The Rockets have requested permission to speak to Lakers assistant coach Brian Shaw about their head coaching vacancy, according to an ESPN.com report.

Team rules restrict Lakers coaches from interviewing for another job while a playoff series is being played so Shaw will have to interview with the Rockets either Saturday or Sunday, or after the Lakers' second-round series with the Mavericks is concluded.

Mario Elie, who has kept his home in Houston since his days with the franchise’s Clutch City-era teams, interviewed for the Rockets’ vacant head coaching position on Wednesday, saying he is ready to recapture the successes from his playing days here.

“I’m very excited,” Elie said. “I like their commitment to winning and bringing back the success of the championship years.

“We knocked it around for quite a bit, about three to four hours. Those guys are very sharp. They know what they want. I had a good time with these gentlemen.”

Elie, who played five seasons with the Rockets before finishing his career in San Antonio and Phoenix, has been an assistant with the Spurs, Warriors and Kings.

The Rockets’ list of coaches to interview continued to grow Tuesday more rapidly than the team could begin checking them off.

The Rockets added a second champion-era star to their list of candidates, with plans to meet with Sam Cassell, an assistant with the Washington Wizards, next week.

They have his former teammate, Mario Elie, an assistant with the Sacramento Kings, scheduled for an interview today.

The Rockets also plan to set up an interview with Hall of Famer Kevin McHale, next week, Yahoo sports reported Tuesday.

Kevin McHale will interview for the Rockets coaching job, league sources told Yahoo! Sports.

McHale, who had two different tenures as Timberwolves coach and served as the franchise’s general manager, has been working as a television analyst for the past two years.

Milwaukee assistant coach Kelvin Sampson, who served as head coach at Indiana and Oklahoma before moving to the NBA, is expected to meet with Rockets general manager Daryl Morey Tuesday.

Rockets assistant coach Jack Sikma and former Rockets forward Mario Elie, who has been an assistant with Sacramento, Golden State and San Antonio, will interview Wednesday.

Former Atlanta coach Mike Woodson, a former Rockets player who still lives in Katy, is expected to meet with Morey on Thursday.
Morey has received permission to speak with many assistant coaches still involved in the playoffs but will seek to work around the first-round schedule.

The Dallas Mavericks will grant permission to the Houston Rockets to talk to assistant coach Dwane Casey about their head coaching position, but any interview will take place when their season is over.

The Rockets have made it clear, according to the sources, that they are in no hurry to hire a coach and that they will wait as long as necessary to interview Casey and numerous other candidates whose teams are in the playoffs.

Beginning next week, Houston Rockets general manager Daryl Morey will interview Rockets assistant coach Jack Sikma and former Rockets forward Mario Elie, an assistant in Sacramento, and plans to speak with former head coaches Mike Brown and Mike Woodson.

The Rockets are interested in a long list of assistants, including San Antonio's Mike Budenholzer, New Orleans' Michael Malone, the Los Angeles Clippers' Dean Demopoulos, Philadelphia's Quin Snyder and Memphis' Dave Joeger, along with former head coaches Lawrence Frank, an assistant in Boston, and Dwane Casey, an assistant in Dallas.

The Rockets will seek a meeting with the Lakers' Brian Shaw if he is not named the successor to Phil Jackson in Los Angeles.

Michael Malone, lead assistant coach for the Hornets, is a candidate for the vacant Houston Rockets head coaching job, according to league sources.

Daryl Morey and the Rockets have not yet requested permission to speak to Malone.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen with all of that, but I know he’s held in high regard throughout the league and it’s only a matter of time,’’ Hornets Coach Monty Williams said.

“He’s put the work in; he’s got a lot of respect for the position of head coach. He hasn’t gone after jobs the way I’ve seen other guys do. He’s a prime candidate.''

“My whole focus right now is on beating the Lakers,’’ Malone said after Tuesday’s practice. “As I said many times before, I have aspirations of being a head coach, but the No. 1 task at hand right now is helping this team and helping Monty anyway I can in terms of preparing for Game 2 and the rest of this series and whatever series after that.’’

Before Williams hired Malone, he spent five seasons as an assistant with the Cleveland Cavaliers. Malone’s father, Brendan Malone, is an assistant with the Orlando Magic and former head coach of the Cavaliers.

While Rick Adelman feels comfortable not returning as head coach of the Rockets, he is not ready to call his coaching career over.

"I definitely would look at situations," Adelman said. "It's not like I'm retiring. I'm OK with doing something else. We'd like to travel. We'd like to do things we weren't able to do because of basketball. If there is no basketball, we're ready for that. But I would look at things if they come up."

After several days of talks, he and general manager Daryl Morey could not agree on the circumstances that would lead Morey to make Adelman an offer or for Adelman to accept it.

"I feel OK," Adelman said. "It's always a sad thing when you depart a situation, no matter what the reasons. There are good people here you get to know. It's always hard.

"They wanted things to be different than they were. Some I was fine with. Some I wasn't.

"The direction the team was going and how they were going to get there, the way things are going to be done in the future, I was not comfortable with some of that."

Houston Rockets forward Luis Scola has undergone arthroscopic surgery on his left knee.

Scola missed five games with the injury suffered March 7 in Sacramento and struggled with it through the rest of the season.
 
Scola said last week he will be ready to compete with the Argentina national team in the Olympic Qualifying Tournament in September.