not sure if this was a dig. Remember when Gerald Wallace had the league in a choke hold for about 2.5 seasons?
Gerald Wallace is fantastic, I wanted him on the Rockets. If Tari turns into 3/4 Wallace then everyone on this board will be over the moon.
Ime has to be furious he’s taken this job now right?? Either way amazing job by Tilman for getting it done asap
Ime Udoka unplugged: On Jalen Green’s evolution, Rockets’ next steps and free agency Since Ime Udoka assumed the position of Rockets head coach almost a month ago, there’s been a nonstop to-do list. Between getting to know his new players, figuring out what his supporting staff will look like and now planning for the draft and free agency, there’s a lot of work to do. Fortunately, there’s an internal sense of unity and alignment that hasn’t always been there in previous years. All parties involved know what’s expected of them in the near future and with a plan to accelerate the rebuild entering phase two, there’s hope that a combination of flexibility and aggression will equal success. The Athletic sat down with Udoka at the NBA Draft Combine for a lengthy, wide-ranging interview about methods to his style, early schematic plans, ensuring accountability and much more. This interview has been edited for style, length and clarity. This isn’t exactly the White House, where the first 100 days of a new presidency are seen as a marker, but it’s been a little under a month since you became the head coach. What have these first few weeks been like? It’s been great. I’ve gotten the chance to spend a lot of time with the players. Got some lunches, dinner, gym time with guys. Also been busy putting together a staff, getting to know everybody, but the most important thing is to spend time with the guys, build a relationship with them, and I’ve done quite a bit of that. What’s been the most important aspect for you as you’ve gotten to spend time with your young players? Just getting to know them as people. You know them as competitors and playing against a lot of these guys or watching from afar, but really getting to know them and having those conversations. Learn about the way they think, things they’ve gone through. I think that part is always as important as the stuff on the court — getting to know their families and being in their environment. Got to do that, had some fun times. It’s a young group, so the conversation and some of the things are different from other teams I’ve coached, but they’re great guys. Do you have an early read on the amount of time it will take to get these guys up to speed? I wouldn’t say early read, but it always takes time. A new voice, new philosophies and learning me as well as me learning them will take time. It’s no different from anywhere I’ve been — whether it’s a veteran or younger guy, it’s taken time. You look at the Boston situation, where I wanted to come in and implement some things; it’s not gonna happen overnight. You understand that changing habits and things like that takes time. My thing is getting us all on the same page, so when we start training camp or spend more time in the gym together, we’ve already had these conversations about what we want to become, and I’ll have an idea of them as well. You’ve used the phrase “take the next step” a few times in relation to this team. How soon do you expect that to happen — a gradual process or something more accelerated? What’s your patience level for that as well? A little bit of all what you just said. You definitely have to be patient, especially with a younger group, but, at the same time, you heard me in the press conference with the young thing not being an excuse. With me, it’s gradual, you’ll see steps, but you want it to click at some point and really take that leap. Guys that have been in the league for two or three years, it’s kind of a natural progression for them to take a step. A lot of that starts in the offseason, that’s why it’s important for us to spend this time together, so it’s not like just coming into training camp they’re getting an idea of what I want. They’ve spent some time and have had conversations about it. In Boston, you ran a number of sets with Jayson Tatum and Jaylen Brown getting them favorable matchups for them to exploit. Do you envision something similar with Jalen Green and Jabari Smith Jr.? Definitely. The more versatile you can be offensively as a player in general, the more it helps you. I want guys that can initiate offense. A lot of times guards and wings aren’t used to setting screens and being the playmaker out of pocket passes. All of those things take some time. A lot of guys are used to having the ball in their hands. We also have guys that really shoot the ball well off screens, so we want to space them and have them well-rounded. We’ll get a better idea of how to use guys, but I do like the idea of everybody being able to make a play, put the ball on the floor and create for other guys and not just trying to score for themselves. The more well-rounded they are, the better off it is for our team, and that’s my job: to put them in those positions to help them get there. In terms of your assistants and supporting staff, what sort of qualities are you looking for in any potential candidates? The first part would be exactly what I’m looking for, which is the relationship and relatability aspect. For me, I want an energetic group of coaches that can get out there and be hands-on. The relationship aspect is the biggest thing for me, where it’s uncomfortable conversations that you’re gonna have during the year — they have to be able to handle that. For me, that’s something I’ve always targeted — people that can connect with players just like I need to do. I want my staff to be a reflection of that as well. From a defensive standpoint, what have you been able to gather from last season’s tape? The team struggled mightily as a collective, but there were a few bright spots here and there. The first thing I would say is that we have competitive guys. What I saw on tape at times didn’t always translate to who they are as players. We have some naturally good defenders. The first part is doing your job individually but becoming a better team defensively as well. Lot of mistakes made were repetitive mistakes, whether it was overall team defense or assignments. I’ll put the onus on them to be able to guard one-on-one first of all, then we’ll always have the help behind it. But I’m looking to clean that area up and definitely improve in that area because we have competitive guys that have the ability to do it. That’s the first part of that mentality.
