Ime Udoka benches starters, criticizes lack of competitiveness in loss to Warriors 2/13/2025

The Rockets are 12th in offensive rating because they lead the entire league in offensive rebounds and 2nd chance points by a large margin, and last time I checked, grabbing offensive rebounds did not require any schemes or elite coaching.

 

Excuse me for jumping in.

TS% is shooting efficiency. ORtg is offensive efficiency. The two are usually corelated because better shooting usually results in better scoring efficiency. However, there are other factors that affect offensive efficiency (e.g. turnovers negatively, offensive rebounding positively). The Rockets are 6th in turnover rate and 1st in offensive rebounding. Those two positives are enough to offset the poor shooting efficiency from one of the worst to middle of the pack offensively.

The Wizard, BTW, are 27th in TS%, 23rd in TOV%, and 26th in OReb%. They are dead last in ORtg.

 

Correct. Which is why I think comparing the Rockets and Wizards TS% is just cherry picking.

 

So you think that's an accident not part of the plan to make up for our poor shooting?

 

How do you plan for getting offensive rebounds?

 

Bottom line is our offense is crap. We were winning because we were kinda mitigating with awesome defense. But now the defense is heading towards being crap as well.

 

You ****ing moron, lol.

 

I wouldn't say it's cherry picking, not totally. Like I said, TS% and ORtg are USUALLY corelated.

The top 3 TS% teams are also top 3 ORtg. Only 2 teams in top 10 ORtg are not also top 10 in TS%.

The large discrepancy between the Rockets' TS% (28th) and ORtg (12th) is an anomaly. I'd say it's probably due to offensive rebounding, which we led the league by a wide margin. I am not sure how offensive rebounding at that high level can be sustained for the whole season. I mean, you seldom hear coaches say they are trying to improve their offense by crashing the offensive board more aggressively. The normal course of action to improve offense is to find ways to help players to shoot better.

 

The same way you plan to play at a fast pace, direct your player(s) to stay back and focus on crashing the boards as you would direct them to run on opponent misses.

 

And we are 11th in fewest turnovers.

Seems pretty clear the coaching staff knows the strengths and weaknesses of the team and our offense and defense reflects it.

 

Is it fair to say that directing your player(s) to stay back and focus on crashing the boards is something even the worst coach in NBA history could easily do?

 

LOL..... If that was your only criteria for coaching, sure. Fortunately the NBA is far more complicated.

 

He directed that comment at me and I couldn’t even get past the first paragraph. **** was making me dumber just reading it.

 

I wouldn't worry about it if I were you two. A drop in a bucket kind of thing you know.

 

I'm starting to understand now that it has a lot to do with not understanding how basketball works. This guy thinks other coaches are not telling the appropriate players to crash the boards. He thinks "We're going to try to get as many rebounds as possible" is the same as "let's play a slow tempo" or "let's play a fast tempo". They think if you have roughly the 25th most talented offensive team, it's absurd to expect 23rd or drop to 27th because "they are what they are". How hilarious is that? The think we're playing NB2k and the players/teams have ratings like 95 out of 100 lol. So any conversation about just an uptick in offense forces them to feign ridicule because it shakes their erroneous principle. You can just see that their are so many contradictions. How would they explain the Cavs become the top offense without adding anything significant to the roster? How do these things happen if not tactics, rotation choices and motivation? These people we're arguing with are just like JB Bickerstaff. Loser mentality. "We did everything we could with the crumbs you gave me" is always the schtick.

When you hire a coach who understands offense, they are the opposite of pessimistic. They are never the least hopeful, like these negative nancies we have over here.

Since they are acting like they forgot: the only contribution Ime had to rebounding this season was at the beginning of the season when he came up with the truly stupid idea of all 5 players hitting the boards, no matter what it meant for our offense. Here his offensive deficiencies were on full display, not even being able to project that it's going to completely choke out the transition points and back-peddling half court points for a team that is struggling to create in the half court because it's their first time doing it seriously. You usually do the 5 guys hitting the glass on a great slow halfcourt team, a major oversight by Ime. We were leading the league in rebounding and our offensive rating was LOWER than this. The idea failed miserably and Udoka had to ditch it. He was once again saved by an injury, when Amen joined Green in the starting lineup we became a significant transition team in the NBA, giving birth to new points out of thin air. That's how you can get some more points if you don't have great shooters. Every modern offensive coach in the NBA is talking about speed as the new tool to exploit. We have the most athletic and fastest players in the NBA and some people are flabbergasted at the notion that speed can take advantage of lesser space to some extent.

