Why the Rockets should think twice about firing McHale (here's a hint: Kevin Love)

McHale is the player-friendly CEO type coach who knows how to recruit. That's his biggest asset to the Rockets -- recruiting. His ability to convince Dwight to come to Houston single-handedly justified him staying for this season. What you shouldn't expect though from him is brilliance in in-game Xs and Os micromanagement.

You know who he reminds me of? Mack Brown. Mack was a superb recruiter that was player/family-friendly but had only basic knowledge about football schemes. However, if you can surround him with quality assistant coaches/coordinators, you have a really elite coaching staff. It's no coincidence UT football's era of excellence came to a screeching halt when they made poor offensive/defensive coordinator hires (Manny Diaz and Minor Applewhite) to replace the top notch assistants that left for greener pastures and promotions to head coach.

It cannot be understated how much the absence of Kelvin Sampson hurt the Rockets. I believe assistant coaches is what Morey needs to prioritize in the offseason. For example, if Frank Vogel is fired at Indiana, he would be an incredible fit to McHale as a de facto defensive coordinator.

Now back to McHale, the Rockets front office would be wise to exploit McHale's very high reputation among the players and recruiting prowess while we still have him for one more year. While Carmelo Anthony would be a nice Plan B, we should be focusing specifically on Kevin Love (4 years younger than Melo), his past bonding with McHale, and how we can utilize that to convince Love to request a trade to Houston. Of course, Love is still under contract so McHale cannot talk to him officially. But thankfully we have some players that know Love (James Harden) and can reach him on McHale's behalf.

In case you don't know the background, McHale as the T'Wolves GM traded for Kevin Love's draft rights. Here's a nice video showing McHale and Love's lovefest:

http://www.nba.com/timberwolves/video/2014/04/11/LoveandMcHalemp4-3233056


More quotes/reading material:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Love

http://www.oregonlive.com/nba/index.ssf/2009/07/kevin_love_looking_for_bigger.html

Love infamously tweeted his firing from Minnesota:

http://www.twincities.com/ci_22265054/kevin-mchale-chooses-not-talk-about-daughter-sashas

Cliffnotes summary

• Kevin McHale is a player-friendly coach with a recent history of great recruiting (reminds me of Mack Brown)
• McHale isn't a good in-game coach (also like Mack), but Morey can mitigate that weakness by upgrading the assistant coaching staff (Frank Vogel good example). Losing Kelvin Sampson clearly hurt Rockets in post-season
• McHale has a long history and close bond with Kevin Love. It would be silly for Morey not to take advantage of it

 

Good assistant coaches can improve the playbook. Again, losing Sampson was a huge blow especially defensively.

The Rockets would be much much better with Kevin Love because unlike getting Dwight, Love addresses a massive weakness at power forward. On top of that, McHale's last year on his contract is the upcoming season so it's not like we'd be stuck with him forever.

 

Keep beating up that strawman of yours. You're ignorant if you think McHale didn't play a huge role in recruiting Dwight. McHale is absolutely adored by NBA players and it goes beyond the Rockets.

 

Yes, because as recent history shows, the three-headed all-star teams haven't been succeeding lately

 

It didn't work in hindsight but I didn't mind it. Lopez had to make a tough hook shot and we had Harden guarding Ibaka last year which seemed to make sense.

Really, we should double Robin Lopez? That's why you're not coaching.

 

^ I totally did not see this coming from Carl.