BOSTON — The Houston Rockets made a shocking move Wednesday, and even one of the NBA’s most reserved coaches couldn’t help from voicing his displeasure.
The Rockets fired head coach Kevin McHale just 11 games into the regular season, one day after the Boston Celtics dropped their record to 4-7 by blowing them out in their own building.
Celtics head coach Brad Stevens offered a pretty strong opinion (by his standards) of the move.
“I don’t agree with the firing,” Stevens said before his team’s game against the Dallas Mavericks at TD Garden. “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. But again, it’s not my call.”
Stevens isn’t the only one who publicly has questioned Houston’s decision to part ways with McHale, who led the Rockets to the Western Conference finals last season. Mavericks head coach Rick Carlisle — who was McHale’s teammate in Boston for three seasons — called the move “preposterous” and “very disappointing” earlier Wednesday, and he didn’t back down from that stance ahead of the game.
“You watch him on the sideline, he walks with a limp because of the sacrifices he made to be one of the greatest champions in history,” Carlisle said. “It’s surprising when something happens like this. Shocking, even.”
An opinion Stevens and Carlisle both share, though, is that McHale will have little trouble finding more work in the NBA if he wants it.
“He’ll be fine,” Carlisle added. “There will be a lot of teams wanting to hire him, because he did a fantastic job in Houston. … That’s a guy with some great coaching credentials, and the other championship credentials go without saying.”
Thumbnail photo via Mark L. Baer/USA TODAY Sports Images
