Jeff Hornacek Fired

[GMATCallahan]

We don't have faith in Markieff Morris. A GM is not going to go on the radio and publicly **** on a player like you all want. He's been trying to trade him the whole season, but nothing has been appealing enough to part with him yet.

Yeah, but his market value is much less now than it would have been in the summer. McDonough should have traded Morris back then for any sort of reasonable player who could match up at power forward ... whoever he was.

[GMATCallahan]

His system DID end up far less structured because he had low iq players. This was fairly obvious. They couldn't even follow his plays when he set something up, or inbounded the ball to the wrong place or not at all.

Being less structured is the opposite of what I'm advocating. I said he should be more structured. When your players have low IQs, you don't ask them to make real-time, live reads and select the best option. You run structured, set plays to take the decisionmaking as much out of their hands as possible. Your point that they became less structured is EXACTLY my point. He did the opposite of what a smart coach should do.

... that kind of offense also requires players with a certain level of discipline and skill and an ability to execute in a programmatic, command-and-control manner. Hornacek did not possess those kinds of players. The only way that this roster could have done anything was to play as fast as possible and allow the speed and talent of certain players to take over.

So Hornacek did what you advocated ... he tailored the system to the personnel. You were more or less advocating a Jerry Sloan-type of structured offense, but that would not have worked with Eric Bledsoe, Markieff Morris, and Brandon Knight instead of John Stockton, Karl Malone, and Jeff Hornacek.

[GMATCallahan]

The season was tagged and bagged. Hornecek was not going to be extended... that decision was made. Perhaps what is accomplished is a try out for Watson.

Watson is not Hunter or Porter. He was a smart player and has been around some top coaches in his career. Wooden, Hubie Brown, Sloan...Good pedigree. Pretty well respected in the league. I like what I have heard him say. He is fiery and speaks with a passion for the game.

How is this a bad thing?

And he gets T's haha...

... uh ... I am pretty sure that Terry Porter was a smarter point guard than Earl Watson. Porter was an outstanding point guard ( I would take him over Jason Kidd and Gary Payton for peak value, at least) who was the second-best player on two NBA Finals teams. He, too, played for outstanding head coaches: Rick Adelman, Flip Saunders, Pat Riley, Gregg Popovich. And Porter was an experienced head coach and assistant coach (who had served under Saunders) at the time that the Suns hired him.

How is hiring Earl Watson a bad thing? Because it represents a clear repeat of the Hunter situation from three years ago, even if Watson turns out to be a better coaching prospect than Hunter. And with this roster, how is anyone really going to be able to tell?

[bwgood77]

You have to wonder if Hornacek came into the season not as a lame duck and demanding to win with a poor roster and instructed to develop the youth, how differently things would have played out. From an old poster who no longer posts here....a PM from January 1st when I asked what he thought about Hornacek...someone with connections...

I got an opportunity to sit with and talk with him for about 3 hours last July on a flight from Phx to Chicago. I was very impressed and think he is the right coach for this team now and into the future.

What you're seeing is instability from the front office caused in part because of lame duck status and pressure to achieve something (playoffs) this team might not be capable of. The two fired assistants were likely formenting some instability as they jockeyed for positioning to succeed Hornacek.

The emphasis on playoffs or else have forced Hornacek to do too much jockeying of the rotation to find the "hot" player. There is too little stratification between players making to much fluidity. For example there is not much difference between the abilities of Goodwin and Weems. If there's pressure to win above all, Hornacek has to guess which one will be on and which one will not on any given night. Can't have stability in rotation this way

In my opinion the best thing the Suns could do is to stabilize their situation by:

1 Extending Hornacek
2 Placing emphasis on developing the youngsters - Len, Warren,Booker, Knight, and Goodwin. That means consistent rotation minutes for all of them.
3 Reassure Chandler he is there for his leadership as well as his play - no trade.
4 Resolve Morris' situation.
5 Don't tank. Even though emphasis is on player development, winning games should be a goal. Players have to have to be able to see success of their hard work.

Just a few of my thoughts.

Clearly none of those points was the objective......at least not 1 or 2 or 4 (so far, but admittedly, I wouldn't trade him for nothing either).

[Frank Lee]

wasn't comparing Watson and Porter as PGs... just implying they are not the same type of guys. Hunter doesn't get high marks for character according to some, and Porter seemed to be a clashing hard ass. neither is coaching today.

