TNT: Kevin McHale reacts to comments from James Harden

McHale would definitely know about crappy leadership skills...

 

and I still have a hard time believing him when he says he had nothing to do with McHale's firing. I have to think the bad blood now reflects a similar state of bad blood between the two when they were together on the Rockets. Nobody's fault, just the way it is

 

Barking at teammates does not make someone a "great leader." If he had better teammates or better coaching, nobody would be talking about this. The best teammate he's had in Houston was a declining Dwight Howard. And I'm still trying to figure out how Kevin McFail ever got a professional coaching job...?

 

But is he wrong???

 

What has James ever "cost" the Rockets?
When has James played on a Rockets team that was good enough, talent wise , to win the NBA Championship?

 

i dont believe harden agreed to the cp3 trade.. i believe the powers that be wanted to lower hardens stats because he was becoming too dominant too ignore for mvp awards.

Hebrew gemetria for the city of houston is 112

it is 112 days from chris paul's birthday to james harden's birthday( not including year) and both were number #3 overall picks.. if you put 3 and 3 together you get 33... 33 in ordinal gemetria equals tom brady, it also equals donald trump, deshaun watson and the word "superbowl." Tom Brady played his last superbowl in the city of houston. Dion Lewis the patriots running back who scored 3tds in that game had a jersey number of 33. Earlier this year the Texans and Patriots played in Foxborough which featured deshaun wtason( who is the only other qb in the nfl who has gemetria of 33) and the texans coach bill o brien made a curious decision to not go for it on 4th down and instead kick the field goal to keep the score at only "33". to honor tom brady

the only player on the houston rockets with a jersey number of 33 is ryan anderson, who was the subject of trade rumors all summer when it came to carmelo anthony of his then team new york knicks*( new york is where donald trump was born)

 

There may have been some truth to what McHale was saying but he's gone about this in such an unsavory way. Nonetheless, I'm sure all non-Houston fans are on team McHale. Harden is just very difficult to root for if he isn't on your team.

 

Kevin McFail was a shitty coach and is a boring analyst. He's only trying to draw James and CP3 against each other because he knows that have something here. **** him

 

You're completely missing the point. You can be a good leader without winning it all. Harden has gotten further in the playoffs than CP3 (thanks to Josh Smith) yet CP3 has a better rep for being a leader. Why do you think that is?

 

What's sad about this episode, to me, is that McHale had a legit point about Harden's style, that Harden isn't the kind of guy who gets in teammates' faces, and Chris Paul can do that. But McHale completely screwed up that point by throwing in the stuff about Harden's teammates mocking him. Suppose that stuff is true. It was still a completely gratuitous and juvenile thing to say.

So Harden comes back at him with "He's a clown," and "He never taught me anything." Also a childish insult. Harden should have shrugged off McHale's remark. "My teammates and I are here for one thing: to work hard and win a championship. We're not gonna get sidetracked by anything else." That would have been classy.

But Harden is 28. McHale is 59. So when the TNT crew came back to McHale and joked about the "clown" remark, and everyone in the studio was laughing, I was sure McHale would say, "You know, I shouldn't have said what I said. What I meant was ..." And then he could say what he eventually said, about Harden's personality. And part of McHale's answer could have been, "I used the term 'leader' in a particular way. James Harden is a leader. I'm talking about the guy who uses his voice ..."

That's how you deescalate a fight you should never have started. And it would have been gracious: one hall-of-famer apologizing to another for a moment of childish, gossipy mockery, and taking the conversation back to higher ground.

Instead, McHale doubled down. And I came away thinking not that the original mockery was McHale in a thoughtless moment, but that it's who McHale is.

 

These older NBA HOF's and stars love conflict; They reminisce about the good ol' days when they could punch someone in the face and it was only a foul or the poetry of trash talk. Mchale probably genuinely thinks he is helping the next crop of stars by escalating arguments and being combative. Look how they reacted to the Embiid and Whiteside beef, look how they reacted to that article about Draymond reacting to the rest of the league, they love this stuff. Harden's reaction was a victory.

 

Josh Smith? He was washed up when he got here. Without Harden, McHale doesn't sniff the friggin playoffs. BTW, was KG a " Leader"? He didn't win squat under McHale, why do you think that is?

 

Kevin should have dressed up as a clown for his on-air response...while he held his ground. It would have been funny...especially with Halloween so close. Missed opportunity. I mean...when someone calls you a clown...why not dress like one? When else do you get the chance to dress up as a clown?

 

This is really an excellent post, and gets it all exactly right.

 

Like I said, McHale may not be a good coach/executive but is he wrong about Harden??? You keep trying to deflect by saying McHale sucks at a coach/executive. That may be true but it's a completely different topic. Stay focused.

 

The point is, In the NBA, if your team isn't good enough to win, where the hell are you going to lead them to? Again, what Rox team was good enough for James to lead them to a NBA Championship? Answer the question.

 

Have you forgiven Harden for freezing and quitting in game 6 or was that good leadership?

 

Have you forgiven MDA for playing uptempo with 7 man rotation, asking his PG to guard two of the best post players in the league, asking him defensive rebound vs 7footers, bring the ball up, score, set eveyone else up and play 40+ min without a viable second ball handling or scoring option? Was that a good game plan? Where was everyone else? Was James the only one getting paid for playing that game? Was the roster good enough to beat Golden St. and win the championship? What player could you have replaced James with and beat Golden St. last year?

 

I'm not sure why we'd even pay attention to this BS from McHale....I mean if Harden was cut from the Rockets he'd have every team in the NBA trying to hire him that very day to be a player and leader.....McHale got fired and he'll likely never get another head coaching offer.

Let's face it, McHale is just butt hurt that he washed out as a head coach.

 

"Forgiven"?

This isn't life and death. Maybe you're taking this too personally.

Harden stunk it up in Game 6. Got it. Move on. If it weren't for James Harden playing spectacular basketball for 38 minutes per game, 81 games out of 82, to get us a good playoff seed, we would have been 7th seed first round fodder.

Now he doesn't have to carry the load alone. Let's see how this goes.

Some people, I swear. It's like that FTW poster's obsessive dislike of JJ "Fatt".