Firing season is upon us with the Houston Rockets parting ways with Kevin McHale as head coach. Despite the team’s poor start, the firing was slightly shocking given McHale’s recent three-year extension and Houston’s surprising run to the Western Conference Finals amid a slew of injuries to key rotation members.

But the NBA, like most sports leagues, thrives off a “what have you done for me lately?” mentality. An ugly blowout loss to the Boston Celtics, the team’s fourth defeat in a row, dropped Houston to 4-7 on the season with a point differential of -7.7, the fourth-worst mark in the league. For a team with serious title aspirations after acquiring Ty Lawson this summer, it was certainly an alarming start to the season.

Looking at the circumstances and it’s not overly shocking that the Rockets have stumbled out of the gate. Sure, the team shouldn’t be getting blown out in embarrassing fashion (or losing to the Nets), but the fact that they’re losing isn’t that unsettling given what has worked against McHale and the team in the early going. What’s harder to assess, however, is what exactly could be realistically pinned on McHale to justify this shakeup.

One of the primary culprits in this early season malaise has been injuries, as big man Donatas Motiejunas hasn’t played a single minute yet this season and Houston is 1-3 with a scoring margin of -9.0 in their four games without Dwight Howard. Patrick Beverley, last year’s starting point guard, has also missed four games this year as he returns from injury while promising young power forward Terrence Jones was out for the team’s first five games with a laceration above his eye. That is a lot of minutes lost for four players that can be considered rather crucial contributors.

With Motiejunas out, Jones on the shelf to start the season and Howard shuffling in and out of the lineup -- not to mention the offseason departure of Josh Smith -- it’s been the Rockets frontcourt in particular that’s been under the most stress. Promising young big man Clint Capela has answered the call for the most part, posting the only positive net rating on the team of all Houston players with significant minutes this year. Capela’s emergence and defensive competence has been offset, however, by the fact that rookie power forward Montrezl Harrell has also been pressed into action. In the 112 minutes the first year player from Louisville has been on the floor, the Rockets have posted a mind-blowingly awful 119.9 defensive rating, per NBA.com data.

Now pointing out that stat doesn’t mean Harrell and his 112 minutes are solely responsible for the Rockets' abysmal defensive rating. A far bigger culprit for the team’s free-fall to 29th in defensive efficiency is the James Harden-Ty Lawson backcourt. Entering the season, most of those following the league had doubts about these two offense-first players providing any semblance of competency on defense (myself included). So far, those doubts have well-founded as the Rockets have been shredded to the tune of 108.0 defensive rating in the 304 minutes Lawson and Harden have shared the floor, according to NBA.com. No big man, nor defense for that matter, can maintain any degree of effectiveness when lacking perimeter players capable of impacting ballhandlers or, at the very least, not routinely putting their teammates, particularly young bigs like Harrell, in bad spots possession after possession.

It’s easy to criticize McHale for his decision to play Lawson and Harden so much together, but it’s hard to actually find a real alternative, even if you choose the non-point guard route. Beverley (4.6 PER, -12.6 net rating) has been borderline unplayable since returning. Veteran Jason Terry, who was never an answer to any defensive quandary, turned 38 in September. Marcus Thornton, picked up on the veteran’s minimum this offseason, has carved out his niche in the league as a volume scorer (and not much else) and youngster KJ McDaniels can’t make shots.

McHale could have started and/or trotted out bigger lineups with Harden as the defacto point guard flanked by Corey Brewer and Trevor Ariza on the wings, but that has downsides as well. Not only has Ariza struggled mightily on offense, but savvy opponents could implement gameplans that deny Harden the ball as often as possible and force the Rockets to initiate their offense through players like Ariza and Brewer -- not exactly a recipe for success. And even if teams didn’t do that, such a measure would have only mildly limited the time Lawson and Harden spent together. Given the circumstances, these two were bound to see a considerable share of minutes together.

The Harden-Lawson duo being a dumpster fire on defense would actually be somewhat survivable if the two had a bigger impact on the offensive end of the floor. So far this season, however, the Rockets star backcourt pairing has posted an offensive rating 98.6 (think Sixers-level bad). Even trying to place that at the feet of McHale seems like a reach as A) this wouldn’t be the first time two ball-dominant players struggled to mesh right out of the gate and B) the Rockets have been one of the worst teams in the leagues at knocking down 3’s defined as either “open” (defender within 4-6 feet) or “wide open” (defender further than 6 feet) per NBA.com’s tracking data.

That is what makes the timing of McHale’s departure so interesting. For a coach that thought he had time, letting Lawson and Harden figure things out in the early going isn’t a bad idea. After all, the team’s 4-7 record doesn’t have them in some monster hole out West. And given the two teams currently holding onto the 7th and 8th spots in the playoffs (Denver and Memphis) have negative scoring margins as well, it’s not like Houston would have had to go gangbusters to get back into the playoff picture. But as the well respected Bobby Marks tweeted out, this upcoming stretch of practices and games make it the ideal time for interim head coach J.B. Bickerstaff to make changes and gain some momentum against a soft schedule (that said, it could have also given McHale time to right the ship as well).

The only real argument for letting McHale go at this point seems to be that he lost the locker room (and/or Harden simply walked in and told management to let him go). If that turns out to be the case, then the Rockets really had no choice -- well, other than assembling a core of stars with serious questions about their professionalism.

This move also puts a lot of pressure on a well-respected, but totally unproven Bickerstaff. With Dwight Howard owning a player option in his contract, a disastrous season could set him loose in free agency among a sea of teams flush with cap space. Whether you respect his game or not, there’s no doubt that the Rockets losing Howard would take them a step away from title contention with no real options (other than a long shot pursuit of someone like Kevin Durant) to acquire that level of talent.

After their underachieving start, Houston’s front office is gambling that their unspectacular, but proven head coach was the person responsible for failing to maximize the team’s collection of talent. But if McHale’s replacement(s) fails to do much better with this eclectic group of talented individuals, the questions will shift from the coaches shortcomings to the roster-building approach taken by Rockets management.