At least according to Yahoo! Sports’ Adrian Wojnarowski, who filed the following Saturday:
With a strong, late push in the search process, Kevin McHale has emerged as the frontrunner for the Houston Rockets coaching vacancy, multiple league sources told Yahoo! Sports on Saturday.
No final decision has officially been reached, nor are contract negotiations underway, but McHale has clearly separated himself from Dallas Mavericks assistant Dwane Casey and Boston Celtics assistant Lawrence Frank, sources said. McHale made a strong final impression in conversations with Houston officials on Thursday in Chicago, and could receive a formal offer in the next week.
Hmmm, this sounds really familiar. A couple of accomplished, deeply respected assistants look overmatched in comparison to a charismatic former player with his own fair share of past success (though not as a coach). Man, it’s like Dwane Casey is the new… Dwane Casey. The same thing has happened to Casey twice as the charming, hilariously inept Vinny Del Negro has scooped up multiple jobs for which the two competed, as VDN went on to stumble as the Bulls coach only to recover with the Clippers last year. Larry Drew also won out over Casey this last summer for the Hawks job, but at least Drew was previously an assistant and did a pretty solid job of getting the most out of that team (even rolling at full steam, Atlanta and its potential likely max out at “feisty second-round exit”). In each of those scenarios, I always wondered what the hell could be going on in these interviews that invariably seemed to be putting Casey on the backburner. Here, I find myself wondering the same thing.
Kevin McHale has engendered a lot of good will from around the NBA in recent months thanks to his very enthusiastic, somewhat nuanced work as a commentator for both NBA TV and TNT, this, of course, in addition to the act that everyone tends to like guys with Hall-of-Fame careers and a handful of rings. McHale’s physically impressive 6’10″ build might invoke the solemn calmness of Phil Jackson, who could stand eye-to-eye with almost any of his players until his back would not allow him to any longer. The former Boston Celtics big man has consistently shown his ability to speak amiably and candidly about his career and his current involvement in the NBA, clearing away most worries that he could turn in to the Magic/Bird types who assumed their very presences would be able to sort out all of the details of being an actual NBA head coach. That was never a problem because McHale’s actually been an NBA head coach before this recent flirtation with Houston. What was a problem is that McHale’s actually been an NBA head coach before this recent flirtation with Houston, and in those stints, the work he’s done could be politely described as “spotty”.
Anthony Carter said he couldn’t draw up plays and looked like a child doing so. Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor seemed to view McHale’s second run as a head coach as punishment for the sins of McHale the general manager, essentially saying, “Clean up this mess you made.” Judging his record solely on wins seems unfair, but if you’re one of those people that buys into such an unconventional rubric, his 39-52 record (mostly padded by an insignificant 19-12 run at the end of a season in which the Wolves, with Kevin Garnett, missed the playoffs) doesn’t exactly scream “untapped potential”. And as for that mess he made as GM for the Wolves, remember that while he may have drafted Kevin Garnett (and gracefully dealt him out in one of the best “superstar for some guys” trades ever), he also traded Ray Allen for Stephon Mabury, signed Joe Smith to such an illegal contract that the Wolves were stripped of first-round draft picks for half a decade, tapped Terrell Brandon, Wally Szczerbiak and Latrell Sprewell to be Garnett’s number two option at different times and basically created the black hole of hope that forced Garnett to leave in the first place. While he may not be applying to be the next general manager of the Rockets, having his input on personnel decisions for years to come does not particularly appeal to me.
Perhaps I underestimate presence, leadership qualities and several other intangibles that I can’t gauge while drinking Gatorade and reading silly articles about basketball players from behind a computer screen. Or maybe Kevin McHale is another former NBA player with a big smile and a great voice about to charm his way into another job that a couple of well-regarded, innovative assistants would have been better suited to do.
