Silas is trash, but he was brought in to fail. Ferntits loaded up on the insurance premiums, then burned the team down three times over to collect draft picks and tens of millions in profit. It's not like they paid Ime the same salary as Smilass and kept their spending habits...
i still consider this silas propaganda. Silas was brought in here to coach Harden and Russ and then Harden and Russ left; he was def here to coach a team to win. Then people moved the goal posts and said "oh he wasn't here to coach children" while saying he developed people like Luka, Curry and Lebron!. It was constant. Silas was a trash coach and taught NOTHING. now people hate Jalen and Bari because they are 1-2 years behind in development. Never forget Silas hated Sengun told him to stop shooting and passing and now he is all of sudden the best player on the court. i feel like somebody needs to compile the silas excuses people were saying in those dark time.
man, in those dark times homeless chumps like @SamFisher would harass me simply because I said Silas needed to use Bari differently. "Silas wasn't the problem it was the players were all busts". I remember. There were people really defending this dude and trashing the lineups and the players not the coaching.
I've maintained on here that he would've been fired if Tilman was the type to eat guaranteed contracts while paying for his replacement. The point is that FO still deserves a portion of the blame, but they're still around and Silas became 100% fallguy. I gave him the benefit of the doubt that first year, but he was clearly indefensible last season to the point of outright sabotage. If your memory bundles all the disaster seasons, then you could count me in the "propagandist" crowd.
Had few more thoughts on Silas so might unload it here. The original draw was because when he was under Carlisle on the Mavs with Luka. They had a historic offensive season. That was one of the selling points. Whether or not Harden remained, expectations was maybe offense would be somewhat decent. That maybe he wasn't a one trick pony and copied/pasted from the Mavs. So fast forward 3+ years later. Luka and the Mavs's OFF RTG is still good with Kidd. Now with Kyrie added. Carlisle went to a mid tier team in Pacers, looked at Haliburton (while already decent) and pushed this new Pacers team to one of the highest scoring teams, while keeping TO's somewhat manageable. So while Silas was 'in charge of that Mavs offense', if any coaching credit, should have gone to Carlisle as the architect, because Rick is doing it on another team. Meanwhile, the OFF for the Rockets during those years were still bad, and whatever he's suggesting to Monty right now with the Pistons, is not showing any tangible results. Lastly, if any were to compare Carlisle's assistants, Jamahl Mosely had the Magic playing defense earlier on (before the Banchero pick), and still has his head coaching job. Ok done.
i dont care if Silas was tanking but he wasn't teaching was my biggest issue. I was gaslit into thinking the team couldn't be taught.
Coaching is a main factor for the difference between years 1 and 2 Sengun and year 3 Sengun. Coaching was also a main factor for enabling "the worst lead guard in the NBA" to be the head honcho. I don't know the "bad coaching" was intentional due to tanking mandate from upstairs or just plain bad. You can't honestly say that the failure was not related to coaching. I have always believed that there isn't much difference between good coaching and great coaching, but there's a big difference between good coaching and bad coaching.
I still got my eye on how the FO will shape up. Ime won a lot of clout during negotiations and is keeping it with the team's progress. It's on record that Ferntits and Stone were buttering up KPJ up until a week before "the incident." We were close enough to offer 34 yr old harden the max for everyone in the league to talk about it. Eric Gordon as the veteran teacher??
This seems not correct - all the intel we have as agggregated by Clutch indicates that Stone was behind this, and in fact Silas wanted to bench him and bring back Wall, at least accroding to Wall.
I trust Ime. FO was trying to get back to Harden with that KPj fiasco. Which makes me hate Silas even more. If Silas was a good coach, if he really could see the game, He wouldn't have just let the FO push KPJ onto him just like Ime did with Harden. he should have played his best players. He still got fired. Should have gone out on his own terms.
The problem with scapegoats is that it allows the true culprits to get away. I put the majority of the blame for what happened the past couple of years on Stone rather than Silas because the team was stripped down to the studs so they could have high draft picks. None of the ex-Rockets from last year's team can crack the rotation on their new teams. When Udoka came, he brought along vets. I think folks are delusional to think that Udoka could coach last year's team to compete for a play-in spot.
No but if Ime coached the past two seasons I could see last year's Rockets being around where last year's Magic were where the national media saw them as one of the most promising young teams even if they are still a ~30 win team. It took Ime and these vets this season for the national media to get the Rockets at the level of the Magic in terms of praising a promising future.
Silas never deserved a head coaching job, or to be a coach in the NBA at all. He rode his Dad's coattails the entire way.
The Rockets have played a combined 4585 minutes this year, about half - 2200 of those minutes have been played by guys who weren't on the roster last year.
It doesn't matter whether the "bad coaching" was artificial or organic. The point is, coaching does matter, especially with young players. Bad coaching not only leads to losing but also bad team culture and bad player development.
Nix is with the wolves Destiny is with the Warriors TyTy is with the Bucks KJ is with Philly yall really think young players are going to crack those rotations championship contending rotations? they aren't generational talents for goodness sake If given the chance, with a coach, they probably would have developed naturally with a chance to play. if Stone doesn't try to go for Lopez some of those players play here. Shiiit if Lopez doesn't ghost the rockets, would Sengun be as good as he is now? yall think Holiday would have played under silas? lol yall think Destiny couldn't beat out Jock for playing time? Yall dont think TyTy wouldnt be backing up Fred right now? yall think Kj wouldn't be above Tate at this point?
because they were traded away to try and get lopez you doofus. if Stone (and Ime) didn't try for Lopez, they would still be here. Jock, Holiday, Unc, Boban were brought in mostly because we had to fill the roster, lol This the type of comment that comes from dudes who don't think coaching matters. you cant trust SamFisher to bring anything of value. sad.
Yeah but to be absolutely clear - it wasn't Silas who created 'head honcho " it was Stone over his objections. That absolutely does matter if you're going to make Silas the fall guy for that. Maybe you can say about him not resigning in protest or something, I guess. I think the best way to assess coaching is counterfactual, or at least comparing with minimal variations from year to year. The Rockets roster had quite a bit of turnover this year, like i said half of it was swapped out, for roughly half of the rotation. Counterfactually - I don't think any coach would be able to take the Rockets GM mandates and do anything with that collection of personnel from 21-23. I certainly don't see any evidence of it. Some of the same players are here and playing better now, but that seems consistent with organic player growth to me - most players improve after a few years in the league. The addition of way better NBA players around them though rather than dead money for John Wall seems like a bigger addition here
