I guess I will have to join the "about the same" crowd. JVG - He seems like such a likeable, top notch person. Just don't know if he would have won more games. Adleman - HOF coach. He certainly had a lot better rosters and didn't win significantly more. McHale - I kind of look at this as a transition year, it should have been much worse. Yao gone, zero in return. McGrady and Landry (and Hill) gone, and nothing currently on the floor in return. We should expect something out of Martin next year, or the player we might get in return. Hopefully the draft choices will provide something in coming years. As far as assets on the floor right now, it is a bit of a low point. It appears to me that McHale is having an influence in transforming the team, particularly with respect to the bigs. We moved away from the Brad Millers to some guys who can actually block shots and rebound. I expect to see more all around players as opposed to those with skill sets for a particular offense.
I think you may have been one of those (which is most people, I think) who was trying to read between the lines when the Rockets were saying flat out what their real intentions were. Morey might be taking a dumb approach to rebuilding the team, but he has been upfront about the whole thing. As Morey had said at the time, they wanted to change their approach to how they developed their players. That meant making some changes to the coaching staff that Adelman wouldn't go for. It had nothing to do with starting over. Morey said it, Adelman said it, the evidence is all there; but most people still refuse to believe it. I don't know why.
Minnesota added three major pieces in the offseason. 1. Adelman 2. Rubio 3. Williams With all three pieces, they were a decent team. Without Rubio, they played as well as last year. In other words, Adelman basically coached Minnesota up to the ability of Kurt Rambis despite adding the #2 pick in the draft.
Basically Adelman coached muched better than Rambis with no practices. So, to put it short, you're mistaken here. (Let me also remind you that the Minny collapse came when they missed Love, Ridnour, Pekovic has bone spurs, Darko is injured all the time and their shooting percentages dropped for whatever reasons (not not having open shots)). Williams needs to slim down to become a good asset.
These two excuses were trumpeted by the pro-management crowd at the time... and some of them still are. None of these things materialized. The team has not been rebuilding. Finch has not been in the coaching picture.
Rick Adelman is a hall of fame coach. Come on now. McHale's not going to win any coaching battles. However, that wasnt necessarily what he was hired for.
What was he hired to do? Did he accomplish that? I'll give you a hint: people say he was hired to develop the bigs. Did he do this? Have our bigs played better or worse this year?
Meh, look everyone's always the "grass is greener on the other side" mode here in CF. Yeah, Rick's a HOF coach (Mchale is the only one in the HOF btw), he would have won more games: Minny: 26-39 Houston: 33-32 I go with the coach who has the winning record. And don't give me that crap about how the Wolves have a much better roster than Houston. Before the season started posters here kept saying the Wolves had a better team, and people like DD were saying how they have passed us by and the Wolves would be battling OKC for the WCF next year.
Because Kevin Martin, Lowry, Ppat and Hill were healthy all year. We even had a handicap, 3 guys were eating roster space and not playing at all for most of the season.
Dont understand this logic at all Clearly McHale has done more with less and has the winning record The Rockets lose their point and off-gaurd, one who is the teams leading scorer and still make a playoff push The Wolves only lose a first year rookie in Rubio and is 10+ games below .500. The answer is clearly before your eyes
I picked JVG because he could've done more for our defense. Adelman would've suffered with no good passing big man and we would've seen maybe even more Scola & Patterson combo. Guys on here are easy to forget how Adelman refused to play Deke when we clearly needed a big out there with Yao out or Yao benched. Now with the frustration lately of the no center line-up, Adelman woul've stressed us out even more. Also under Adelman, no way Martin would've been benched so much thus we would lost more games because of lack of defense. JVG would've maybe even inserted Lee into the starting line-up earlier and used Dragic more because of his defense.
I think what people are missing are some simple facts: McHale did with the team this year exactly what Rick did last year. He got them to a winning record and no playoffs. McHale also did this with an arguably worse roster due to lockout schedule, injuries to our backcourt and on the fly development. I feel next year McHale is gonna have this team performing at a high level
There were other problems on the twolves with injury. Still, the point you make is moot. Dragic and Lee are better starters than Lowry and Martin.