The Houston Rockets shocked the NBA world on Wednesday morning by announcing the firing of head coach Kevin McHale, less than six months after he led the team to a Western Conference Finals berth. The 57-year-old McHale, who had been coach of the Rockets since 2011, is a highly respected member of the basketball fraternity, and his dismissal came as a surprise to some fellow NBA coaches.
“It’s preposterous. It’s beyond belief. I’m really shocked,” said Western Conference rival and former NBA teammate Rick Carlisle, head coach of the Dallas Mavericks, on Wednesday per Jimmy Toscano of Comcast Sportsnet New England. “It’s just hard to believe that something like that could happen at this stage. And a guy who took the team unexpectedly to the Conference Finals last year. And to have this happen after 11 games . . . preposterous is the only word I can come up with.”
Brad Stevens, head coach of the Boston Celtics with whom McHale spent 13 NBA seasons as a player and won three championships, was equally baffled.
“First and foremost, I think we’re in a business where expectations certainly drive decisions at times,” said the 39-year-old Stevens, also per Toscano. “And I don’t agree with the firing. But it’s not my choice to make. I think that Kevin is a great coach. Kevin has been great to me. Kevin is obviously a great Celtic. People love him everywhere they’ve been. Everybody that you hear from loves working with him, loves being around him. To me, from the outside looking in, it looks like 11 games in making a rash decision.”
While Rockets GM Daryl Morey’s justifying the decision by saying that there is no time to waste in the Western Conference makes sense, the decision still feels like just what Carlisle and Stevens were alluding to: an impulsive, knee-jerk reaction.
With the 4-7 Rockets reeling despite being in “win-now” mode this season, they will move forward with assistant JB Bickerstaff serving as the interim coach. Whether or not the team can put it together, they will likely regret the decision to let go of McHale upon the first sign of adversity. While McHale was never a great Xs and Os/in-game tactical coach, he was a proven leader and winner whose firing this early in the season is not only baffling to Carlisle and Stevens but also to the entire NBA community.