Does it help to have some defensive-minded players with experience on the roster like Jae’Sean Tate to help the others with coverages and playing better team defense? You would love for a lot of it to come from the players, but that’s my job as the coach as well, to point those things out. Accountability comes from everywhere — myself, players on the court — but you have to walk the walk yourself before you can talk to other guys about it. We want our players to do it, but, at the same time, we’re probably going to add some veterans that help in those areas as well. It’s a total effort starting from me, not sweeping anything under the rug as far as that, but once it’s instilled it comes down to players not making the same mistakes over and over again. Getting better in those areas. Speaking of adding players, you guys head into the summer armed with nearly $60 million in cap space. But do you see free agency as more of a chance to give this team a facelift or simply adding pieces around a young core? I would say more complementary, honestly. I mean you want to do both. You want to add veterans that aren’t just a voice only, you want them to be out there, play and push the guys. But, as I’ve said, regardless of free agency and the draft, we still have a group of guys we want to grow, and we’re looking for internal growth. More so than necessarily looking for an outside guy to try to save the day. We want these guys to grow, but we’re going to add pieces to push and compete for time and are out there to play to complement the young guys that we already have. You recently spent some time with Jalen Green and Tari Eason. What were some of your takeaways from those meetings? More of what I said — you see a fire and competitiveness within them and that’s the first thing. Just having that mentality. It’s a matter of nurturing that and pushing them to be the best version of themselves, which will ultimately help the team. That’s the first thing I look at, and, overall as a group, we have a lot of that — guys that are competitive, guys that want to be great and guys that have a chip on their shoulder. Those are the type of guys I look for, and, from there it’s just pushing that and getting the best out of that that I can. In Boston, you had two bigs in Al Horford and Robert Williams who were key in your success, particularly in the second half of the season. Why were those two so essential to your game plan and what elements of that are you looking for now with this new roster? We went against the grain of the NBA with all the small ball. I looked at the size and versatility that we had and it’s not just those two, although the double big lineups did help and they were versatile enough to do it. But you have to use what your personnel dictates. It also helped Jayson and Jalen go back to the two and three position, and they’re big wings as well, so we were big across the board. I just saw what we could be defensively as a unit for a bunch of guys that scored naturally, I thought that would help us there. For us, in general, you’ve got guys like Alperen (Şengün) for example, a big; and Jabari is a versatile guy that can play three, four and sometimes small-ball five with his height. So, the versatility is there as well. You just want to add complementary pieces. They do things very well, we’d like to add somebody to the mix that does something a little bit differently to have that versatility across the board. Does the collective age of the group impact the schematics you want to implement? This isn’t a team like Boston that had real veterans with quality years under their belt, up and down the roster. This is a team full of players between 19 and 22. Not at all. I think that goes with what I’m saying. You’ve all been playing basketball for a long time now. You’ve all been taught the game. I want guys that can catch on quickly but also adapt to what we’re trying to do. I’m not gonna hold anything back defensively or schematically because we’re a young group, that’d be going against what I’m saying. I want guys to get up to speed quickly, have smart, cerebral players that can do a lot of different things. The versatility is a part of that, but I’m not going to dumb it down because we have a younger team. I’m expecting everybody to catch up to speed and be able to use their strengths to our advantage. How important is spacing and shooting for what you want to run? A good chunk of what you’ve run in the past involved the maximization of the length and width of the half court — being flexible and dangerous. It’s big. It’s big. Especially when you already look at some guys that have the skillsets that Jalen and Kevin (Porter Jr.) have, these guys can attack the basket and get by. You want shooters surrounding them, but spacing is crucial there. Understand what you have with those guys, now it’s time to take the next step and make plays for others. That spacing is crucial, but I’ve said it — our numbers weren’t great from 3 last year, but it was due to shot selection more than actual shooters. Cleaning those areas up, making it easier on everybody taking better shots as a group will help us. What did you see from this team offensively last season from an on-court structural standpoint? What did you gather from the film? At times, just a lot of your turn, my turn. We want to be a little more collective unit out there. Young guys are ambitious and playing for certain things. Up until this point, a lot of them have had individual success. We want to cultivate that into team success. With me, that’s the job of a coach: to push that and get that out of them. You have to take their individual talents and they have a ton of them — we have guys across the board — but always take it back to the team concept.
Grown woman acting like 15yo fan. Your son is grown too now mama its a bad look being on others dick so much. First Bron and her dreams of eating dinner with him now Udoka. Sad
Hah, we sure saw a lot of that. Rockets finally broke me midway through the season and I hardly caught any of their games this year. I really pray that Udoka is able to change this, but man, a lot of it is up to the players and based on personnel as well.
He is hunting for versatile defensive PF vet off the market with planning to use Jabari as a SF with Jalen and Scoot playing the guards. Im super happy this is what i was saying whole year long…. And tbh it looks like they might be targetting Draymond Sengun Draymond Jabari Jalen KPJ playmaking size speed strength shooting this might be dope
KPJ is about to become great or quit basketball because of Green. I guess this is for the better. Dray would just need to stay healthy for the length of his contract. If we loved Pat Bev, we would LOVE dray. At least that's what I've heard from my GSW friends.
Paraphrasing but essentially... Silas - "we give them as much as they can handle, dumb it down, be patient" Ime - "we aren't holding anything back, not dumb it down, catch up or don't"
