Effort
It’s an overused and fallacious theory that pro athletes don’t care. Granted, in a long season, there will come some stretches where teams just want to get back in the locker room and go home as soon as the ball is tipped. Sometimes it’s just hard to get up for a Tuesday night game in Minneapolis in February.
In general, though, pro athletes are exactly that: professionals. They have some of the best jobs on the planet, and they know it.
The Houston Rockets circa 2015-16 have led me to question that belief. No team looks more disinterested for longer stretches than this squad, and no team looks as allergic to its own sweat.
Again, I can’t emphasize enough that I’m skeptical about the lack of caring, but nobody has ever looked less interested than these Rockets do for long stretches of time.
Changing head coaches didn’t seem to help, and after firing head coach Kevin McHale 11 games into the season and replacing him with assistant J.B. Bickerstaff, the Rockets look no better.
The Rockets of a year ago were a team that could truly use effort to work their way to victory on a nightly basis, but this squad looks like a shell of what they were last season. They need to return to those roots if they hope to pull it together before it’s too late.
Next: The Lawson Experiment Has Failed