Ime Udoka after Rockets fall to Thunder in NBA Cup 12/14/2024

let me guess, the players were soft. they didn't execute it... blabla

did he take accountability for the first time ever?

 

I’m happy the Rockets at least made it to Vegas, but our lack of shooting and star power puts a huge cap on this roster

Jabari is the most efficient player in our starting lineup with a TS% of 56.5%, which is still below average

Rockets were 29th in FG% and 28th in 3 point percentage before they showed up tonight and shot 37% from the field and 24% from deep on 46 attempts

we were also 25th in free throw percentage before going 15-25 from the line

 

Missed shots

 

Shooting is always the problem, but why we never solve it?

 

He should blame Stone for building around a soft euro and and steaky guard.

 

Streaky guard I’ll take but I don’t think Sengun is in any way soft. He gets a ton of contested boards and is one of the most physical guys in the league today

 

don't disagree with that at all. but his offense is disastrous. it matches with how he played for those old enough to have watched Ime. he had 0 offense and focused only on defense. 90% of our shots seem to happen with 3-4 seconds left on the clock. the fact that reed sheppard can't even get tick is an indictment on him as well.

 

This is spot on. The question is now, do we take a first-round exit in the playoffs and let the team grow, hopefully to something better in 26, or gamble by making a trade?

 

Look at the Kings.

this is why I hate the whole let the team build and don't rush. just because we make the playoffs doesn't mean we're on OKC's trajectory. we're winning a lot of games by catching teams by surprise as well.

 

Sullivan is not it either, unfortunately.......sometimes it does not work out.

 

This isn’t hard to see. Our lack of shooting caught up to us. It’s a roster problem and it’s exasperated by the tool a consistent high level defensive effort takes on a team. If we can make some moves to be more balanced by actually having shooters we can take that next step to contending status. Until then we are going to be a 1st round exit team; 2nd round at best. But honestly thats another huge step from last season.

just feels like our shooting, and especially our guard play, is holding us back.

 

NBA is a superstar league. When you get to playoffs and in these kind of games, whoever has the most superstars will win. They get the benefit of the call from the refs too.

This year we're winning by committee but history has shown the mass majority of those teams never make it far. Remember that 60 win Hawks teams that won by committee and immediately got shut down in the playoffs.

 

Houston cant shoot Rockets

 

It's pretty simple, OKC has:

better defense

better shooting

better 1A

 

Extending Green instead of a prove it year a la Kuminga

Seems bad

Is bad

 

If SGA didnt get a superstar whistle 15 FTAs its still a winnable game.

Sengun and Jalen had 0 each with like 5min left to play.

This offense is terrible and we dont have shooters. We need freebies.

 

Yeah, I'm impatient too. We have too many young guys to take our time. We will need to make serious decisions on paydays for 5 more of the core 7 in the next few years.

 

He was fair in his assessment, only Tari & Amen brought their A game though he also acknowledges that the 3 fouls on 3pt shots killed us. He will never own up to his mistakes and he’s rarely asked about things like "why did you go with Aaron over Tari” or "why didn’t you change your defense or rotation when it was obvious players [Adams] couldn’t challenge their 3pt shooters"?