New #MorningTip on McHale’s firing, @Sixers & their ‘process’ & more STORY: https://t.co/QregU0BlQd pic.twitter.com/68vAl2INj8
— NBA.com (@NBAcom) November 23, 2015
So was this the right decision? It really smacked of a panic move. You have two legitimate All-Stars on your roster with James Harden and Dwight Howard. The season is only 11 games old. You fire a coach (who is in the Hall of Fame himself as a player) after he led the team to win the league’s most competitive division and got you to the conference finals, even though Howard missed so much of last year?
It’s not like the Rockets were 2-9, or 1-10. A 4-7 record is not the end of the world. They did get waxed by the Celtics, and they did lose to the Mavericks without Dirk. However, they had also beaten the Clippers and Oklahoma City. You don’t go from almost making it to the NBA Finals to the depths of the standings. It looks, at least at first blush, like a panic.
The Houston Chronicle did report that team management thought that McHale had lost the team. If that was really the case, then it may well have been time for the move to take place. If the team had waited for things to get worse, then that 4-7 record would have turned to even more of a tailspin. There are times when players just stop trusting their leadership and the game plan. When players have guaranteed contracts, you can’t fire them. McHale is a demanding leader who learned the game during the “old school” era that does not resonate well with many modern players.
