Mchale is not a great coach overall, but like the players, the coaching staff made me eat crow and crow has never tasted so damn good to me. It's rare for a coach to improve significantly but he did it this season. He led by example and embodied our underdog identity and that was infectious. I can't, with a straight face, say that another coach would get us 2nd seed and division championship everything considered. Well done coach. Very very well done to you, and let's not forget the staff who were able to make this team play great defense - something unimaginable last summer when Lionel Hollins rejected our offer.
Funny, I didn't see you or any of the gang of McHale haters saying this on the "Fire McHale" thread. In fact, I think we should record the names and quotes of many of the idiots posting on that thread. The disrespect they showed not even our worst enemies would equal. It is not premature. We are SW champs. We are #2 seed. Regardless of what happens in the playoffs, the regular season record speaks for itself. Coach McHale did an outstanding job juggling line-ups and bringing in supposed malcontents and blending them into a force in the highly competitive conference. Premature to congrat them? ...garbage!! They deserve our sincere congrats and support for a successful playoff run.
I've said since early in the season I thought McHale had done a really good job with this team. They got off to a great start, were playing terrific defense, weathered an unbelievable number of injuries going all the way back to their 3rd game(the home opener over Boston), went 26-15 on the road, were perfect in overtime games, and became a helluva tough team to beat in games decided by 5 points or less which is always the sign of a team that plays solid defense and makes clutch shots on the offensive end. A lot of this can be attributed to the brilliance of James Harden, but not all of it. McHale deserves a lot of credit as does Morey for recovering from a disastrous offseason to focus on loading this team up with veterans and experienced role players who could solidify the bench(a luxury we didn't have last year unless you still think Jeremy Lin was a good player). Now of course McHale still needs to lead this team to at least one playoff series victory this postseason, but at the moment, it's hard to imagine any other coach doing a better job in the regular season with the hand he was dealt.
Mchale is gonna get his fair amount of hate and deserving so as i fully expect him to make some bonehead decisions in the playoffs, not a great X and O coach of course but there is no denying the credit when he leads a team to win a division with as many injury bugs as they had.
Credit for winning the division for the 1st time in 21 years. Yippee, now do something we haven't done in the great Morey, McFail era, get out of the 1st round!
They didn't surround McFail with coaches who've been their before, look at the coaches for the Spurs, Clippers, Warriors. Vastly superior than ours! That is on Morey.
I will never argue for him as an in game strategist, but anyone who still a full blown McHale basher is missing the boat. His players love him, even players that leave disgruntled (Lowry) have admitted to wishing they could go back and do it over because they respect him now. He managed a bizarre season of injuries with only one playmaker on the entire team for LONG stretches, he managed the personalities of guys who had struggled to fit in elsewhere, his coaching staff helped turn Josh Smith of all players into an efficient offensive player, something he has NEVER been before, he and his staff turned the defense completely around... I just can't hate on him. They are running a good program over at Toyota Center.
We MUST get back to that style, aggression,and activity on Defense that we showed at the start of the season...THAT is the real key to get out the West this season. I do think we can do this (even though I'm not a McHale supporter), we must be aware and take no possessions off. We have to play SMART and EFFICIENT basketball to get to where we want to go this post-season.
I admit there is a fair amount of truth in what you said. Let's hope for 1st round success. We can't rely on a bunch of 3 point attempts. I hope McHale will make our players realize that, and keep on motivating them through the choppy waters. He should leave the X's and O's to the assistants.
lol seems obvious to me. He holds the opinion that McHale is garbage. This regular season didn't really coincide with his belief. So to remain "right" on his belief he sets up a very, very high and unlikely expectation for him to actually give in and believe McHale is not garbage. I might be mistaken, but this is the same guy who said we would never win a playoff series with McHale. Now he expects to make the final four with him or he sucks.
What in the world are you talking about? I'm the same guy what? I never said what you just insinuated. And go back and read my posts (in several threads) and get some honest context from what I wrote. Unbelievable.