I was just more or less impressed with what Watson has said in his few statements I have heard. Im also a big fan of Hubie Brown. To hear Watson was on the phone with him for two hours today can only be a good thing.

[bwgood77]

wasn't comparing Watson and Porter as PGs... just implying they are not the same type of guys. Hunter doesn't get high marks for character according to some, and Porter seemed to be a clashing hard ass. neither is coaching today.

I was just more or less impressed with what Watson has said in his few statements I have heard. Im also a big fan of Hubie Brown. To hear Watson was on the phone with him for two hours today can only be a good thing.

Watson seems certainly motivated, has the players' ears, and looked good in his first game. I don't want to jump to conclusions about him but so far, so good. I doubt he is the answer for the team long term, but hell, whoever we find as the answer, I will be happy with.

[GMATCallahan]

You have to wonder if Hornacek came into the season not as a lame duck and demanding to win with a poor roster and instructed to develop the youth, how differently things would have played out. From an old poster who no longer posts here....a PM from January 1st when I asked what he thought about Hornacek...someone with connections...

I got an opportunity to sit with and talk with him for about 3 hours last July on a flight from Phx to Chicago. I was very impressed and think he is the right coach for this team now and into the future.

What you're seeing is instability from the front office caused in part because of lame duck status and pressure to achieve something (playoffs) this team might not be capable of. The two fired assistants were likely formenting some instability as they jockeyed for positioning to succeed Hornacek.

The emphasis on playoffs or else have forced Hornacek to do too much jockeying of the rotation to find the "hot" player. There is too little stratification between players making to much fluidity. For example there is not much difference between the abilities of Goodwin and Weems. If there's pressure to win above all, Hornacek has to guess which one will be on and which one will not on any given night. Can't have stability in rotation this way

In my opinion the best thing the Suns could do is to stabilize their situation by:

1 Extending Hornacek
2 Placing emphasis on developing the youngsters - Len, Warren,Booker, Knight, and Goodwin. That means consistent rotation minutes for all of them.
3 Reassure Chandler he is there for his leadership as well as his play - no trade.
4 Resolve Morris' situation.
5 Don't tank. Even though emphasis is on player development, winning games should be a goal. Players have to have to be able to see success of their hard work.

Just a few of my thoughts.

Clearly none of those points was the objective......at least not 1 or 2 or 4 (so far, but admittedly, I wouldn't trade him for nothing either).

These comments do suggest the essence of the situation: the Suns were basically in a developmental stage, yet ownership and management were trying to rush or force-feed the process in order to make the playoffs this year. And why? To be destroyed by Golden State or San Antonio in the First Round?

[GMATCallahan]

wasn't comparing Watson and Porter as PGs... just implying they are not the same type of guys. Hunter doesn't get high marks for character according to some, and Porter seemed to be a clashing hard ass. neither is coaching today.

I was just more or less impressed with what Watson has said in his few statements I have heard. Im also a big fan of Hubie Brown. To hear Watson was on the phone with him for two hours today can only be a good thing.

I also like Hubie Brown very much, and Watson may possess many attractive characteristics. But the fact that the Suns handled this situation much as they did three years ago with Hunter, along with the reports that Sarver really wanted to hire Steve Nash or bring back Mike D'Antoni, suggests to me that Watson is basically a pawn. Matters could change if the Suns win more games, but ... why does the organization really want to win more games instead of playing for the highest draft pick possible?

[AtheJ415]

It's Jeff's. Jeff's job is to play the best player. When he plays the worst player simply because he gets paid more then he's a moron, particularly when that player is a rookie on a rookie deal. Pekovic makes more than Towns. Who starts? Kanter was signed to a huge deal. Does he start? Len can serve as his understudy and still start. Backups can mentor starters, particularly backups who have proven to be great players in the past.

Hornacek was playing vets to try to win games despite those vets proving time and time again to be worse than the young players they played in front of. Yes, that's Jeff's fault. All of it. And he's a moron for it. If Jeff's job was to win games, the 1 sided lineups filled with no shooting and worse players was an awful way to accomplish it, and pawning it off on management is just lazy. He was dealt a bad hand, but given that hand, he epically, unbelievably, catastrophically failed.

