The Houston Rockets were a force last season, they extended their coach, who they thought, brought the full potential out of the team, they went to the Western Conference Finals eventually losing to the future champions and they arguably had at least for the players, the MVP in Harden.
Just after 11 games and a 4-7 record, they fired Kevin McHale and replaced him with assistant coach J.B. Bickerstaff. How did it go so bad and so quickly? Stephen A. Smith seems to have the answer by pointing the finger at Dwight Howard on First Take this morning. He thinks if the center was playing well, Kevin McHale would be still there.
The easy target for the blame would be Dwight Howard, Rockets have been awful in defense and Howard is the anchor of that defense, he is getting paid big money because he was such a force on that end of the floor. A Dwight Howard on top of his form hides a lot of defensives holes but that’s the problem he has not been healthy the last two seasons, he only played half of the games last season and so far this season was not playing on back to back games. It is certainly not his fault that he is hurt but if the Rockets have any chance to regain a contender status, they will need their center to be 100% healthy so I think it’s unfair to put it all on Dwight’s shoulders.
James Harden comes in next, after confirming his status of superstar last season and getting awarded with a lucrative Adidas deal, the shooting guard is not the player we saw last year, after making some improvement last season on defense, he seems to have reverted to his old ways and even scarier his aggressive mindset offensively seems to appear only when games become out of reach. It is tempting to blame the Kardashians here for his early season struggles but it has to be deeper than that which bring us to his relationship with Kevin McHale.
Kevin McHale lost his locker room. There is no doubt that he is a respected coach around the league and his record since he took over the Rockets speaks for itself but you have to wonder if his players were still buying into his philosophy. I think that’s where the issue comes from, we have seen Kevin McHale very upbeat and always had his players’ back but after these last two losses, we saw him on tv blasting their lack of effort and giving them no excuses. Maybe that was our first sign of his dismissal, the general manager Daryl Morey even touched on it today when answering the media questions by saying they were not responding to Kevin McHale.
Management chose to make the switch now because it is hard to make a push in the West when you are behind, OKC Thunder came up short last season and they can attest to that. We also have to recognize that the Rockets added a key player in Ty Lawson who haven’t found his groove yet in addition to an ailing center and a franchise player who is not playing at the level he’s capable of. You can make a point that it’s the coach’s job to make it work but if those players stopped listening maybe it was the right time to make the change and it is always easier and less expensive to get rid of the coach.
Bickerstaff, who was in the staff and more likely closer to the players, has now the task to bring them to the top of the western conference. He doesn’t have a ton of experience but we saw recently with Steve Kerr and to a lesser degree with Luke Walton in this early season that with talent you can get the job done.There are certainly no more excuses for a group which is filled with talent and has already placed itself in a position where they can’t under perform anymore.
