Zach Lowe: Houston keeps surprising me that they are not trying

Traits as to why he's one of the worst coaches in the NBA...

- Total Incompetence
Obviously no clue on the offensive side of the ball..
Not much better on D, which is supposed to be his strength
Xs and Os
Rotations/substitution patterns

- narcissistic egomaniac /character issues
Ime never accepts responsibility. Instead, he throws his players under the bus. No accountability whatsoever.

He is damaging the development of our young players.

Ime also has an amount of power into personnel decisions, and it's hurting the team.
He has a type of player he likes, and...
doesn't have the patience, wanting to go for it now.

Dude's perpetuating a "culture" that is already pervasive in the organization.

Need I go on.
Ime was okay for the last phase, but we need to get rid of this ìdiotic drill sergeant ASAP.

 

"Total Incompetence" is an opinion, not a fact.

Saying Ime is a "bottom 5 coach" is very specific statement. I'm not defending Ime, just curious how he got there

 

I think the inability to install anything approaching a coherent NBA offense speaks for itself

 

I’m not looking for any major deal, but I would like to get rid of DFS, even if it means we add a pick, and get a playable-player in return. Yes, playable - doesn’t care about the position, just a guy who can play well for 10-15 minutes off the bench, that’s all.

 

It’s not that they are not trying. They are trying to build a bully ball defensive team full of grizzled vets, because they are stupid.

 

Lol the new savior mini Bruce almighty

 

His record also speaks for itself. Last season, he had the 5th best record in the league. The prior season, they had the 4th best record in the league.

So your statement that he can't install "anything approaching a coherent NBA offense" and that he is a "bottom 5 coach" is completely counter to actual real world results.

I'm not suggesting he's a HOF coach. It's just that was a very specific statement so I'm wondering how you came up with that. If you made it up, just say so.

Often folks often have a hard time understanding the difference between fact and opinion. If you can factually back it up, that would be interesting to know.

 

There’s much more to it than regular season record. How are the young players developing? How do they play in the playoffs when it matters, what is the record relative to the talent on the team, since he obviously has input on the roster construction how well are we positioned going forward. He fails at all of those other criteria. I don’t know he is bottom five, but he is certainly a horrible fit for a young team. Of course, we won’t be young for long if he has his way.

 

It will be interesting to see what happens when more teams start competing due to the lottery changes. I suspect getting to 50 wins/home court advantage will be much harder.

 

I can only assume that you either never watched the Rockets play or that you don't know what you are seeing when you attempt to watch basketball. Lots of terrible coaches have been dragged to solid win loss regular season records...it doesn't mean they are quality coaches.

Hell, Dusty Baker is one of the most incompetent managers the Astros have ever had, but the talent on the team managed to win a World Series despite him.

Talent can go a long way to overcome incompetent coaching, that's why "scoreboard" arguments fail to adequately defend awful coaches.

You have to actually watch the games and know what you are seeing if you want to judge a coach. See for yourself how many times he's outcoached, see how often his incompetent player management or his complete lack of running any kind of competent NBA offense puts his team in a hole. See how many 4th quarter leads he manages to blow with his incompetent decisions. How player management decisions compound problems across a season. Things of that nature.

We're not discussing something that you can wrap easily with a bow using a handful of metrics.

 

I'm just curious about the actual data. We are all disappointed in many of the results. But bad results don't mean bad decisions. I think people lose sight of that.

You can make great decisions and have bad results ...and vice versa.

The simplistic data suggests he's an elite coach. So I just find it odd the level of hatred towards him. I recall some people calling attention to some nuanced data sets where he under performs in certain situations. For example, maybe when he plays playoff teams, he has a sub-500 record? Or maybe in tight games, he loses those games more often than not?

I'm just curious. A bottom 5 coach is an odd statement to me.

 

Well, if you can't easily state it with a "handful of metrics", then why did you provide a "simple metric" as proof? I agree he's had his troubles, but I can't find any metric that would suggest he's "bottom 5".

The team is very good ...by any metric. Yet the team has also underperformed expectations.

 

And god I wish he wouldn't have.

 

Are you arguing just to argue or do you genuinely believe Ime Udoka is a quality coach?

 

Kd had a hell of season much better than Jalen green I do not understand all the hate for him at all. Maybe he’s not a good human being ok but he’s a beast at bball

 

Don’t care about Jalen anymore, but only box score watchers and casuals think KD was a beast at BBall last year. He shoots the ball well. That is the extent of his skill at this juncture of his career. He was a turnover machine, poor defense, and a chemistry killer. Watch the games not the metrics and you will see why knowledgable fans are down on him. Oh, and he also wasn’t available for the playoffs, which doesn’t bode well for next year.

 

****

 

ranking of coaches is not something factual, it is an opinion that should be based on facts, but there is room for different evaluations. As a counter, can you list 10 coaches you think he was better than last year? If not, it is totally acceptable that someone thinks he is bottom 5.

He was the worst performing coach in the whole playoffs. And we knew that he would be, no one thought that they won 52 games so they should be good.

He is doing okay record wise in the regular season and that’s about it in the positive column for ime.

 

In other words the Houston Rockets have their pokerface on.

 

Just because he can hit the 3 doesn't mean you want him playing outside often, with Sengun those 3's are a bonus.
The way you optimize him is putting him in the paint where he's most effective, where he can be SenHub.

You might optimize Amen by doing the above but that's what they did most of the year and that resulted in KD and Sengun being double teamed on a very high percentage of their touches, no matter where they got it.

Amen's gotta find that 3 ball.