McHale's commitment to playing Beverley heavy minutes is taking minutes away from Lin, Garcia, Casspi and others...even Asik. Beverley simply isn't good enough to warrant that many minutes at the expense of players who have more skill.
If that's the real reason I have no problem with that. It looked like he limited other starters' minutes too, not just Lin. Still, I'm guessing giving Lin some more minutes this game (before garbage time) couldn't have hurt
His back might still be hurting. I noticed some1 said during half time he was still riding on the bikes
I only had time to watch the first half, after which I only checked the box score at the end. Just wondering what happened.
Dunleavy came back with a vengeance and hit almost everything and that affected his teammates. They started to make shots too. Bulls defense was topnotch they forced a lot of turnovers. We couldn't make shots and lackadaisical defense.
Not riding Lin when he had the hot hand was one of the problems. Also, D-Mo played well in the first half and did not play in the 2nd until garbage time. Why? IONO...
I always thought that, if your starters are getting tired or aren't getting the job done.... THAT IS WHY you have other players on your bench. amirite?
McHale definitely stuck with the starters too long tonight. Most coaches would have correctly juggled the lineup earlier.
In theory, yes. Earlier in the season, McHale justified sitting various starters under the pretext of saying that the Bench was playing well so he felt he would leave them out there. Everyone was fine with that explanation. Yet tonight, for some bizarre reason when we're in the home stretch of a play off push and the Starters can't hit a bucket and the bench IS playing well, he leaves them cooling the bench. It made ZERO sense. Lin was the best scorer. Asik was playing better than Dwight. DMo was defending better than Tjones. Hamilton was more effective than Parsons. Yet they were STILL all cooling the bench while the team was getting buried deeper and deeper into the hole. Coaching stupidity. Guaranteed Thibs or Pops would have ridden the bench and let them push the game, Especially with the starters playing with such poor effort and shooting like crap.
When Lin takes 11 or more shoots, Rockets was 15-1. (I read it somewhere) After tonight, 15-2 I guess.
I'm just gonna throw this out there: if you think this game was McHale's fault, you're an idiot. There's no way to sugarcoat it. Nobody on the team but Lin came to play tonight. That's not McHale's fault.
Is it McHale's fault that Dunleavy shot lights out? No. Is it McHale's fault that Dwight, Harden and Parsons couldn't hit a shot? No. However, handling minutes IS McHale's responsibility. The Bench dug us out of 10 point holes... TWICE. When they're playing that well, it's McHale's job to recognize that and give the team the *BEST* chance to win the game. Would we have won? Maybe, maybe not. However, we had NO chance when McHale sat on his butt and watched the Bulls rack up a 20-2 run. THAT is 100% on McHale and Co. Whether you think it's a 10%, or 50% chance of pulling out a comeback is opinion. However, it's a LOT better than what we saw on the floor tonight.
Talent wise, the second units may have what it takes to beat them, just saying this is the type of game you can win even if your starters dont do well
i don't know. Can't really put this on McHale I mean, you can't really expect a team as talented as Harden, Howard, Parsons, Bev, and Jones to play that badly. No D and as many turnovers as points. You have to admit, its kind of unbelievable.
