Why was Clint benched?

Because we were getting eaten alive by Whiteside in the paint and McHale decided Trevor f***ing Ariza would be the best option to stop him.

Don't get me wrong, I love Ariza, and I'm sure he wasn't happy playing center in crunch time.

 

This sounds reasonable. But my biggest beef with McHale's rotation is that he seems to have a set mind in what works and what doesn't and never tries to throw in something else even when Plan A is clearly crumbling.

In the 2014 playoffs, when LMA was killing us, he never even played DMo one single minute. I understand that maybe he felt that DMo wasn't ready or wasn't a good matchup. But hey, Jones was getting killed, and the Howard-Asik Twin Towers tandem wasn't much better. Why not just try something else. At least for a few minutes and see what would happen?

 

This is the one thing that drives me crazy, always.

Starters get in a hole, bench digs them out to tie the game or nearly by halftime, we start the third with our starters and those guys that dug us out are never heard from again. It's not just McHale. It was true of Adelman, JVG, and Rudy as I recall and I'm sure I'd have examples of the same from coaches of other teams if I followed other teams closely enough.

It drives me completely insane though.

1. Five guys get us in a hole.
2. Bench guys dig us out.
3. We go back to the starters and falter again.
4. Though we know our way out through substitutions, we never ever avail ourselves of it.

It is the most maddening thing to me about being a NBA/Rockets fan.

 

Huh? We were never in a "hole" until late in the 3rd quarter. The starters were doing just fine in the first half, Capela among them. Not sure what this post has to do with the topic at hand.

 

Cannot believe that no one asked McHale about this last night...

 

I think when Bosh got hot he went with Chuckwagon because hes quick enough to guard Bosh on the perimeter. Miami was running high pick & roll and our bigs were leaving Bosh open. Either way Capela shouldve play more

 

And when Whiteside was eating us alive with his length (when we were still up 9), I kept yelling at the TV for the coach to put Capela back in. I don't understand why he didn't even get a whiff in the second half. He was turning away shots in the first half and grabbing rebounds and scoring points, and he was the only one who could keep Whiteside in check. I did not see him blowing defensive assignments or being lazy. I'm frustrated that no one bothered to ask that question to McHale during interviews (or may have missed his answer).

 

Capela (and especially Harrell) were having big trouble with the Wade/Dragic-Whiteside pick&roll. If you leave Whiteside to help on the ballhandler, you have to make the pass harder or just foul the man. These are the plays where not having Dwight shows (as it was last year with for example, D-Mo having to defend Paul-DeAndre p&r).

I think McHale would probably have gone with Hayes, if he was in any shape to play more. Playing Ariza at 4 or 5 and hoping we can punish Heat on the other end might have been what they were looking for. Looks really dumb in retrospect with all the bricks they were shooting, though.

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McFail is clearly demented. He doesn't have it all there. I wouldn't be surprised if Alzheimer's is setting in. He's had a traumatic life as a Rocket with his mom dying and then his daughter.. It's time to move on from him.

 

McHale always puts out crappy lineups and makes mind-blowing bad decisions at the start of the season because he wants to "experiment".

 

He does the same thing with Trez.

 

Some journalist gotta have enough balls to finally ask this to the coach. WTF was that idiotic decision.

I dont' know about the previous staff but for this it is Mchale.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" lang="el"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Quick addendum to today's post on sub patterns, (<a href="https://t.co/PnTqOiqURq">https://t.co/PnTqOiqURq</a>) 3 teams rode starters hardest in Q3 last year: Bulls, Rox, Clips</p>&mdash; Seth Partnow (@SethPartnow) <a href="https://twitter.com/SethPartnow/status/661285296659496960">Νοέμβριος 2, 2015</a></blockquote>
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We always go back to the starters no matter what.
Other teams don't at this degree- and San Antonion uses their bench sooner and better than any other- and we have seen the results.

 

MilkHair

"Where nothing makes sense"

 

They have tried to go insanely small for big stretches of all 3 games. I don't have the stats on it, but it hasn't seemed to work out well at all.

 

Went with Harrell again for the small ball 5 and Harrell couldn't get a board. Thunder went on a run with the scrubs. I don't get it. Just play Capela... they have 32 rebounds

 

i keep teling yall, someone needs to call him out on his random number generator he uses for rotations. its not good for the team