Written by Bart Doan at Bloguin
So here’s your deal: there are just some dudes that get you fired.
Think of it like this … from youth to adulthood, we all have that one or two dudes we know that if we hang out with them, nothing good happens in the end. It might be the best fun you’ll have at times, but then you sleep in too late and miss class or are late to work and all hell breaks loose.
The Rockets have a lot of those dudes, but probably the only major one they’re not willing to move on from is Dwight Howard. So as a solution, they decided to fire Kevin McHale.
You knew it was going south when they had the dreaded “players only meeting” last week. That’s code for, “someone’s head is about to roll.” In the NBA, it’s code for “probably a coach.” The NBA isn’t like MLB or the NFL. Players have major power, and one or two really good ones on your team tilts the balance of your franchise.
If those dudes aren’t on your side, you may as well send the janitor in to eavesdrop and find out how long you’ve got to clean out your office.
McHale wasn’t Gregg Popovich by any stretch of the imagination, but he wasn’t terrible, either. I mean, the dude did preside over a team that went to the Western Conference Finals last year right after getting an extension, right?
Management was sort of forced into a box last year. Ownership gave him a new shiny contract in December, which people are going to piss and moan about now while not understanding one thing: had they not given him that contract back then, they’d be out more money now.
You’re not getting rid of a coach that gets to the Western Conference Finals and his contract was up. Firing him 11 games into this season probably means you have a bunch of guys on a team that aren’t in it to win it. Sorry.
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