Because Dwight Howard would be so great passing the ball from the 3 point line in traffic, and Harden is well known as an off the ball offensive player. You run the offense that suits your best players, not the other way around. Even Rick Adelman abandoned his own offense when the Rockets had Yao and T-Mac because of their offensive abilities. It was only when Yao went down, and Chuck/Miller were the Rockets big men & Kevin Martin/Bud were the wing scorers that the corner offense went back into full force. The Adelman offense is a thing of beauty when its run correctly with the right players, but the Rockets aren't that team right now as constructed. Adelman is gone from the NBA, and he's gone from the Rockets. Please people... get over it.
Its a little bit of both. Players: Harden turns the ball over quite a bit. He leads the league in turnovers (158) .... averaging 4.1 a game. Since he does have such a high usage rate , this is not the end of the world but it would be nice to see improvement. Howard also has a turnover problem , mainly when posting up, he averages 3.1 a game. Almost 40% of his post touches result in a turnover. As a team they are at the bottom in turnovers , 29th trailing only Philly ... and they are nothing but a glorified DLeague team. More Howard - He wants to be a traditional post big and doesn't like the pick & roll , sets weak picks and doesn't roll hard to the rim. Has to be the last guy down the court every possession , has to touch the ball out beyond the 3 point line instead of getting into the play , setting a hard pick or getting to the low block & establishing position early in the shot clock. Howard's post touches have to be dictated by the matchup , some games he's going to have a favorable one , give him the ball , others he's going to struggle .... Do something else. Josh Smith - Shooting anywhere outside 5 feet or doing his best imitation of Jeremy Lin and the jump pass. How bout give me your best Chuck Hayes impersonation instead. McHale: Caters to Howards desires to be a traditional post scorer rather than drilling it thru his head that he needs to do something more efficient .... Like run the pick & roll or be the second option from the baseline when someone else is the picker. Remember the favorable / unfavorable matchups discussed above , that's 50-50 Howard & McHale. They have to know , with as much analytics as they employ who the favorable matchups are and who gives him fits. Doesn't bench Josh Smith the moment he takes a shot outside of the paint or when he imitates Jeremy Lin's patented jump pass. Doesn't attack players who get in foul trouble. Like against GS , Bogut gets 3 and goes to the bench for the duration of the half .... First play out of the gate in the second half should be to isolate & attack him and send his ass back to the bench. There just isn't enough player movement off the ball , no screens or pin downs & very few cuts to the bucket ... Just camp at the 3 point line and wait while Harden , Howard or DMo is in an isolation. Not enough use of the high / low post game or transitioning from a pick & roll to a high low set where the picker ducks to the FT line , just too many ways to break down a defense from there & Both DMo & Josh Smith are capable of facilitating from that. They are just too damn predictable .... and neither the players nor the ball move enough. Morey - He has to take a little heat here too: Mainly for amassing a group of bigs who shoot below 50% from the charity stripe collectively and having not found a secondary facilitator capable of taking the heat off of Harden & running the show when he is on the bench. Cant knock him for the 3's & points in the paint theory , its produced championships in the past .... He just needs a coach who can demand they execute offensive sets that lead to those shots more efficiently rather than this playground offense.
The biggest accomplishment of McHale's career will be if he can affectively transition Dwight Howard into this new stage of his career. Guys.... its not that easy. He can't just go up to Dwight and say, we are no long going to post you up. You are asking for trouble if you come in with that overnight goal. He's smarter than that, and understands the superstar mentality. But McHale, and definitely Morey know that Dwight needs to see the ball in the post, less, and less as time goes on. Unfortunately, its going to take alot of watching film, communication between him and McHale, and ultimately Dwight himself is going to have to have the light bulb go off to say I'm willing to take a step back in the offense to help the team win. ........ As for the turnovers.... practice has alot to do with that. When you don't do the drills that establish pass positioning you really start to lose that skill and continuity. There are certain drills that the coaches run in an NBA practice that really helps with getting those passing lanes open and working on knowing where to put the ball under pressure. Its obvious to me that this team probably hasn't practices in a long time, and might not have more that 2 or 3 practices in them since they acquired the new guys.
I don't think Howard has to take a lesser role in the offense , he can see just as many , if not more touches .... But they need to come as a result of something other than a simple post up. As for the turnovers , I think many of those are a direct result of the style of play , they'd have far fewer in a more structured , disciplined scheme.
No *****. I quoted examples of what GSW did. I swear some ppl on here have sorely lacking comprehension skills. And by the way you can run PnR with Howard and DMo. In my post I said "PnR". As we all know Howard is an elite Pnr player, problem is he doesn't do it enough. You also failed to rebut my assertion of running more floppy for Harden as they do with Thompson. Chess v checkers my man.
