Honestly, it is a waste of time watching him he has no answers for what good offensive teams are doing, just play harder. DD
There are some things he might not be good at…but he is absolutely correct about the lack of effort and competitiveness. Absolutely great teams may be able to do that and get away with it but that is not us. There will be other butt whippings if he allows it to continue.
Teams lack leadership, and accountability, the players know that no matter what they do, they are going to play, Ime isn't going to bench his favorites. This leads to complacency, this is 100% on Ime....if he doesn't like the effort bench em. DD
Tonight in the Toyota Center I saw for myself. The Rockets are so mechanical on offense. FVV's return might have thrown them off, adjusting, but it was awful to watch live.
for some reason, they struggle mightily against this mediocre Kings team…they have had our number Would the Rockets beat them in a playoff series? I seriously doubt it
Exactly we have no player that is good enough to get by their man consistently, not a single guy who can do it off the dribble. Amen sometimes can, but he isn't good enough when they pack the paint. We really need a better player than FVV at PG, he is too slow to play the position in a playoff series, he is a stop gap, sure, but he isn't a true dribble penetrator. DD
The issue is Rockets are playing against 1-2 Zone Defense illegal 3 second No Calls. And Clogging the Paint 3 Second Violation No Calls. The Referees are a huge burden, with zero respect to younger players. Veterans on Sacramento getting calls in crucial situations. John Goble ejecting Ime Udoka and Alperen Sengun at Sacramento is frustration by no call fouls.
Benching doesn't solve everything. If there are certain players that have a specific skill. Like shooting. If you see a Zone Defense why isn't Aaron Holiday, Jeff Green not on the Floor, both are in shape and are shooting better. Why was Jabari Smith and Fred VanVleet on the floor when they were terrible, out of shape, scared to shoot, slowing down the pace on purpose giving a HUGE Advantage to the older Sacramento Team. No common sense with Ime Udoka.
Let me guess. "it's his fault, it's his fault, it's also his fault, it's his fault, also their fault too" ?? How'd I do?
It's really worrying that Ime never takes a moment to criticize himself or admit his mistakes. I think this is a recipe for a total disaster down the line.
Agreed. I can already sense he's not the coach to take them all the way. He's excelled as the coach to wipe the stain of Silas out of their mouths and get them from A to B. He has too many deficiencies to take them from B to C.
I think IME overvalues defense and undervalues offense. Leading to our team being unbalanced - the Rocket's best regular season team was so efficient at scoring the ball other teams couldn't keep up -even with Harden and CP3 on defense. This team can play lock down defense but it is taxing and when we are down, very hard to come back from when we are playing people who are low percentage shooters. Even adding ONE 40% 3pt shooter would make a massive difference. Our main roster 3pt shooters FVV - not a great shooter - streaky JG - Streaky Amen- not good Bari - around avg Sengun - not good Tari - around avg Brooks - average We don't have a single elite or PLUS 3pt shooter playing...not one, and I question whether Ime would play one if they were substandard or below avg on D. We are unbalanced....and thus not consistently good. DD
I seriously doubt if he can actually take this team from B to C. I'm not sure how much of our success this season is thanks to his in-game coaching. If we want to be a real contender, we need a coach who knows how to make great adjustments on the fly.
He acts like the paint being packed is a regular thing in the NBA. For other playoff teams it's an occasional thing. For great teams you can't pack the paint. We've reached the point where the paint is excessively packed 9 games out of 10, the secret is fully out now. This is the result of "he's not a good shooter but he's a better player and thus the team has to improve if I play him". No the 5 most talented players are not necessarily the best fit/production. Everything has limits in the NBA including defense and rebounding. The front office wants to be good in the playoffs and didn't bother improving the one of the worst shooting teams in the NBA after multiple deadlines. Didn't hire an assistant, so they believe they've got it. Ime still not giving enough thought to offense. You don't get to blame that on the players, you said this roster has what it needs. You can't clap people into making 3's unfortunately. The Kings rotation is full of bad and lazy defenders. The only way they were able to compete with us defensively is "f*ck it let's pack the paint to death, we take our chances, they have to work hard for everything". This increases our required volume of 3's for a team that's already one of the worst shooting NBA teams. It reduces finishes at the rim and FT's - the most important points in basketball. However, all that can't be fully resolved now. We're way further from AVERAGE shooting than people think. Ime doesn't seem to understand how bad this is and it's a problem he must fix in his career. He simply makes the game harder on his own players by ignoring this. He makes them have to spend a crazy amount of effort on offense. The only thing we can do right now is play more of our shooters and fewer of our defenders. The only defensive problem we have is that we're a very short team. Brooks and FVV are tiny for their positions. Amen, Green and Sengun are average height. Sengun, FVV and Brooks are not athletic either so nothing to make up for their height. No one but Amen has a good wingspan. How can you be obsessed with defense and not care about this? 58 points in the paint. Don't you think it's because you're starting a short terrible rebounder with alligator arms at PF knowing full well our C deserves and needs defensive protection? He barks and barks but ultimately they will just shoot over him from near the basket. This is not positionless basketball Ime, you misunderstood the memo. Having said all of that, the team was not great either and overall they've been too chill in the first quarters for my liking too. I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for not having chemistry after not being fully healthy for two months and the starting lineup changing constantly. I'll give everyone including Ime a chance till next game to pick it up. Don't play with fire Ime, check yourself. The warriors and Lakers are not messing around. We're missing out on overtaking the Grizzlies, they are struggling somewhat. Nuggets are now quite far ahead. It's not about defense Ime, it's about the whole thing, it's all connected, offense affects defense and vice versa. They clearly don't have the capacity to play any more defense or improve rebounding everyone has a limit and you pushed it to a good maximum. Stop nitpicking now. Sometimes it feels like Udoka is holding a grudge against the Celtics and insists on proving he has a way of winning that's the exact opposite of Mazzulla. Who needs 3's if you have rebounding - that is a dumb idea Ime. It's just end of regular season and you can see teams have started fighting for rebounds in playoff mode just like we do. That gap will shrink even more in the playoffs. Surely during that season Mazzulla taught him a lot about offense, that guy is an offensive genius. It's time to lean on those lessons he gave you Ime.
