Asik/Lin- "He(McHale) told us to take the rest of the game off in the 4th and we tell Kevin, hey we just wanna win"
You know what you should have done when you felt compelled to make a thread? You should have done nothing.
I Too can USE random Capitals and Feral apostrophe's! If it's called clutch time then why do you attribute it mostly to luck? Do we not make our own luck? Positives: 1. Bench mob got confidence and closed out the game. 2. Clutch time performances by the bench. 3. Starters got to rest a lot. That means a TON this time of year. 4. Bench got experience that might prove valuable down the road. 5. We won. Negatives: 1. We let them get within 5 points? 2. More lame GARM threads?
what if we didn't win? i would like to know what all ppl would have said. we are jsut lucky. 5 pts in nba with a couple minutes left means nothing. plus the trend was magics still chipped away the pts. it doesn't like we had stopped them for a couple minutes before the last 2 minutes. we were just lucky smith finally got that rb after magics players missed a couple tips on the offense board. we were really lucky. had they made one of tips, we would have been only 3 pts up. then they would have no need to commit foul. instead try to play defense and stop rox scoring. we were not really good on offense end with our bench.
Finally a reasonable post. Yes it's a gamble, but thats what a gamble is, a win/lose scenario, not a lose/lose scenario like everyone is making it out to be.
Firstly, the playoffs are four rounds. That's 16 wins. Not 20. Secondly, please don't refer to the playoffs as "The Show" ever again. Finally, meh, that coulda been bad, but he believed in his guys. I'm not a huge McHale fan, but I don't hate him as much as you guys seem to.
Is it really just luck? How is it fair that McHale gets none of the credit in a win, but gets all of the blame in a loss?
What if Asik, Smith and six other players all had Ware-like injuries this game? What is Sweet Suzie filed a paternity suit against Parsons causing him to flee to Tibet? What if Les sold the team to the Maloof's at half time and they decided to play Royce White 1 on 5 for the rest of the year (don't say you couldn't see them doing something like that)? What if Bill finally snapped at the inane things that Bulland and Drexler say, game after game, and stabbed them both in the the vocal cords with rusty sporks? This game is fun!
I have said once before that I would rather lose now to win later. IMO we are one good player and one above average coach away from being the second best team in the west. when we go to the playoffs with this clown we will be very lucky just to not get swept. I love my team but he is my least favorite coach in the twenty plus years I have been a Rockets fan.
I admit, i started getting a little nervous at about the 5 minute mark when it was a 12-13 point game, but when McHale made the decision to not put the starters back in then he left himself little choice when it came to putting them back in with 2 minutes left. Basically given the events leading up to the finish of the game i think that mchale made the right choice. Look at his article, that i found after 1 minute of searching Google http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/04/why-ice-may-be-bad-for-sore-muscles/ . Its not exactly a peer reviewed scientific journal, but I'm sure the guy writing it did some reseach and quoted some literature when making his arguements. In short, the article talks about the effects of icing sore muscles and then resuming strenuous physical activity. It reaffirms my sneaking suspicion that after sitting on the bench for 15 minutes and icing their knees, that Lin and Asik may well have been more ineffective than the bench. They may have been risking injury as well. “The current evidence base suggests that the performance of athletes will probably be adversely affected should they return to activity immediately after cooling." is the articles take and it provides a logical explanation for mchale, whether he knew it or not. Mchale was not mistake free and i think D-mo should have been taken out, not because of him playing poorly, but because he looked absolutely gassed. Either way the Rockets came out with the W and injury free, which is all that matters at this point of the game. When we were up by 10 with 2 minutes left, the Magic's chances of winning that game are really low if we just milk the shot clock and convert on the offensive side a few times. People will use the almost loss to crucify Mchale , but the truth is that this game won't change anyones opinion on him and i bet that nearly everyone who is bashing him already had strong dislike for our coach. Focus on the good here. Without 2 of our best players, we dominated the magic for 3 quarters. Yes they are the magic, but we played our style of ball which we badly needed to get back to. Good teams will try to take that away, but tonight we got practice doing it against NBA competition. Practices cant replace the pressure of an actual game, and every opportunity to get more locked in before the playoffs should be welcomed. We have the chance to be one of the most inexperienced teams in history to make the playoffs. Thats a testament to the talent on the roster and to the coaching staff. In what was supposed to be a top of the lottery year, we have the potential to give a top seed a hell of a series if we can play like we did for the first 3 quarters and have everyone healthy. I know as fans we get into the games and can become emotional , but for the love of God take 10 seconds and take a step back and look at the whole situation before you come crying and demand peoples heads on a platter.
First, I thought the camel = Harden & Parsons. Becuase McFail ride them secretariat all season long. McFail did a little gamble tonight. Normally NBA team just don't blow a 18pts lead that often against a super crappy team. I am sure if Rox played any quality teams instead of Magic, he would have played the starter at least 6 minutes into the 4th Qtr. Of course something weird happen, and Rox lose this game. Then you can call his head.
People defending McHale for this decision are justblindly blissfully ignorant. I don't care what his rationale is, you just don't frigging do this to show that the bench can finish off games. This is the NBA not some pee wee sports. Even Lin was yelling at the coach to let him in. You don't risk a win like this especially when we are still very much in the running for the sixth seed, not after all the hard work put in by the starters, you just don't disrespect their effort to prove a point. And a really ridiculous point at that.
How was it a bad decision? If TRob or DMO gets the confidence to help us win in the playoffs? If we have to bring in our starters against the LEAST TALENTED TEAM IN THE NBA when we have a 5 point lead. We don't deserve to be in the playoffs. Chill the **** out we won.
It's getting to the point where I bet if we beat the Heat in the finals in 7 games, GARM will be littered with threads about how McHale "almost" cost us the championship through his subsitutions and not playing Lin enough, playing Harden too much, no offensive sets, etc. I mean, JESUS F***ING CHRIST you'd think the coach would get at least a tiny bit of credit after these last two games without Harden and then Harden/Parsons. You'd think we'd be happy with Asik dominating and Lin stepping up his game. But instead, it's the same ole s*** over and over.
