This got buried in the game thread, but there are some important notes here, so I thought I'd create a new thread for discussion of them. A group of Pacific Northwest-area Rockets fans were in Portland last night, and in our usual spot during the shootaround to talk to the players and get autographs as they go in and out of the tunnel to the locker room. Some guys stop and are very friendly (Josh, Corey, Dwight), while others (Harden, Bev) just run right by. Bill Worrell gave everyone fist bumps. Anyway, Rockets prez Tad Brown stopped and chatted with us for about 15 minutes. Very nice guy, and he answered all our questions and seemed pretty honest about them. Among the things he said: * The CBS Sports article Ken Berger wrote was very inaccurate. Harden never asked to get Milkhair fired. Tad says the writer knows the team and should have known better. Said it was full of BS and the quotes were utter crap. Tad was pretty perplexed about the whole thing. He said McHale was fired because the team was playing horribly and it's the coach's job to make sure that doesn't happen too often; something had to be done about it. * Josh left over the summer because his agent convinced him the Clippers would give him a bigger role and it would benefit his career and make him more money in the long term, even if he took a smaller contract at first. The entire team was thrilled to get Josh back and everyone hopes things work out this summer so they can keep him. * Tad says most people don't realize how close we were with T-Mac and Yao before they both broke down physically. The Rockets won 75% of their games when both of those guys played and we had solid role players. When that collapsed, it was absolutely Les's mandate that we rebuild without tanking. * The team has become a media punching bag this year because after managing to rebuild without tanking and doing so well last year last year, we're having a difficult year. Tad hates that everyone is kicking us while we're down, but that will make it that much sweeter when we bounce back. Also, the Blazers gave free Rip City T-shirts to everyone in attendance, and Pizza_da_Hut took a Sharpie to his. At one point, he was on the jumbotron waving around the shirt on the right:
Thanks for the report TopFive! That Josh Smith info was interesting. I am glad Tad spoke up about this media BS. Howard & Harden are disliked by media/general fans and I think a lot of media (and other GMs) are not fans of Morey. So, punchingbag. Small note. Ken Berger writes for CBS Sports.
Tad's a great guy. A Rocket through and through. But there is a little home town spin in one of his alleged responses above. He didn't tell the whole story.
I'm just going drop this in here, too, which I posted in the articles' thread. On that day, Les was about as vocal (and certainly the most pissed) that I've ever seen him. It was clearly Les's firing, without a doubt at all. ---------------------------------------------- http://www.houstonchronicle.com/spo...-Kevin-McHale-seek-a-new-voice-to-6641826.php Alexander, Morey and Rockets president Tad Brown discussed the move Tuesday, opted to sleep on it and then met with McHale on Wednesday. McHale said he could have turned the Rockets around, but he understood the decision. "The team was obviously not responding - on offense, on defense - they weren't playing hard," Alexander said. "It continued for a while. I considered four or five games losing by 20 points something we can't take here. I've never seen my team in the 23 years (as owner) play as poorly and with less effort. I'm not attributing it to the coach. I'm attributing it to circumstances. Who knows whose control it is? But I had to do something to make a change. It couldn't keep going on like this. Do I want to watch us lose over and over and over again?" Morey: "Mr. Alexander does not accept losing. I don't accept losing. The players, no one accepts losing. We've been the fifth-most winning franchise since Mr. Alexander has owned the team. We're going to do whatever it takes to win. We had to make the tough call of what is the best thing to be done to get our season on track. I'm very confident we can turn this around." Alexander was not so sure. His confidence left with the coach he showed the door. "I won't have confidence until it happens," Alexander said. "I'm not confident right now, no. How can I be confident?" ---------------------------------------------- How anyone can remember that day and how furious Les was and how vocal he was and think this was the FO catering to Harden is absurd....not to mention the amount of money he is paying McHale. So, there's that narrative, too. You can't say Le$ is cheap, and say Harden swayed him in any way to fire McHale on such a long contract. It annoys me to no end that the media will invent this story and ignore ALL these comments from the owner on the day of the event.
Thanks for sharing. I am sure a Brown cleaned up some of the info, but it is surely annoying to have the media in lockstep on kicking the Rox at every downturn.
Clarification to your post, topfive. Bill Worrell was delighted to see the PNW Rockets contingent again and called us his "crew", giving us high-fives instead of fist-bumps. He said "we did that last game and see what happened?" so he changed it up. I think Tad Brown was relieved to see hard-core Rox fans at an away game with all the media noise out there. He didn't really want the conversation to end. Shout out to the Moda Center staff (especially Doug) who all recognize us loud and proud Clutchfans. They always ensure we get the best spot near the bench for shootarounds so we can cheer on our team. They're awesome, even maintaining their composure during the 4th last night. We gotta think of a name for our Pacific Northwest-area Rockets fans group, cuz that's a bit of a mouthful.
Legit dope story. Met him at the Clutch City documentary and agree with OP, was very straight forward with his answers. He commented they were addressing the PG situation (Ty Lawson deal that failed miserably obviously) My friend commented on the Parsons talk that he was going to bring Dwight to Dallas and Tad replied "Parsons just likes to talk, we still like him but he talks alot." Lol. Good stuff!
