“Something had to change,” he said.
Rockets management agreed. But Harden was not talking about the change the bosses had enacted.
Rockets owner Leslie Alexander and general manager Daryl Morey believed that change had to be on the bench and fired Kevin McHale as coach, arguing that the team was “not responding” to the coach who led the Rockets deeper in the playoffs than the franchise had gone in 17 years.
Harden blamed someone else.
He blamed himself. Whether Morey and Alexander made the right call is uncertain. We’ll never know if McHale would have turned the Rockets around.