The Houston Rockets fired Kevin McHale this morning.
McHale delivered the Rockets to the Western Conference Finals a year ago, but four straight blowout losses and a roster struggling to respond with effort pushed to the organization to make a move to salvage what had been expected to be a season of championship contention.
McHale signed a three-year contract extension a year ago and is owed approximately $12 million. He went 193-130 in four-plus seasons with the Rockets and is the winningest coach, by percentage, in franchise history.
Assistant coach J.B. Bickerstaff will take over as the interim head coach, with assistant Chris Finch ascending to associate head coach, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
Read that first part again.
McHale helped lead them to the CONFERENCE FINALS a year ago… and now he’s out after 11 games because his players have absolutely quit on him. A team led by a childish clown (Dwight Howard) and a fame-seeker/Kardashian hanger-on (James Harden) has successfully led a mutiny on a coach who has the best winning percentage in team history.
Never forget that this is a player’s league, and if some element infects a locker room and the players decide they want a new coach, they can do it by simply slacking off.
The Rockets are, indeed, a horrible mess right now. They’ve gotten blown out often, they’ve lost to the Nets, and they spent a great deal of court time embarrassing themselves with a severe lack of effort. I don’t know the inner workings of that team, but it feels weird that McHale would suddenly lose this team after so much success in Houston.
Enjoy your downward spiral, Houston.
Kevin, you’re more than welcome to come back to Boston and teach Kelly Olynyk some footwork in the post.
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