I think the problem was that McHale, being an old-school type players coach, expected a level of maturity that some on this team just weren't able to muster. After seemingly being tried by fire during the playoffs and achieving a modicum of success, I think McHale believed he could give the team some leeway and they would still maintain their level of commitment. Unfortunately that only proved true with vets like Dwight, Terry, and Ariza. It's apparent now that guys like Harden and Lawson require tighter reins. McHale's lax training camp, filled with giving guys random off days, began to bear bad fruit in the preseason and snowballed into the regular season.
Did McHale tell Harden to stop screwing with someone's wife or something? He's a good guy, probably best working as a lead assistant coach to buddy buddy with the players than doing the actual in game adjustments that he lacks ability of.
Great professional response, but it's a shame that Morey has wasted Les's money and didn't realize earlier that McFail wasn't the answer.
I'm convinced McHale was brought in as a recruiter (to recruit Love and Howard), but that that plan fell apart once we got Harden. I'd love Thibs here.
He was a top 5 PF of all time. Great post moves. Maybe he should have paid more attention to Red Aurbach or whoever the hell was the head coach of the Larry Bird Celtic Championship teams?
Yeah, well we ain't the Spurs. You can't give half the team a bunch of random days off all throughout the preseason and just assume they'll be ready to go come opening night. Especially when you're integrating a new PG. It was his responsibility to make sure they were in shape, focused, and prepared to play with one another so that when Denver came to town 3 weeks ago, they could pick up where they left off last season. Just look at how lost Lawson's been on offense. McHale never made any concerted effort to use him as a playmaker through the first 11 games. Can you blame some of the players for tuning him out when this is how he was coaching them?
All this could've been avoided if he had been fired after the portland series like he should've been.
I was surprised by McHale's performance as a coach last season, but overall he just isn't a very good coach for a championship aspiring team. When McHale was hired we were rebuilding and he was a good choice for that but not any more.
Yeah that is exactly why he was up during said comeback and cheering the guys on from the bench, because he has issues with his ego. :roll eyes: I really like McHale as a person and feel badly for him...but seriously what the hell happened to this team - where are all these issues/meetings coming from, dating back to pre-season?! Let's hope that this is a wake-up call for the team.
McHale seems like a really great, nice guy. He's been through a lot over the past 4 years with the Rockets and I hope he doesn't get too down about being let go. Its just when a team has visible problems that need to be corrected, they have to be adjusted and you can't keep saying things like " We needed to get our groove back, our rhythm, play harder " instead of directly fixing the real problems. I'd like to he did try to actually fix some of our problems but our play is hinting that he didn't. Good luck McHale, hope you get an assistant coach or TNT job.
Well I can only thing of a couple possibilities. #1 We don't know what the players said behind closed doors, perhaps they simply no longer believed in McHale. #2 Les Alexander saw and had enough and insisted that a change be made.
