Udoka is the absolute worst coach in making in-game adjustments. His in-game adjustments are the worst, even worse than Doc Rivers. All he does is hype up the team and never takes any blame for his tactical failure—it's always the players' fault. Today, he benched all the starters in the 3nd half and never played them again. Sure, the bench players played well and made a great comeback, but if a bunch of bench players can overcome a full-strength Warriors team, then those guys wouldn't be bench players. He is delusional. He wants to be like Popovich. But Popovich has the ability and authority, and that's why the team respects him. But Udoka is a young coach with no skills, the whole team just doesn't respect him! Rockets need a new coach!
I am fine with Ime playing bench the entire quarter. They are more deserved the minutes. But I agree Ime has to improve in-game adjustments.
Immune has no offensive system but he makes adjustments. He went with the double big lineup to get back in the amavs game when that game seems onthe verge of a blowout.. he just needs to find an offensive assistant coach.
I thought subbing the whole team was a really good adjustment. He found a group with energy that brought us back into the game. I think the only issue I have is that they ran out of gas and he needed to get his better team out there to finish the game. I get that the 3rd stringers deserved to finish the game after the come back, but if they were out of steam, then use your other players to finish the game. Also, call a timeout for goodness sakes. Aaron Holiday was trapped with the Rockets down 6 and if he would of called the timeout, we would of had a chance to score the ball. Instead we lost the ball, Draymond hits a 3 and the game is over.
Yes, the Rockets need to listen to the opinion of the poster who thinks players were benched in the third “half.”
Ime is screwing up every single thing in the offense and blaming it on not having a superstar. Everything else can be done better while we wait for a superstar player and a superstar coach. You came out and said to your hardest working team in the NBA that you're sad you don't have Anthony Edwards... Anthony Edwards has less wins than your team, the wolves have closed fewer games than the rockets. Yeah we wish we had a Mazzulla buddy but guess what we only have each other.
There are always going to be cases where bench players are playing better than some of the starters or they are more effective in certain matchups. As Rocket fans, we all know about the Rockets comeback in game 6 of the playoffs against the Clippers in 2015. The Rockets trailed by 19 in the 3rd quarter. Their comback occurred in the 4th quarter and was led by backups Josh Smith and Corey Brewer while starters, including Harden , were on the bench. Same with Iggy winning the Finals MVP as a bench player. It happens. Udoka is very well respected by his players and opponents. I don't believe that there is any basis for saying that his players don't respect him. His ex-players in Boston still speak very highly him. When you look at where the Rockets are now vs where they were when Udoka took over, you can't really complain. It's been an amazing turn around. There's issues with the mix of the skills of the current roster. We are still the gang that can't shoot straight and the same defenses are effective against everyone on the roster. We have been overcoming these things and over-performing by out working our opponents from night to night. It's difficult to maintain that level of effort over an 82 game schedule and there's a good chance that it won't translate well to the playoffs when most all teams are also giving max effort but it's really our only option right now. We have to just try to outwork the competition because we are not going to magically learn to shoot tomorrow. It's amazing that we've been able to win this many games when you consider how bad of a shooting team we are. Currently, our only rotational player with above average efficiency is Amen. Dillon has shot the 3 well this year, but overall his efficiency is still low. FVV was never a dominant offensive player, but his shooting and efficiency have been terrible this year. Jabari has done some good things but he's still a below league average in shooting and efficiency. The bulk of our shots go to Jalen and Alpie. Jalen has always had issues with efficiency and consistency. He's improved in some areas this year but we still can't depend on him from game to game. Unfortunately, Sengun's efficiency has fallen off a cliff this season. Overall, Green is inefficient but amazingly, he's been more efficient than Sengun this year. Sengun has been one of the 3 least efficient starting centers in the entire league this year. When you look at how we shoot the ball, it's not really surprising that we're prone to periodic offensive droughts from game to game. We don't have that guy to just give the ball to and let him go get a bucket in tough situations. You can try different things, but currently when things get tight, we are putting the ball in the hands of inefficient players and then hoping that they can consistently come through. The good news is that our guys are mostly really young and still developing. I also fully expect to see some roster moves to balance out the teams skillset and bring in some missing skills. If you were coaching against Houston, how would you defend? Probably pack the paint and even play some zone if your team had that among it's defenses. Well, that's exactly what we've seen our opponents do. Unless we start beating those defenses, then we will likely continue to see it. Defensively, we switch a ton and will continue to. Like every team in the league, we give up an amount of open 3s but right now our opponents have been shooting those open 3s at a better percentage than before. Due to the success we've had, teams are taking us more seriously and we're getting their best game. We are not sneaking up on anyone anymore.
Sengun is the shocker to me. He seems to be just throwing the ball up when under the basket or with his baby hooks. He isn't flicking his wrist or following through.
As we improve, our better players have higher expectations on them and more pressure. It's one thing to put up numbers when you are losing most nights and the opponents are in cruise control. Then you go to where you're getting opponents best games and you are all of a sudden in tight situations in many games. If you're one of the better teams on the league, then teams aren't going to let you just take your time and back somebody down every posession. You're going to have to be able to counter what opponents are doing to make them pay and that will change how they defend you. Sengun is still really young. He can learn to be effective from areas other than down low with his back to the basket. He can expand his game to become an effective passer from out top. It's not just Sengun either. Green is by far our best player at getting his own shot, but he is still learning about shot selection and when to try and take over games. Amen is a phenominal talent but in order to be the elite player that so many people believe he can be, he's got to improve his handles. Currently, he's a straight line driver. He's added the euro step this year to give him some side to side movement on his finish, but his drives still start out as straight lines. When teams are clogging the lane as we've been seeing, that makes navigating through traffic difficult. Obviously, his shooting needs to improve but I think it will based on the improvements that we've seen so far. Ultimately, to be a contender, we're going to need that high end guy that can put the team on his back and carry us in tough situations. Currently, we don't have that guy. We hope our young guys can develop into that but there's no way to tell. All of the "he's the youngest guy to do this or that ever in the NBA" is great but improvement doesn't keep increasing linearly. The Jordan's or Jokics generall had some major leaps that few other players have ever made. You can't count on our guys making thise same kind of leaps. That's why I fully expect a trade if the right player ever becomes available.
Ime took over the worst team in the league and turned it into possibly a 50 win team in 2 seasons without a superstar and a group of flawed players. Are there things he can improve, absolutely, but expecting this team to be better than they've been this season and that he's what is holding them back is delusional.
the only player he shouldn't put back into the game was Amen. he was awful. Would have liked to see Reed come in for some extra shooting down the stretch.
But he did, to rest Jeenathan. And his rebounding tenacity helped a lot getting it from 12 down to 2 in the 1st half of the 4th Q.