I would suggest that you may be underestimating the internal politics of an an organization—and those internal politics are not necessarily the same as in any other organization. Towns is a number-one overall draft pick; Len is a third-year player that the Suns' organization did not deem sufficient to primarily handle the center position entering the season. As for Kanter, he is an offensive-minded center who evidently fits better with Oklahoma City's second unit rather than in a starting lineup featuring two elite scorers.

The veterans did not necessarily prove to be worse than the young players. Although I would take Len over Chandler, Len clearly is not a game-changer right now. T.J. Warren, meanwhile, is ridiculously overrated by some people who allow his one strength (off-ball scoring, primarily at the rim) to obscure all of his weaknesses (basically every other aspect of the game). Archie Goodwin, meanwhile, is a non-point guard trying to function in that role and is a totally unreliable shooter to boot. A guard who cannot really shoot or pass effectively is ... what? A small forward?

I would also note that the five best players on a team do not necessarily start the game in every instance, anyway. There is a reason why something called the Sixth Man of the Year Award has long existed.

Hornacek failed this season (not necessarily last year and certainly not two years ago), but your over-the-top outage and piles of hyperbolic adjectives to describe that failure is curious (unless you are secretly Robert Sarver). Most any coach would have failed with this roster and this set of ownership and management. The roster's construction proved poor, and once all of Phoenix's veteran guards went down, it became the worst in the NBA. Meanwhile, management handled all of the situations around the team, from allowing Markieff Morris to rot on the roster to firing Hornacek's assistant coaches in wave after wave, atrociously. Hornacek's "failure" this year was not "catastrophic" or "epic." Rather, it was pretty much irrelevant because the organization's problems are much bigger than that. To offer that acknowledgment is not "lazy," but rather about seeing the total picture. What is "lazy" is to imagine that Hornacek constituted the crux of the problem, because then one can imagine that changing just one person in a suit-and-tie on the bench will resolve matters. There is a reason why the Suns are on to their fourth head coach in the last four seasons and their sixth head coach in the last nine seasons, and that reason certainly is not Jeff Hornacek.

Yes. Excuses, excuses. Jeff, as head coach, didn't have control of the starting lineup. Sure. And he was doomed to fail. None of it is his fault apparently.

Also, I've worked for tons of sports teams, including in the NBA. I know exactly how the internal politics work, and people in Jeff's position play the guys who think will help them win. They don't play the guys who get paid the most, except to the extent that they are scared of the scrutiny involved. Although I guess it depends on the guts of the coach and how good the coach is. Jeff's problems were in large part his inability to get lineups on the court that had the best chance of winning (again, a relative term, so don't come back with some strawman about the talent here, I'm speaking relative to the team we DID have), in part due to horrendous, and I mean god-foresakenly horrendous, combinations of players on the court at the same time who cannot compliment each other (Knight, Price, Tucker, Markieff, Chandler). That lineup has 1 guy who can make a jumper consistently, and he had Leuer, Len, Teletovic, Booker, and Warren all sitting there ready to balance out the lineup, but Jeff didn't want to do that. It's the team that shooting forgot and had only 1 plus defender, while offensive juggernauts in Booker and Warren sat on the bench, and Len, who was better than Tyson on both ends of the floor, sat.

You can make as many excuses as you want, but I'll call a spade a spade. Jeff's season was every negative adjective possible. I cannot say a positive thing about it. To do so would be to lie.

As for the youngsters, just about every overall, non-minute-weighted advanced stat favors them. So your statement bolded above is simply irrelevant to the discussion. Your statements may be true individually but don't get to the real issue of what I'm saying or to the point of a coach's decision, which is part of why I didn't respond to you the last time you did pretty much the same thing in our discussion of Tucker. Len isn't a game changer? Sure. That would be relevant at all if Chandler somehow was. Guess what? He's not this year, at least not until he had his monster 3 game span last week. He has been our worst defender and a spacing killer who can't make a shot outside of 5 feet. But hey, let's focus on whether Len is a game changer to compare awful to average. Warren's individual strength outweighs PJ, Price, and basically everyone above him in holistic non-minute-based stats. What that means is that his strength is such an advantage that he's the better player regardless. I could flip your sentence and say PJ and defense and it would be the same. I couldn't even use Price in the sentence because he's so bad at both ends of the court I'm not sure what his strength is. Effort? Because he's had 2 DBPM's in his 10 year career that were positive IIRC. What you say about Archie would have significance if we weren't playing a team of non-shooters constantly under Jeff.

