Adelman was one of the best coaches the Rockets evr had. His lost was made obvious with Mchale succeeding him. I honestly never had an issue with Adelman as the head coach of the Rockets, and was disappointed when they got rid of him. JVG was not a good coach for the team. I wasn't a fan.
At day's end, Rockets success will be in spite of McHale. Tough challenge in a deep conference. Hopefully everything works out.
Right but at the time(right before winning titles), Rudy T was a new head coach that was more known as a former player who got the job basically cause Chaney resigned & he was in the right place at the right time. In today's terms it would be like Brian Shaw or Derrick Fisher winning a championship several years into his coaching career. The Bill Fitch/Rudy T/McHale connection also is interesting. Fitch was McHale's coach in Boston during the championship years in the 80's, and Fitch was the HC when Rudy T first started as a scout/assistant. They all sort of get their NBA strategy framework from what they both learned from Fitch. I'd actually go back to the 80's Celtic's offense as sort of the inspiration that Rudy T had for the 90's Rockets teams. Its just crazy how these guys are all sort of connected & inspired by each other going back that far. What I'm saying mostly is that Rudy T. knew the game well, as does Kevin McHale, but reputation about being a basketball strategy genius has a life of its own with Fans. Don Nelson had 6 seasons with less than 30 wins. Did he not know how to coach after one of those seasons any less than when he had one of his two 60 win seasons? Its just a little bit ridiculous.
But you just made my point. LMA did not miss game 2. However, the reason he didn't miss was because there was absolutely no double teams. We watched him hit jumper after jumper without atleast TRYING anything different. Regardless of how Portland operates, atleast try SOMETHING different. Make somebody else beat you and live with the results. Instead Mchale let LMA get the ball in his sweet spots and completely abuse Jones & Asik in single coverage. That's just defensively. We haven't even discussed offensively
It's hard to argue with your well-stated post. There are obvious coaching-decisions that you can point to that would have made life easier on the Rockets. My premise is that you have to look at coaching and execute (ability to execute) together. Aside from those “few” plays having a direct impact on the outcome, they are indicative of the Rockets ability to execute. Agree that coach should have made the adjustment from Tjones on LMA earlier. That’s on coach. “Pop immediately put long bigs on LMA from the start” is a bit overstated. The Spurs starting lineup didn’t change between the Mavs and the Blazers series, and the minutes for their frontcourt are relatively the same. So Pop immediately having longer bigs on LMA is a personnel thing. Your point: if LMA scores less in game one or game two, the whole complexity of the series is changed. No doubt. The same can be said about Harden. If Harden plays efficiently (read: like he played all season) it also never comes down to the last couple of plays. Harden has NEVER played as poorly as he did in the first few games. The Rockets offense is about pace, efficient shots, reading and reacting was successful all season long. We have a simple system that wasn’t executed well. So, should we have a more complicated system that is absolutely dependent on execution? Can you just flip a switch in the middle of the series? So, when you talk about a team’s ability to execute: YES you have to look at the coach, but not the coach alone. People were having the exact same conversation about Doc Rivers before he got Ray Allen and Kevin Garnett. Erik Spoelstra has more rings than Doc.
If we had tried something different we would have been swept. I can live with us getting wrecked because Aldridge is going off hitting low % shots. I can not live with us giving up endless wide open 3s because we keep doubling him. The strategy was vindicated in games 3-6 where we played the exact same defense on him as we had in games 1 and 2. To quote Harden, "it's basketball man. Sometimes the shots go in and sometimes they don't"
I would also point out that despite all the fussing about our offense, and despite that Harden was basically a no-show for the first 5 games, our ORTG was 115.6. That was the highest ORTG for any Western team through the entire playoffs. (actually I'm not sure what the Spurs ORTG was in the Finals, can't find that info on BR, but our ORTG was higher than theirs in every other series including their demolition of the Blazers in round 2) Say what you will about our crunch-time offense, but we were certainly not struggling to score points. And that was with our best player shooting 13-35 most of the series.
