[Morey's Own Words] Why Did the Rockets Fire Kevin McHale

Then why DA FUQ would you leave JB Bickerstaff as headcoach???

One of the most mindboggling, completely idiotic decisions ever!

 

he lost the locker room. the players made the decision before morey did.

those first 11 games, the players weren't even trying. that couldn't go on all season (although i wouldn't mind if we had tanked).

under jbb the players at least tried, although they still weren't good, at least they looked like an nba team again.

 

Here is the thing - Morey has lost the locker room long before McHale.

DD

 

It makes perfect sense.

Bottom line is the players just completely sucked this year, but trying a coaching change was worth the risk.

 

Then Morey hires McHale's assistant, 10x worse than McHale. LOL

 

Yeah Brewer sucks badly but we still have to play him 28 minutes in playoffs.

 

Isn't this exactly what Morey said about the move when it was made? That we couldn't wait and lose traction in the West? So he still hasn't given an account of the move.

The two main things missing here are an assessment of JB as a coach and an indictment of McHale's losing control of the locker room.

Instead Morey explains how badly the team sucked to begin the season. We already knew that without checking how many non-Playoffs teams we lost to last year.

 

Is 0.500 a winning record or mediocre at best?

At least they can sugarcoat it as that and not a losing record.

 

DM responding to head scratching around the league.

Would be interesting to know whether he's speaking of his own will, or if he was directed to issue a 'statement' by Les.

Either way, trying to publicly explain their decision, given the timing, comes off as desperate, IMO. I doubt this sways the attitudes agents (and free agents) have of the Rockets' organization this offseason.

Meanwhile, McHale is on TNT commentating game 1 of LAC vs. Blazers. Something tells me he won't be coaching again for awhile, if at all.

 

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This confirms another 3 years of JB. He's 37-34, 37-35 if you count the playoff loss.

 

Short term it was a mistake because it was to early in the season and JB has turned out to be a much worse coach IMO. But I think in the long term, it was the right move to make because I just don't think McHale was truly a championship caliber coach. The only thing is now Morey has to validate his decision by hiring a great coach who can get this team to the next level.

 

Murray just needs to throw out his mumbo jumbo system and see whats right in front of him

If he continues to look for an excuse for a system that does not work and never will, he will be laughed at until his death

 

The best explanations I can come up with are:

1) Firing McHale was intended to send a message to the players and wake them out of their early season stupor. Since Morey at the time(and sadly enough, possibly even today) didn't think coaching really mattered that much, he might've convinced himself that the mere firing of McHale would be enough to get everyone in that locker room on the same page.

2) Les is a cheap b*stard who didn't wanna pay another coach to take over after eating 13 mil after firing McHale.

3) No respectable veteran head coach would take over this mess even with 71 games left in the season. We all know players talk to each other around the league. I'm certain coaches do too. And there's no way word didn't get around to the likes of Thibs or Brooks that this team was in deep trouble right from the get-go.

Maybe it's a combination of all 3 for all I know.

 

McHale lost Harden. End of story. Harden didn't want to be held accountable by McHale for his crappy defensive effort. McHale started talking about the lack of effort of the team. Harden sensed the posse catching up to him and he disconnected from McHale. Once Harden shut McHale down it was only a matter of time before the rest of the team caught on.

Morey is at fault here for 3 things:

1. Handling Harden wrong. Giving Harden too much control.

2. Having No Plan to bring in another quality coach before firing McHale.

It's obvious in hindsight that we should have retained McHale for the season and started clearing out players. This would have forced Harden to make a decision on how or if he was going to adjust. There's no way this team would have been worse over 82 games with McHale than with JBB. And now we've got a bigger problem with Harden's head swelling.

3. Not explaining the above to Les strongly enough to turn Les away from the 'Fire McHale' drum beat. Les forced the firing. And Morey didn't prevent it. Same thing happened with the Jeremy Lin signing. Les forced it. Morey knew it wasn't the right signing. And it cost us a first rounder to get rid of Lin.

Same thing with us fighting for the playoffs last week. Gotta get in to make Les happy for the moment. Drained us of another first rounder.

Morey giving in to Les hurts this team big time. Les is a great guy and he's the owner. But he meddles on the basketball side of things and every time he does, it cost the franchise and us fans. Morey needs to tell Les the truth when Les goes to meddling. He's got plenty of track record of Les meddling failures.

When Les involves himself in basketball decisions with irrational emotion, those decisions hurt the franchise every time. Morey is too smart to not find a way to point this out diplomatically.

 

If the players were "trying" under JBB, then why did the other team get layup after layup all season long because our players refused to get back on defense? That just plain lazy. Lazy lazy lazy.

I've seen enough of this Rockets team. Blow the whole thing up and let's start fresh with some players that really want to play on both ends of the court.

 

It's not a problem for Morey to fire McHale, but u can't let JBB be the head coach, This decision has destroyed this season and the future chance.
I don't think any top players will join Houston next season

 

Actually I forgot a 4th possibility. Les was delusional enough to think that firing McHale and replacing him with JB would play out the same way as the last time the franchise fired a previously successful head coach and elevated his top assistant to the job(Rudy T replacing Chaney).