Rockets' Stephen Silas shares biggest takeaways from last season

Stephen Silas's first year as a head coach was one to forget, as the Houston Rockets had easily their worst season in recent memory. From players such as James Harden, Russell Westbrook, and even Victor Oladipo wanting out to having a record number of players suit up due to injury, Silas's first season was surely not what he anticipated.

But in spite of the Rockets' 17-55 finish, Silas still sought ways to improve from his first season at the helm as a head coach, pointing out the need to develop his assistant coaches as one of his main areas of improvement on Sirius XM's NBA radio.

"I need to do a better job of it, I think. First year you come in and you try to do everything. You have all of these ideas. I had 21 years of ideas that I was gonna do when I was a head coach.

And I wanted to put my stamp on the organization and I wanted to make sure that my voice was the one that the players heard. 

And developing my staff and giving them more wasn't at the front of my mind. Now as the summer goes along I'm like, 'Man I've gotta use these guys more, I've gotta develop them more.'

I have the great John Lucas on my staff and he's amazing. He's done it so many years, he's been through so many situations. He helps me on a daily basis and he's one of the best player development guys in the league. 

And then I have Jeff Hornacek and Will Weaver and Rick Higgins and DeSagana Diop. So yeah, the development of assistant coaches is something I need to do a better job of. Because I had some great head coaches who did it for me.

But they were veteran head coaches. They were Rick Carlisle, they were Steve Clifford, they were Don Nelson, they were my dad. So I'll get there."

Houston Rockets' Stephen Silas shares takeaways from first season as head coach

Silas also listed the aspect of the job that surprised him the most.

"The communication. Making sure that you're communicating with every player. 

When I was an assistant, you have like 3 or 4 guys that you're focused on. But when you're a head coach, you've gotta make sure that you're on top of every single guy.

Making sure that you're communicating with the GM, making sure that you're communicating with PR, ownership, all of the different departments. Like the communication part, I knew that would be very important and I feel like I'm good at it, but you've gotta write your lists and make sure that you're hitting every point. 

Because if you allow one of those guys to feel like you're not engaged into them getting better or you're engaged in the organization being as good as it could possibly be, then it could be really bad."

Although Silas's first season was filled with trials and tribulations, he sought a way to learn from the adversity. This will be a huge benefit for his coaching career because he likely won't have another drama-filled year (to that extent) for a long time.