The roster is pretty much right & the attitude is much improved. What this team needs now is a training camp
JB is just emotional. He's friends with the players... he won't be able to challenge those guys how they need to be challenged to get to the next level. Everyone is in their comfort zones. I don't understand how he says he's a defensive coach... I don't see the Rockets even trying to play defense. If Smith starts you have 4 good defenders around Harden.
Yikes.... we need some spelling bees in this thread to sort out the casual fans from the intelligent fan....
Mchale was not FAR Better than JB. Atleast they don't do that insane 2-3 zone against shooters who can shoot. Mchale was an idiot.
The Rockets have had several training camps with this coaching staff. (The fact McHale isn't the head coach is irrelevant since the whole 'cut off the head and another takes its place' applies here as they're all the same no system type coach) The Rockets need a completely new training staff heading into the pre-season. Only when we have a coach who can implement any semblance of a defensive or offensive (I'd like both - but one is at least better than what we have now) system can we begin to improve and see the results this much talent should be showing.
I don't disagree that the free-flowing offense needs more structure for us to be successful; JB & McHale can both implement that but don't for reasons the board has discussed plenty. But that's not the point I was making. My point is that the Rockets can still get exponentially better at this time with a training camp of sorts. They didn't have a decent one at the start of this season and here's why and how we know: 1) Our players were hardly engaged until recently and played like crap in the preseason games 2) We had a lot of injuries during training camp and the preseason games 3) McHale was fired predominantly because of a bad training camp where no training happened - led to losing those 7 games with an out of sync roster 4) Josh Smith has not had even one training camp with the team 5) Brewer's only training camp with us was this year's crappy one 6) Last year's training camp had lots of Tarik Black, Dorsey & Papanilkolau who ended up contributing during the first part of that season; this year's group have still not formally learned to play with each other after a dis-engaged training camp. This roster has basically learned to play with each other on the fly So, yes, we badly need a training camp right now with a competent roster that is finally starting to care about games Not that it matters because we obviously cannot have one, unless it's over all-star break or something.
Don't need to fire the coach, they need new players, improvements at the trade deadline. Morey is going to be one busy dude on February and probably will be the most stressed GM this year. I hope it will be worth it.
It would not be smart for Daryl Morey to keep JB next year if he cherishes his job. Especially with Thibs out there who we all know Harden listens to.
Don't see how defense could get any worse. JB is not over his head, the guy is dead and buried. He's so out of his league I actually feel sorry for him.
Too many good coaches out there this up coming off-season to stand pat. Unless JB has a clutch city 6th seed run up his sleeve they must make the change. I want to say, I don't think JB is a bad coach. He just took over a mess of a team so it's hard to really tell. It's like the opposite of Luke Walton. I'm not sure Luke Walton is a good coach...he just took over a team that already knew what it was doing while JB has taken over a team that was in shambles and was asked to fix it and save the season for a team with championship aspirations...I mean that is just begging for failure. Hopefully JB will try working under some other good coach like SVG or Kerr or Pop because he clearly IMO seems to really have the passion for coaching.