So because a coach went single coverage against a jump shooting big (from 18 feet.. IE the least efficient shot in basketball) and didn't double to allow one of the deadliest 3 point shooting teams to get open 3's that constitutes him as a bad coach? Look... I get it. That series was hard to watch, and as a fan you want him to try something different, but the fact is, it was a toss up either way (gambling that LMA goes cold eventually & likewise gambling they miss 3's). In the finals two years ago in game 6 Popovich took out Duncan for a key stretch where LBJ got to the rim at ease with no shot blocking & that run eventually led to them a huge run & the Ray Allen 3, and the rest is history. Popovich is judged based on the totality of what he's done not based on one or two questionable coaching calls but wins, personal achievements, reputations with players, and championships..... not because he has the best game calling schemes to win toss up games. When the Spurs are at their best & WINNING, they aren't winning those toss up games.... they are clicking on all cylinders and kicking the crap out of teams by knowing & owning their own identity. The Rockets lost their identity in that series, and tried to match up to Portland's size due to a reaction to DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT. You could easily turn your argument upside down and say that the Rockets lost the series because they over-schemed and lost track of their normal style of play that kicked the crap out of teams like the Blazers & Spurs during the regular season.
I stood by McHale all season and defended him. Just looking back on the season now, and some of the losses and big mistakes, a lot of it came down to bad coaching and McHale just being out coached. There were maybe 4-5 games where everyone unanimously agreed that good coaching was going on, but those games were very few and far between. I wish JVG would come back
I am really impressed with how Carlise coached Monte Ellis. Even though Monte Ellis is a volume scorer, somehow Carlise is using him the right way such that he is still integrated to their system. Pretty impressive.
I totally agree. Unrealistic expectation levels almost always lead to disappointment. I fell for it too. Post DH trade, pre-season I was expecting around 40-45 wins and a possible second round playoff appearance. I've seen too many "super teams" in various sports to believe that you can just throw great players together and win championships. But then the team started to play well. Then in March they started to play REALLY well. I was letting my emotions, not my logic, dictate my expectation levels. Then there was a downward trend after Sampson left. I wrote that off as simply resting up for the playoffs. Clearly there was more to it than that. And as the immaturity of the team (and yes, the coach) was exposed in the Portland series I found myself disappointed. Days later after the emotion wore off I realized that from a big picture view it wasn't that awful of a year and hopefully some valuable experience was gained. Of course there's the flip side of the coin, where we have folks who consider any year a team doesn't win it all as a total failure. Expectations.
On the double team of Aldridge issue, McHale claimed in interviews after the series was over that he did have a double team called but the players didn't rotate fast enough. He wasn't doubling Aldridge without the ball, but there was a double team that was supposed to arrive when he got the ball. He either shot too quickly or the players moved too slowly to cover.
I remember reading about that. Jones, in particular was inferred as the culprit that didn't recognize it was his job to double, and he rotated poorly, late and sometimes not at all. Having seen a decent sized sample of T. Jones on defense this is a feasible scenario. McHale lying to save face is also feasible, but I tend to believe the first explanation.
I find it hard to believe that McHale would lie to save face. I'm not a fan of his really (though it may seem like I'm defending him in this thread) but one think I will say about him is that he seems very straightforward with his interviews.
Ditto. Plus he'd lose tons of credibility with the entire team if he flat out lied to keep from looking bad. I don't remember him calling out Jones but from the way he described things it wasn't hard to put two and two together.
Quite true. I remember him openly questioning why Howard picked Houston over Dallas calling the decision a "mistake" on Howard's part. Naw, he's just openly displaying his egotistical arrogance and dumbassness. You should hear the BS he's spreading about getting Carmelo to come to Dallas - that Carmelo has a legit shot at competing for a title THIS year with the Mavs because "we have a championship coach in Rick Carlisle" unlike what they have down in Houston. You have to understand that Cuban is a guy in love with the sound of his own voice.
