Corey Brewer likes Mike D’Antoni’s energy, but wants a strong defensive assistant

Corey Brewer was on ESPN Face to Face with Hannah Storm on Thursday, and he spoke about the Rockets hiring of Mike D’Antoni.

“He’s going to bring a lot of energy,” said Brewer of Houston’s new coach. “That’s what we need. We need some energy back here in Houston. It was a bad year this year. Expectations were high and we ended up playing really bad but I think Coach D’Antoni is going to come in and change all that.”

However, the Rockets small forward was quick to comment on where the Rockets really need to improve.

“But we’ve got to play some defense,” added Brewer. “So hopefully we get a good assistant to help Coach D’Antoni and we’ll be OK.”

Of course, the Rockets have added a strong defensive assistant to D’Antoni’s staff in Jeff Bzdelik, so we’ll see where this goes. As for D’Antoni, he mentioned on 790’s The Bottom Line with Adam Clanton and Sean Jones on Wednesday that he hopes to figure out how to get Brewer back to playing the way he played the year before last season.

Brewer does think the addition of D’Antoni will be big for James Harden.

“I think this is really good for James,” said Brewer. “The way he plays, with Coach D’Antoni’s offense, he’s going to have an amazing year. He’s going to make the game a lot easier for the rest of us. We’re playing high pace. There’s going to be a lot of open shots.”

Brewer also was asked about the relationship between Harden and Dwight Howard.

“It wasn’t as bad as people say it was,” said Brewer. “Superstars are going to have their disagreements and different things, but it was just a bad year. I’m not going to say it was either one of their faults. It wasn’t those guys not getting along. It was all of us. None of us played our best basketball and we got knocked out of the first round.”

Does he think Dwight will opt out and leave Houston?

“Probably only Dwight knows,” said Brewer. “For us, if he comes back, we’re going to be happy to have him come back. If not, good luck to him and we’ve got to do what we got to do to try to win basketball games next year.”

You can watch the full interview here: