Houston Rockets Fire McHale 11 Games Into Season
After a Western Conference finals appearance last season the Houston Rockets came into this season with high hopes. But, after a 4–7 start, the Rockets pulled the trigger on firing head coach Kevin McHale.
Rockets general manager Daryl Morey said that the sole reason for firing McHale is just that the team “was not responding” to him.
“There is no time in the West,” Morey said.
But, that may not be the case this season. A lot of teams are getting off to slow starts compared to last year, like the Rockets, Memphis Grizzlies and New Orleans Pelicans just to name a few.
After watching a few Rockets games, though, I think Morey may be right. It just didn’t seem like the players had any energy to go out and play. They were very lax at times and maybe even down right lazy.
So if you want to say that is why Kevin McHale got fired, then fine, but don’t say that there isn’t time to give the guy who took you to the conference finals last season a chance to turn it around.
The last returning NBA head coach to lead his team to the conference finals and not make it through the following season was then the Miami Heat head coach Stan Van Gundy. He resigned after just 21 games into the 2005–06 season, which is when Pat Riley took over. And oh, by the way, they went on to win the championship that year.
McHale may not be a great head coach, but he is a great basketball mind. He won’t be on the open market long.
Boston Celtics president Danny Ainge, who played with McHale on the Celtics, said that he would be welcomed to join the organization.
“We’ve got a spot from him. I know we could figure something out for him in some capacity,” Ainge said, “but I think he’s just in a wait-and-see mode.”
League sources told ESPN.com’s Marc Stein that the Dallas Mavericks would even have interest in hiring McHale if he was prepared to switch teams immediately. That wouldn’t be a crazy idea since Mavs head coach Rick Carlisle is known throughout the league to be one of McHale’s closest friends.
“It’s preposterous,” Carlisle said after he heard of McHale’s firing. “It’s beyond belief. I’m really shocked. It’s hard to believe that something could happen at this stage to a guy who took a team unexpectedly to the conference finals last year.”
Mavs forward Chandler Parsons, who played under McHale for his first three seasons of his career, was also shocked about the firing.
“I don’t get it,” Parsons said. “Obviously, they’re having their struggles early, but I didn’t see that coming.”
“You could tell something was off by the way they were playing, but is that McHale’s fault?”
Well, if you ask anyone on the Rockets, it seems like they would say that it was.
