[Rockets.com] McHale explains why Jones didn't play

This makes more sense to me than him sitting for disciplinary reasons... There's no reason why the head coach would shy away from saying a player was late etc. If a trade is in the works, hopefully the decision to not play Jones was an opportunity to showcase Morris.

 

If Morey is pushing to get Morris playing time in order to trade him, I think its safe to say that it will backfire if he continues to start.

 

Now that we're trying to win rather than lose, I (and others) thought about the trade idea when none of the rooks played.

But....ah, who knows.

I guess if Atlanta doesn't play Al Horford or JSmoove tonight and we still don't play the rooks, we'll know.

 

If anyone watched any serious amount of preseason games, you will come to the conclusion: Lamb is not NBA ready!

I don't expect he will play any substantial amount of minutes as a Thunder this year. I am really glad Morey gave up Lamb instead of DMo.
Based on our preseason, this is how I rank our rookies in NBA readiness:
1. Jones
2. DMo
3. White/Lamb

Talent wise, based on our preseason:
1. DMo
2. White/Lamb
3. Jones

If Morris was getting "dominated," Jone would get "killed." Go back and watch the Magic preseason game, the last time Jones played. Jones played the first few minutes and never returned for the rest of the game, Jones will not do well defensively against the bulky 4's!

I believe it was for defensive reason that McHale played Morris over Jones. I was once very vocal against McHale as a coach (Lowry and Bulinger and his negativities), but after watching the preseason, I believe Rockets have the right coach under the circumstances.

His overall coaching strategies are in the right direction. McHale is not in any way perfect, and he will make some mistakes along the way and we really should cut him some slack like we do with our rookies.

 

First off, I am not one who say "Fire McHale." But I am with Clutch and others who think that starting Morris and not playing Jones (together with Smith's minutes alongside Asik) was strange.

These are the excuses people have thrown around:

1. It's a matter of policy for McHale not to play rookies in season opener.

First, that policy makes little sense. Second, Morris played 4 minutes in last season's opener. Morris was a rookie.

2. Seniority rules.

Seniority for seniority's sake makes no sense. Morris played a total of 126 NBA minutes last season. Most of it was garbage time. 126 minutes of experience trumps current performance? I said it in another thread. It's not like Morris was the incumbent rotation guy and you didn't want to mess up the chemistry. What is the benefit of playing him?

3. He did well in practice.

How do we know? The only performance we could see was some training camp footage and preseason. Nothing indicated that he was so outstanding. Some people say that he did well early on but got injured. Well, exactly. He got injured and now he's behind getting back in form. He's rusty. So why was he played over the other guys who were not rusty?

4. We needed a face up 4 who could spread the floor.

But why was Smith played alongside Asik when Morris was pulled for his poor performance?

The puzzling thing is not that Morris didn't deserve PT. He probably did. What's strange was that Jones who did so well in camp and in preseason did not even got on the floor, especially when Morris was not playing well and both Patterson and Smith were injured. Clutch's speculation makes more sense than any of the other excuses in my opinion.

 

Jones is a nba starter already as a rookie his that good

never trade him

 

very sloppy both sides

 

we are trying to showcase morris for another team

 

Obviously McHale just doesn't trust playing rookies in games he thinks he can win unless they've impressed him or someone really drops the ball.

Either way, Morris showed some of why he was drafted tonight being the only other player besides Lin and Harden to score to score in double digits. Jones and Motiejunas will get their shots down the line but it isn't like we HAVE to play them or they were top five picks expected to start.