A TIME TO TALK IT OUT
After players-only meeting, McHale says no to ‘blame game’
The Rockets could not brush off their struggles any longer. They could not point to a slow start after the injury-filled preseason. They could no longer dismiss the losing streak as early in the season.
In a sure sign of a team searching, on Tuesday they had their players-only meeting — part airing of grievances, part pledging to make amends — to discuss the issues that have made them among the NBA’s most disappointing teams.
“It was a good talk for us,” Rockets guard James Harden said. “It was good for us to kind of communicate. Each guy said what their role was and how every single night they’re going to contribute to that role.
“After the talk, we had a really good practice. Guys communicated. We worked hard. Now, it’s about carrying over. It’s about going out there and carrying it to the floor.”
If the 4-7 start to the season, the place as the league’s second-worst defensive team or a losing streak longer than any they have had since January 2013 were not indication enough of how things have fallen apart, the need to meet would be. Teams do not get together to discuss how to stay wonderful. But the Rockets left the session believing they were ready to “buy in” as Harden said they had not before.
“It was more of a collective (decision to meet), and the guys bought in,” said Harden, who is shooting a career-worst 37.2 percent to start the season. “That was the most important thing. Individual guys have been struggling. You kind of tend to go your own
way. But we’re here to say, we’re all in this together. You might be struggling, but you know somebody has got your back. That’s what you needed to talk about, making sure guys knew we had each other’s back and how important that was.”
That has been a problem. There might not have been previous players-only meetings, but the Rockets had often pointed out their shortcomings, from a debilitating lack of communication defensively to a loss of effort when things go badly.
When the Rockets went from a 15-point lead to a 29-point deficit against Boston on Monday, falling to their fourth straight loss, they decided a heart-to-heart was necessary.
Correcting mistakes
Guard Ty Lawson said on Monday he would initiate such conversations after the 111-95 loss to the Celtics, when the Rockets demonstrated that they can play at a greater level but fell apart when things went wrong. By Tuesday, he said players had not been running the defensive coverages coaches wanted, but believed Tuesday’s pre-practice sit-down pointed out and corrected that issue.
“If you go back and look at tape, we were doing our own thing,” Lawson said. “Like coaches’ say, ‘run this pick-and-roll coverage.’ We were calling something totally different. We had three or four different coverages. We were only running one. We had to get on the same page. Hopefully, we’ll do it tomorrow.
“It’s going to be a work in progress. Everything is not going to happen overnight. But I think out of that meeting the one thing is on the defensive end, we should all be on the same page. No matter what the coaches say, we need to do. We need to be on the same page.
“For the most part, I think we got everything in order.”
On Saturday, after the Rockets were blown out by the severely shorthanded Dallas Mavericks, coach Kevin McHale brushed off the need for more meetings, saying that since the Rockets are not “a debate team,” they need more action and less talk.
By Tuesday, he seemed to welcome the greater commitment his players made to each other.
“You’re either making excuses or you’re making plays,” McHale said. “If you’re making excuses, you’re not thinking about what you’re doing. I got to think about countering everything you’re saying so I can make some BS excuse. When you’re making plays, you’re not making excuses. You are moving on. That’s what we got to get to.
“At certain point, we have to go out and do it. You (as a coach) can pick apart everybody’s problems. Until they can talk to each other honestly and say, ‘Hey, that was my bad,” then you’re not getting there. Hopefully, we can get to that point. On functional teams, usually by the time you get over to the sideline, everything (the opponent) is doing, you figured out. Dysfunctional teams get over and they start blaming each other. We can’t get into the blame game. We have to get into the fix game.”
Building character
Dwight Howard, who would not discuss anything said behind closed doors, repeatedly had called for the Rockets to resist any temptation to point fingers. He did say, “It was good for us to sit down and talk” and that the start of the season was “embarrassing.” Beyond that, he typically found a bright side.
“All this stuff is going to build our character,” Howard said. “That’s what we want. Sometimes, the toughest tests are given to the strongest warriors. Right now, we’re going through a strong, tough test. We’ll see where we are as a team.”