If Ime doesn't get his **** together, this is his future:



That's what these coaches do and I am SCREAMING for Udoka not to waste his potential falling into this category. Don't become the guy who comes and teaches the fundamentals and then gets canned in favor of someone who the Superstar thinks is a better balance of tough, creative and motivational. Those coaches will ALWAYS raise the floor I accept that. However, they never win championships. Specialist coaches don't win championships, two way coaches win championships (Pop, Kerr, Malone, Bud, Mazulla). Ironic because Ime understands players have to play both sides, but doesn't apply that to himself.

Udoka's pure talent is much higher than JBB, right now he's headed in this direction. If he doesn't change himself, like JBB, when his superstar gets him fired he will be onto the next tanking team to teach them fundamentals and defense.

The people on this board defending Ime essentially believe he, too, his maxed his potential. They are just NEGATIVE pure and simple. They think this is the best Ime can do, the best all 15 players can do, that Ime's assistant can't again have better offensive ideas than him. Think about it in the big picture for a moment. What kind of person thinks nothing can improve in literally the youngest (by adjusted usage) offensive operators in the playoff picture. No one in the playoff race is allowing younger players to run as much of their offense. It's the most improvable team and they see it as a dead end. Ime is in his 3rd season only and doesn't have a lead assistant and they think this is it this is his maximum if you ask for more you're crazy.

TL;DR version: you know when you're out with a group and everyone is suggesting ideas and there's just that one person who says no to everything and never suggests anything? That's the guy. That's the archetype. That's who we're dealing with when it comes to these posters.

 

Exactly.

 

Very important: any increase in TS% will result in an increase of offensive rating. Not every increase of offensive rating will result in TS% increasing materially.

This is important because of all the factors that go into offensive rating formula if you break it down, there is a solid chance to improve our TS% and no realistic chance of improving anything else without major changes to the roster or rotation.

That is the ONLY reason we are here talking about TS%. Other teams can talk about raising their offensive rating by increasing their offensive rebounding for example. We're done in that department.

If you dig even further into TS% and break that down, you will discover that it's not realistic to improve anything materially except transition (by prioritizing the right players' usage and lineups) and 2PT% (by cutting down on our idiotically high midrange volume).

Would love your thoughts on whether I'm misunderstanding any of this.

 

Great take.

 

There are some posters..... Who for whatever reason.... can't accept that this extremely young roster is not very good offensively. Initially FVV was their target during his awful shooting slump and Amen was just being held back..... Whoops

Now Ime is their focus, but never the actual roster.

 

The bottom line is for this team to be a top offensive team and contender is we have to become better at outside shooting. Now you could say that we have a young team that will develop into better outside shooters, in which case the onus is on the head coach to put those players in a position to succeed.

If you believe we have a young team that can only marginally improve it's outside shooting, then the onus is on Stone and Fertita to re-vamp the roster to provide Ime the necessary components to improve the offense. If Ime fails at producing a top offense while having the components to do so, he needs to go.

A third way to look at it is both things need to improve. We need a better roster and Ime needs to improve. I am very happy with the re-build and believe we are way ahead of schedule. That being said, expectations have been raised and I don't think this fanbase needs to be content to wait another 2 or 3 years to contend. In my mind, status quo next year, is unacceptable.

There is no reason, other than unforeseen injuries, that this team should not excel next year at both defense (thanks to Ime) and offense, thanks to the emergence of Amen. The FO now has enough information and assets to make a huge jump as early as next year, by re-vamping this roster to provide the necessary outside shooting to make us competitive. Surround Amen with efficient 3&D players and bring enough offensive knowledge to the coaching staff and we could become an emerging dynasty. If the FO sits on their hands, we will miss the opportunity and OKC, Spurs, Memphis, and the Lakers will surpass us.

It will be very painful for some of the fanbase, but we will have to break some eggs to perfect this omelot. Our focus should be to build around Amen and not the outmoded model of a post up center with limited outside shooting and with good, but not great defense. Sengun is probably our best trade piece and could be the centerpiece to acquire the necessary roster to become elite at both sides of the floor, which is going to be necessary to compete with young rosters of OKC, Memphis and SA going forward. It has become evident to me that posters like @ApacheWarrior and Clutch were right in their assessment of what it will take for us to become real contenders.