ESPN analyst Rose wants to see ‘ best effort’ from The Bearded One
Kevin McHale’s dismissal as Rockets coach was a primary driver of sports talk around the country Wednesday, and few had more quotable comments on the subject of McHale and the Rockets’ woes than ESPN analyst Jalen Rose.
Rose’s two most memorable soundbites from ESPN’s Wednesday pregame show involved James Harden. In one case, he said Harden “is a turnstile on defense.” Also, referring to Harden’s previous spat with rapper Lil B and his current association with reality TV personality Khloe Kardashian, he said, “I don’t know if the Lil B curse is real. I know the Kardashian curse is real.”
Both comments are too good to let pass, so Rose was good enough Thursday to expand on both topics. We’ll start with his thoughts on Harden’s off-andon defensive efforts, which were on Wednesday in the overtime win over the Blazers after being off for much of the season.
“What (everyone) wants to see is effort,” Rose said. “When you are the best player and it’s obvious that at times you’re not giving the best effort, it’s hard to discipline players around you. It will fall on deaf ears. They will say ‘What are you going to say to me? You’re not playing with any effort,’ and it continues to have a domino effect.
“There is a bigger responsibility to the leading scorer to be the best player. Those are two different things. The leader is something totally different. If you have someone who can be all of those things like Lebron James, that’s great.
“For the Rockets, it’s clear that’s something they are searching for. Jason Terry does what he can, but normally it has to come from your two notable players who are working on Hall of Fame credentials in Dwight Howard and James Harden. You hope it comes from them.”
Rose said it takes a “conservation effort” to balance offense and defense in the NBA.
“How you do it is instead of taking 25 shots, you take 19 shots. Or you don’t play 40 minutes when you’re fatigued for four or five of them,” he said. “No one is a machine out there. (Harden) had five steals (against the Blazers). So you know that when the effort is there, the potential is there.”
Rose acknowledged that his comments about the Kardashians were tongue in cheek, but with an eye toward the difficulty of NBA players who are already in the spotlight complicating their lives by their off-court associations.
“Whether we agree if they (the Kardashian sisters) have talent or not, we know that they have turned their name and brand into a multimillion-dollar conglomerate. Congratulations to them that they live in America,” Rose said.
“What I will say is that there are those who can point to a lot of instances where they were directly or indirectly involved, sort of in the six degrees of separation, and somehow it didn’t turn out for the best for those individuals. That has nothing to do with the Kardashians themselves. It has to do with being able to balance being followed by the media vs. being followed by the paparazzi.”
As an example of mixing sports and show business, Rose noted the recent defeat of UFC champion Ronda Rousey, who also is continuing to work on a budding film career. In the case of Harden, he said the intensity of the spotlight he faces because of his association with Khloe Kardashian far outweighs the attention he draws as an NBA player.
“Their name and their brand trumps any NBA player right now,” Rose said. “That spotlight exists, and I have seen people get caught in that spotlight, and it didn’t turn out well for them. You date who you want to date. But you want guys to do their best to be competitive, because there is more of your job on the line. Kevin McHale's job was on the line."
Other voices
It is a requirement that when anything of consequence happens to the Rockets, we check in with former Houston coach and current ESPN analyst Jeff Van Gundy, who had a reasonably predictable reaction to Kevin McHale’s dismissal.
“I’m stunned by it,” Van Gundy said. “Kevin can leave Houston with his head held extremely high for the results he got and the manner in which he conducted himself. He is a complete class act.”
Van Gundy also drew on past experience to express his opinion that coaching changes don’t always involve a full-scale player revolt.
“Every team goes through points in
the season when they are listening more or listening less,” he said. “I remember (Knicks coach) Pat Riley, the year after we lost to the Rockets in the (1994) NBA Finals and started 12-12 in 1995 and playing completely uninspired basketball, saying to us as a staff, ‘Sometime you have to wait on a team to gather their level of commitment and get their energy back.’”
Unfortunately for McHale, Van Gundy said, the Rockets opened the season “where they weren’t playing with a great level of commitment or energy.” Also, unfortunately for McHale, he said, you can’t rush a team into regaining its edge.
Looking ahead, as a former interim coach who replaced Don Nelson with the Knicks, Van Gundy said he has great empathy for Rockets interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff.
“I understand the fragile nature of being an interim coach,” he said. “I wish J.B. a lot of luck because I know how hard it is. You hope you have the right players who are going to show respect to the positon of head coach, not to the actual person. Hopefully he does.”
ESPN analyst and former NBA coach P.J. Carlesimo, meanwhile, has known Bickerstaff so long that he refers to him by his given name, John-Blair. So he obviously has only best wishes, too, for the Rockets interim coach.
That being said, however, Carlesimo said Thursday that the dismissal of Kevin McHale was “borderline disgraceful” behavior by the Rockets.
“The job he did, and I think I can speak for the majority of coaches and NBA people, improved each year. He did an excellent job of relating to players. He was a players’ coach. It was a terribly disappointing decision.”
College football ratings
Here are local college football Nielsen ratings from last weekend in Houston. Ratings are not available for all networks, including the SEC Network, Longhorn Network and CBS College Sports, and for ESPN3.com games. Each point represents 23,373 TV households in Houston.
Oklahoma-Baylor, Ch. 13, 4.9; Alabama-Mississippi State, Ch. 11, 4.1; Memphis-Houston, ESPN2, 3.9; Arkansas-LSU, ESPN, 2.4; Oklahoma State-Iowa State, ESPN, 2.3; Michigan-Indiana, Ch. 13, 2.0; Texas-West Virginia, ESPNU, 1.9; Georgia-Auburn, Ch. 11, 1.9; Ohio State-Illinois, Ch. 13, 1.9; Western Carolina-Texas A&M, ESPNU, 1.5.
Also, Kansas State-Texas Tech, FS1, 1.2; USC-Colorado, ESPN2, 1.1; Washington State-UCLA, ESPN, 1.0; Oregon-Stanford, Ch. 26, 1.0; Kansas-TCU, FS1, 0.8; Wake Forest-Notre Dame, Ch. 2, 0.7; Virginia Tech-Georgia, ESPN, 0.5; Florida-South Carolina, ESPN, 0.4; Utah-Arizona, FS1, 0.3; Louisiana-Lafayette-South Alabama, ESPNU, 0.3.
Finally. Miami-North Carolina, ESPNU, 0.3; Maryland-Michigan State, ESPN2, 0.3; Eastern Washington-Montana, Root SW, 0.1.
Four DVRs, no waiting
Kevin Harlan and Rich Gannon will be at Jets-Texans on Sunday for CBS. … HBO averaged 4.4 million viewers per episode of “Hard Knocks: Training Camp with the Houston Texans,” making it the most-watched “Hard Knocks” series since the Jets averaged a series record 4.6 million in 2010. … CBS has received permission from the SEC to show a sixth Alabama game this season, allowing it to telecast the Auburn-Alabama game on Nov. 28. … Jeff Gordon will join Fox Sports’ NASCAR coverage next year, joining Mike Joy and Darrell Waltrip in the broadcast booth. Larry McReynolds will remain with the network in an analyst’s role. … Finally, Anheuser-Busch InBev says it will not revive its puppies ad for a third Super Bowl. No word if Houston-area actor Don Jeanes, who has played a Clydesdale trainer in three straight Super Bowl ads, will return for another spot in this year’s game.