This team is going to nowhere! I'm SO TIRED to listen words like "We weren't playing hard. We did not play hard today. We did not come out and play. We did not give a good effort."
Guess what would happen if we replaced McHale with a new coach. ClutchFans would hate the new coach. How do I know this? Because ClutchFans always think they know more than the coach and want him fired. ClutchFans wanted Rudy fired, they wanted JVG fired, and they wanted Adelman fired. Now they want McHale fired. Some things never change. Fire the coach, get a new coach, ClutchFans are happy for about six weeks, and then the whining begins.
But I thought the players loved them some McHale? Steve Kerr coached circles around the guy, and people keep given him a loose leash on how he's starting to grow as a coach.
I wanted neither of JVG or Adleman sent packing , think long term both were a terrible decision. Adleman came here to coach two stars , one of them a 7'4" center and ended up with a 6'8" starting center and Kevin Martin ..... I'd take him back in a heart beat based off of what he was able to do with that squad.
I've been a huge fan of our past 3 coaches. Rudy won two rings. Both JVG and Adelman got way more out of their rosters than most coaches would have. McHale is the worst coach in franchise history.
Yep, the Rockets haven't fired a head coach in a long time and I think they take pride in that. Also, Morey values coaching continuity. Didn't Les Alexander basically just say it's not a huge deal if we don't get to the 2nd round? You think an owner with that attitude will fire a coach he just extended for flaming out in the 1st round again?
That's more or less what I mean. He needs to get his baskets in the flow of the offense and within the P&R. What a player like Tyson Chandler does on offense is really the most effective and efficient. When he posts up, he can have really good nights but it can really bog down the offense.
Good god you are ****ing dense. The best you can come up with is one play from months ago? And too boot, not even one that has to do with coaching? Do you have any idea how coaching works? What the coaches role is? What the players do? Do you know any of this? Coaches set up the baseline of what occurs, but it is up to the players to execute. McHale sets up a play and Harden changes it. It doesn't matter how good a coach is, they can't stop time and fix a player's error. Its mind boggling what you think a coach can control. Oh well, another one to my ignore list. Howard won't run it. This isn't new. This has been well documented for 3-4 years and is a huge criticism...of Howard. What? That is not a matchup advantage. Green is an excellent post up defender. Howard on Bogut was the matchup advantage and McHale went to it, and it was working. It was working so well that Kerr actually switched Green onto Howard to slow him down, which worked. I recall three plays for Dmo where he got easy shots around the basket and he missed them all. Those same stupid ISO ball plays are what has made Harden an MVP candidate for the entire year. I can think of two instances this year where Harden has been ineffective (Butler/Thompson), but thats on Harden, not McHale. They did run switches, as I remember Harden on Lee a few times, but he settled for threes which he missed. The only thing McHale could to was mess with the rotations a little, which he did (Harden out early in the third quarter, and brought back in to face a different defender), but it was too late by then. For the record, Harden did manage to get two back to back baskets, and the Rockets a mini run with that tactic. I agree, the paint defense was bad. Not sure if thats on the players or the coach. Needs work, but hardly indicitive of incompetent coaching. You are not paying attention if you believe that. All the Rockets moves thus far been limited by maintaining flexibility, in order to get that last piece. We could have matched Parsons even after signing Ariza, for example, but chose not too. All these vets the Rockets have added for depth have been scrap heap guys. This is a talented team, due to luck, but hardly complete or balanced. You guys just need to accept the fact that we got beat by a deeper, more balanced team last night, that executed extremely well. This McHale stuff is nit picky as hell and is not the real cause of the problems we have.
I have to say that Mcfail is the real cause of our instability. He might be a good communicator, but not a good head coach. We have enough talents and all we need is a better coach, the one who can give us a structured offensive(a system), who uses 10-player rotation instead of 8, who reacts more quickly to what is happening on the court, and who can be mean to our defense-lazy star players. Only so, we can ensure our stability on both ends--- get more than 10 straight wins . If I recall correctly, the highest number of wins in a row has been 7 since Mcfail was hired.
You just proved my point Larsv8. The fact that Harden is allowed to make that change on the fly on the most important possession of our entire season tells you all you need to know about McHale. A real coach would have made sure all 5 players knew what they were supposed to be doing before coming out of that timeout. It's obvious they were confused.
Much like the final .8 when Lillard made the final long 3. McHale still manages a 3 year contract extension and along with Les Alexander's sentiments of winning the championship is not a priority I just feel..
Not choosing sides in this debate but isn't it the job of the coach to tell his players what he wants them to do? (See Popovich) Just like in the workplace when your boss wants you to do something you don't care for you do it anyway.
Unfortunately thats part of the package of Howard being here. Dantoni tried that and then Howard left. Pick one: Howard is here and doesnt run pick and rolls or Howard isn't here.