If you want to make comparisons, then make actual comparisons, but to simply poke holes in the young players' games as if that somehow makes them worse than the vets with no discussion of the vets and no comparisons made is useless. It's all relative. Rotation decisions are always, always relative. To say one guy shouldn't have played because he sucks only is relevant if the others don't suck. Our vets suck. That much I'm sure of.

The 2nd bolded would matter if guys were playing more minutes than the starters off the bench. Another red herring which simply isn't true except maybe for the PF position, since it's had so many different guys in the starting and primary bench role. So again, the majority of the court time here is going to the starters except for maybe at the 4. Why does that point have any relevance here? Do we have some bench guy getting more minutes than our starters that I'm not aware of? Warren, Len, and Booker routinely got less minutes than the starters all year until they started.

You can call my attribution of Hornacek "over-the-top" if you like, and you can find it curious. I frankly don't care. I think anybody with a brain who watched what Jeff did this season should believe he deserved to be fired. Subbing in PJ Tucker for Warren and leaving Booker on the bench down 2 with the ball and under 10 seconds left, for instance, is a decision that is simply a stupid basketball move. And Jeff did that. While trying to win a game. Because he honestly thought that was his best chance to win the game. See, Jeff was so bad at evaluating, that he didn't really understand the strengths and weaknesses of his own roster. He did wonky stuff like this all season long, and it did cost us games because it did put us in a worse position to win. I've never criticized Jeff like this before this season, but he fully deserves it. He was incompetent. And on top of that he lost the team, and just about every chemistry and role issue we had was aired in the public because Jeff couldn't control it. This stuff happens ALL THE TIME. It is unbelievably common, and good coaches are able to get through to the player in a way that prevents this type of stuff. It's no wonder he lost the team, and it's because he did a bad job. The guy refused to lead, didn't hold anybody accountable, and expected the team to lead and run itself. He is as responsible as any individual for the current mess.

Would people here claim a surgeon who cut off the wrong leg wasn't at fault because the nurse handed him the wrong knife? Do people realize Booker probably is still sitting if Jeff wasn't forced to play him due to injury? The kid had 14 points in game 1 on great shooting and then sat for weeks so we could play Ronnie freaking Price more minutes. Those are the types of decisions he was making this year. It's inexcusable.

[AtheJ415]

You have to wonder if Hornacek came into the season not as a lame duck and demanding to win with a poor roster and instructed to develop the youth, how differently things would have played out. From an old poster who no longer posts here....a PM from January 1st when I asked what he thought about Hornacek...someone with connections...

I got an opportunity to sit with and talk with him for about 3 hours last July on a flight from Phx to Chicago. I was very impressed and think he is the right coach for this team now and into the future.

What you're seeing is instability from the front office caused in part because of lame duck status and pressure to achieve something (playoffs) this team might not be capable of. The two fired assistants were likely formenting some instability as they jockeyed for positioning to succeed Hornacek.

The emphasis on playoffs or else have forced Hornacek to do too much jockeying of the rotation to find the "hot" player. There is too little stratification between players making to much fluidity. For example there is not much difference between the abilities of Goodwin and Weems. If there's pressure to win above all, Hornacek has to guess which one will be on and which one will not on any given night. Can't have stability in rotation this way

In my opinion the best thing the Suns could do is to stabilize their situation by:

1 Extending Hornacek
2 Placing emphasis on developing the youngsters - Len, Warren,Booker, Knight, and Goodwin. That means consistent rotation minutes for all of them.
3 Reassure Chandler he is there for his leadership as well as his play - no trade.
4 Resolve Morris' situation.
5 Don't tank. Even though emphasis is on player development, winning games should be a goal. Players have to have to be able to see success of their hard work.

Just a few of my thoughts.

Clearly none of those points was the objective......at least not 1 or 2 or 4 (so far, but admittedly, I wouldn't trade him for nothing either).

These comments do suggest the essence of the situation: the Suns were basically in a developmental stage, yet ownership and management were trying to rush or force-feed the process in order to make the playoffs this year. And why? To be destroyed by Golden State or San Antonio in the First Round?

