is on them to give the players guidance on the exact thing to do defensively when faced with specific game situation against certain players or certain teams, but the lack of anything close to that has led to numerous end game failures. 3. Read and react sounds great on paper and when it is actually run. But when Harden reads the defense and "reacts" by just holding the ball for 20 seconds, it defeats the whole purpose, and teams find it much easier to defend, especially if he does it so many times in a single game. 4. No one has said that 110% of the blame is on Mchale. That is extreme and ridiculous. Many are saying that the Rockets potential is wasted because they have such good players but the captain of the ship cannot harness their talents properly. Young players make mistakes too, and they are partly to blame obviously, but there has been a lot of second guessing from so many fronts on how the Rockets are coached from people more experienced than we all are that you simply cannot ignore it
ISO plays can work if we force the defense to switch their weakest defender onto our best scorer. But we rarely ever run those plays to force them to switch, or when the double team comes, the ISO player is slow to pass the ball (Harden and Dwight).
Harden, Lin and Parsons are still in the developmental years of their careers. That's why all three repeat bad habits. That's also why we have had a veteran guy like Garcia thinking if he immediately "reads" a slight opening for an isolation drive for himself - with multiple better players on the court - he's going to "react" to it, after all, who's going to correct him? The young, immature core of Harden, Parsons, Lin? Carefree Dwight? The hands-off coach? The coaches expect young, developing players to figure it out themselves, it's not happening. Their talent alone in a free flowing system, without hands-on coaching, will find it difficult to not provide above average winning results over an 82 game season, but it's not going to get them anywhere in the playoffs. Remember how we accepted Francis' reckless play all those years, because of his numbers and entertaining play? He was in a free flowing "system" with Rudy T himself. What happened when JVG put him in a structured system with direction and defensive emphasis? Are we going to wait until these habits are set in stone before we start demanding more hands-on accountability from our coaching staff? Remember now, in a system that fails to payoff in the playoffs, the coach or the players go.... Which would you prefer? Even Jordan and Kobe couldn't figure it out themselves. Without proper guidance these hall of famers were just as overeager, often times to a reckless point, as all offense competent and offense driven young players in a flawed environment do (be it in management or roster, or both), thinking they could only win one way, their way. These two however had one thing Harden, Parsons and Lin don't... the will power to exert over their bad habits on the court with the proper system/guidance/managerial support in place even if it came past the 3-4 year developmental window of their young careers, or late in his 3rd year in Kobe's case. A hands-off free flowing "system", with veterans like Garcia and Dwight, isn't going to work with a young core when games slow down, defenses get tighter, and the pressure increases like it does in the playoffs, nor is it going to help that young core improve their game significantly to make up for that lack of guidance. If McHale is gone next season, which he should if this team doesn't get past the first round (which has a great likelihood of being the case if things don't change with management) it WILL be because of his "system" or lack thereof.
