Houston Rockets: 3 reasons why Stephen Silas shouldn’t be fired

Houston Rockets reason #1 why Stephen Silas shouldn’t be fired: The James Harden trade

The single greatest argument for giving Stephen Silas a mulligan this season is the James Harden trade. James Harden has a real argument as the best offensive player in the NBA and no team’s offense is going to improve in his absence.

To make matters worse, the Rockets completely bungled the Harden trade from the perspective of giving Silas a chance to build a cohesive team. The franchise knew very early on that Harden wanted out and instead of moving quickly, they dragged their feet.

Silas was tasked with trying to build a system around Harden in the preseason only for him to be traded after eight regular-season games. The front office did this knowing full well that this regular season would feature next to no practice time due to the condensed schedule.

Add it all up and Stephen Silas entered a situation where he had to build a team around a player hell-bent on leaving and then had to readjust his system in the middle of a season with no practices. To say he got a raw deal is a compliment to raw deals.

Stephen Silas has had a horrible first season as an NBA head coach and much of it was out of his control. He can’t stop players from getting injured, he can’t go out there and hit the shots for them, and he wasn’t the one that bungle the James Harden situation.

At the end of the day, Stephen Silas deserves another season just on account of him having to clean up all of his bosses’ messes. The people that hired him screwed him in year one and him having to pay the price for their failures would be an incredibly cruel twist of fate.

Stephen Silas might not be a good coach but there is no way, after this season, to know if that’s true. Red Auerbach wouldn’t have been able to lead this Rockets roster to the playoffs with all the turmoil and injuries they’ve endured.

Stephen Silas shouldn’t be fired. This was a lost season by the front office’s design and Silas diligently suffered through this debacle of a season. For that, he’s earned a chance to bring this team out of the ashes.