Not really. They held on to Jeff for a long time. What probably would've saved him was not getting consistently blown out by the worst teams in the NBA. The 76ers, the Wolves, etc.. You all are talking as if the entire FO was somehow oblivious to what was happening on the court this year and didn't adjust their expectations at any point. And I guess you could point to McDonough's interviews where he consistently points to the playoffs, but he's trying to sell tickets and hope at that point. No GM can be honest about what he really thinks in a live radio interview in that scenario. I fully believe we adjusted our expectations after seeing the team struggle. The problem was 0 improvement in all aspects of the team despite this now incredibly low bar. D-league team's could've beat us with how we faired in many of these games.

If the expectations were the problem, as everyone says, then the pressure would be so immense on McDonough that guys like Warren and Booker and Len would've been shipped out along with picks to get guys to help them win now. Jeff's problem wasn't the expectation that the Suns must win. That was a part of it, but most of it was his inability to make decisions to put the team in its best opportunity to win, to lead, or really anything of positive note. The team continued to reach new lows until the end. Continual decline is not a problem due to org goals or player injury, it's due to a coach losing a team, being unable to get through to players, and generally failing across the board.

[aIvin adams]

how about them rattlers tho

[Years90Suns]

I can't believe how many people are willing to give Hornacek a free pass here, there are so many things that point in Hornacek's direction. Plus the local media trying to paint this picture of Hornacek being set up to fail. I am not saying Hornacek is the MAIN reason for our struggles but he at least played a big part in it.

1. Hornacek lost control of the locker room a long time ago and likely the respect of his players. Evidence is the trouble last season, especially with Marcus Morris shouting at him.

2. Hornacek has in the past openly said that it is not his job to be a leader and that the players must step up. Hornacek is a coach that lets players to their thing which is not a good thing with a young rebuilding team.

3. Hornacek is always sarcastic, he does not seem very inspirational. This might work for Popovic but again doubtful this is a good approach with young players on a rebuilding team.

4. After three years you can't see any structure in our offense or even defense. Do not give me the excuse that our players are low IQ. That has nothing to do with the fact that the Suns hardly seem to run any plays or regularly botch plays completely after timeouts.

5. No stability in lineups. How many lineup changes did Hornacek make? Did he really develop young guys? Based on what we saw from Warren before the development is slower than expected and Hornacek benches him for mistakes. Alex Len has not developed as expected either.

6. The dual PG lineups are clearly Hornacek's idea. There is no way that McDonough makes strategic decisions of how the Suns play. By all accounts Hornacek was always involved in personnel decisions. Plus Hornacek stuck with that idea even when Bledsoe or Knight were not available by playing Price instead.

7. Brandon Knight was very high on the Jazz wishlist in the 2011 draft at #3 when they opted for Kanter instead. Hornacek was a full time assistant with the Jazz at the time. It is not too far fetched to think that Hornacek played a role in trading Isaiah Thomas and targeting Knight as a replacement for Dragic.

I believe you composed a well explained succession of facts with which most of us should agree.
From the beginning most of us thought Hornacek was not prepared to be the ideal fit for this young team. I believe he is not ready to be an NBA HC at all at this point, but especially for a young team, he was absolutely not the perfect fit.

With that said, I cannot se the point in firing a coach at the beginning of February with 5/8 of the season already played.

We were losing and that is what we need to do to get the best posible player in next year draft. We needed to lose and develop our young players.

Reasons for firing a coach now I can think of:

- the most chances to get a good pick in next june draft, the most chances we have to screw it up by selecting someone who does not become a good NBA player. So, fear of letting see that we do not have a GM with a gnarl for talent.
- if we stay just where we have been for the last 4-5 years, always with the hope of a brighter future, the management and ownership feel they are doing something in the right direction.
- they thought that we do not have enough talent to win this year anyway, so they decided to hire Watson to begin next year's work already.
- they do not have a solution for MM's situation, so a new coach is a fresh start for everybody.
- they thought that the losing culture we were living in was not good for the young players, so they decided to stop that (too professional for Sarver, Babbitt and McD, but still a possibility).

In the end, we are already two-three years in a situation plenty of bad decisions but, in addition, those decisions are taken at the worst possible or most useless moment.
In complicated situations one need to analize whether the new situation is bringing better things than the situation one already have. I do not see any foreseeable changes for the last 33 games (now 32) and I do not believe Watson is a person to stay as a coach for the next season.

[Frank Lee]

Chemistry begins with coaches. They can be either a catalyst or an inhibitor.

[JMac1]

Chemistry begins with coaches. They can be either a catalyst or an inhibitor.

I don't know why so many people fail to understand this. Earl Watson said you have to connect with your players before you can ask them to do something on the basketball court. I know I said it and got blasted for it, but there you go, a NBA coach and ex-player said it.

Jeff wasn't the guy. He didn't know how to get it done. Build a bridge first, then communicate when you have opened the ears of your players.

[bwgood77]

As for the youngsters, just about every overall, non-minute-weighted advanced stat favors them. So your statement bolded above is simply irrelevant to the discussion.

I won't respond to the rest of your strawman, but I have shown this isn't true. Of course you did pull out one stat that favored Warren to PJ, but out youngsters were FAR at the bottom, particularly Booker and Archie. You may want to call some of them skewed because of minutes, but when you say ALL advanced stats, you would be nice to see what they are. Later today I may do some research to see if I can come up with anything that backs this claim you make, since you can't seem to.

[AtheJ415]

As for the youngsters, just about every overall, non-minute-weighted advanced stat favors them. So your statement bolded above is simply irrelevant to the discussion.

I won't respond to the rest of your strawman, but I have shown this isn't true. Of course you did pull out one stat that favored Warren to PJ, but out youngsters were FAR at the bottom, particularly Booker and Archie. You may want to call some of them skewed because of minutes, but when you say ALL advanced stats, you would be nice to see what they are. Later today I may do some research to see if I can come up with anything that backs this claim you make, since you can't seem to.

No. You used VORP, a number that factors in % of minutes played. I stated "non-minute-weighted". Accordingly the more minutes you play, the higher the VORP. Its not apples to apples. In comparing guys who play the same minutes, VORP is a good measure, but in comparing guys who are in different roles and therefore seeing very different minutes, it's going to horribly inflate the guy with more minutes. That's why according to VORP, Brandon Knight is drastically better than Booker.

[gaspar]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/FearTheBrown/status/694596158950391808[/tweet]

[bwgood77]

As for the youngsters, just about every overall, non-minute-weighted advanced stat favors them. So your statement bolded above is simply irrelevant to the discussion.

I won't respond to the rest of your strawman, but I have shown this isn't true. Of course you did pull out one stat that favored Warren to PJ, but out youngsters were FAR at the bottom, particularly Booker and Archie. You may want to call some of them skewed because of minutes, but when you say ALL advanced stats, you would be nice to see what they are. Later today I may do some research to see if I can come up with anything that backs this claim you make, since you can't seem to.

No. You used VORP, a number that factors in % of minutes played. I stated "non-minute-weighted". Accordingly the more minutes you play, the higher the VORP. Its not apples to apples. In comparing guys who play the same minutes, VORP is a good measure, but in comparing guys who are in different roles and therefore seeing very different minutes, it's going to horribly inflate the guy with more minutes. That's why according to VORP, Brandon Knight is drastically better than Booker.

No, I did not use VORP, I used Real plus minus from espn and BPM (a net of OBPM and DBPM). The latter may be somewhat similar to VORP but ALL of those are stats based on per 100 possessions, so minutes played isn't really factored in.

But even using your favorite, WS/48, Len is 10th, Knight 11th and Goodwin is 12th on the team. That stat does help the Warren argument, but if you want to go strictly by that, Price is also 6th while Booker is 7th.

That stat if you only want to use that one gives you the argument about Warren vs Tucker, but it certainly doesn't help Goodwin or Knight, and if that was used for playing time, Booker would lose minutes to Price.

[bwgood77]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/FearTheBrown/status/694596158950391808[/tweet]

That is unbelievable the difference in Houston's points per timeout between their two coaches. Much of the chart looks like I would expect given roster age and experience, but Houston under him is suprising, although some could probably be blamed on Harden starting so terribly and jacking up bad shots out of timeouts.

[GMATCallahan]

[tweet]https://twitter.com/FearTheBrown/status/694596158950391808[/tweet]

That is unbelievable the difference in Houston's points per timeout between their two coaches. Much of the chart looks like I would expect given roster age and experience, but Houston under him is suprising, although some could probably be blamed on Harden starting so terribly and jacking up bad shots out of timeouts.

Plus, how many games did Kevin McHale coach this season? The sample size is probably too small to be meaningful.