Ime Udoka after Rockets brutal home loss to Hornets to open 2024-25 season

A lot of our problems can be traced back to spacing. Teams are getting comfortable crowding the paint against us. They have lots of time to do it.

Fred can space the floor and at least understands how to push the ball up efficiently. Brooks however is not good for pace or space sometimes. Not liking his fit with this lineup when we play fast. Really think the overall dynamism of our team would increase if we started Eason. Need someone who can run with Jalen in transition offense/defense. Really hope his 3PT shot has improved slightly.

 

oh man, the good old days

 

FVV will be fine but there's no reason any of the veterans on our team should play more than 28 to 32 minutes on any given night if everyone at their position is healthy. Especially if they're having an off shooting night, which Fred clearly was. We need to start transitioning toward the young core getting the most minutes at all five positions, whether they're starting or not.

 

Ime had a post practice interview like a week ago saying he's planning on reducing Fred's minutes from last season and acknowledged that he overworked him. I guess it didn't translate in the first game though. Let's see if he really meant it.

 

Ime needs to show he can deliver an offense that is not ISO here, ISO there......

The team plays hard, but it also needs to be smart.

DD

 

Coach is not concerned about distributing the ball as long as it’s the right shots. Green took a whole bunch I think you have to consider who is shooting. Percentages don’t lie.

Hope this 18 point choke job is a blessing in disguise for the Rox and they make the right adjustments. Just one game just build from that.

 

The Rockets should be playing 10 deep, with the rotation looking something like this:

PG: VanVleet (30) / Amen Thompson (18)
SG: Jalen Green (30) / Reed Sheppard (15) / Amen Thompson (3)
SF: Dillon Brooks (28) / Tari Eason (20)
PF: Jabari Smith Jr. (30) / Cam Whitmore (15) / Tari Eason (3)
C: Alperen Sengun (32) / Steven Adams or Jock Landale (16)

You adjust the bench minutes game by game depending on matchups and who has it working that night. Such a rotation gets all the important guys their minutes and every young player gets decent run.

They should also play up tempo as much as possible to wear out older or less deep teams.

 

Our offense is way too one dimensional. It causes many problems:

1- If the original pnr action doesn't work out, we take a bad shot almost for sure. Because we don't have a secondary action
2- Opposing teams just clog the paint. This is very easy both mentally and physically, they don't have to make a lot of decisions or run a lot.
3- On the other end we put a lot of effort on defense and then end up gassed out on the fourth.

It is true that we don't shoot well but we don't have a second or third plan as well when the shots don't fall, which is often the case. I think it is mostly on Ime at this point.

 

In other words, Ime and the coaching staff are not catering to our strengths enough and have not a proper offensive playbook nor strategy that fits this team. We cannot just keep praying on guys to make their threes. We actually have to adjust, make it harder on defenses by moving players and the ball. If we don’t and just expect guys to hit threes then we’re ****ed. Even with our strategy being what it is, I don’t think Jalen shooting three or four threes at the end of the 2nd half there was very poor judgment, momentum was switching and he needs to learn from it. I just fear Ime doesn’t even say this to Green behind closed doors. I do get him not calling Green out on those shots during a press conference though.

 

We should all feel lucky to have a coach like Ime. He doesn't get angry at Jalen no matter what because you have to treat superstars like a superstar. Ime is aware of everything. Bench Sengun, hell yeah, bench Tari, bench Amen...those are role players and it's normal.

 

I think people on here have an out of date view of NBA offensive coaching. It's incorrect to think Ime or any coach can "scheme up" an offense to be 3, 4, 5 pts per 100 more efficient in the regular season.

The league has changed. The game has been optimized and pretty homogenized. Mostly everyone's trying to do the same stuff, as Popovich has said. There are remarkably few dumb teams. Basically you have to do two things, which everyone knows:

1. Have the right principles, i.e.: try to take a lot of 3's, make quick decisions, collapse the defense and kick, crash the offensive glass, play with pace, minimize mid-range and post-ups except for a select few players etc.
2. Avoid obvious personnel mistakes, like playing two non-shooting bigs or asking guys to do things they simply can't do, like KPJ or Jeremy Sochan at PG etc.

After those two things 95% of regular season offensive success is pure talent and performance of your players. Look at the best offenses last year. There's no surprise team in the top 10 who makes it there with great X's and O's and limited talent.

We can still do a little better principles-wise and optimizing bench lineups, and Ime has said some stuff in press conferences that makes it clear he knows that.

So the next step up in our offense from mediocre to good won't come from scheme or play design. It will come from one thing: our players improving and playing better. That is what makes good offenses "work".

 

It often is a bad idea for a coach to make a player second guess their shot selection.

NBA players excell when they rely on muscle memory and instinct. The moment they secidn guess themselves on whether they need to take a shot or not they already let go of their muscle memory and are now thinking of their movements and making decisions a step slower slowing defenses to recover, block, strip etc


It's a very thin tight rope to manage between telling your guys to take good looks only and lowering the confidence of a player to where they second guess and hesitate on the court. The last thing the Rockets need is Jalen Green doubting himself, hesitating etc. That would just result in a cascading effect of playing worse.


Honestly I think that's what happened to Sengun in his first two years with Silas where he was probably coached to limit his three point attempts. Made him second guess all the time which causes those hesitations even when wide open.

 

Stop it. Green is not a superstar. He’s not popular either. Sengun > Green

 

That's a troll account lol.

 

I see that, but in a vacuum they were not the worst. But he has to recognize the context. Cannot just go up for your own shot repeatedly when the momentum is shifting, when you’re ahead but the opponent is gaining ground, you are clearly cold and there was no rhythm to it. He just did his own thing. I do hope Ime at least sees that and in the end Green does too, regardless of Ime having to point it out. I can imagine when they go through tape review, they stop it several times during those last 2 minutes and see where they lost the momentum for the game. Where the mistakes really started and it only snowballed from there. And several guys, starting with Green, see that better shots might have been available and he recognizes it was selfish of him to try to go for a homerun in extending the lead / stop the bleeding.

 

That's the kind of mindset you have to have if you are a defensive team.

Mda could also have a relaxed attitude about offense because we took on his system and were a very good offensive team .

Obviously you need the right mix of offense and defense , but I also think you need to let the coach control the identity.

You can argue we have a young , more offensively leaning personnel ... And that the coach should adapt . But still , the coach sets the identity.

And plus , if you think about our young offense , you can also think about our young defense . Amen and jabari are more defensive oriented players . Just as much as green and sengun are offensive guys .

I'd rather see us win 90-85 than lose 125-120

Even if that means guys had bad offensive games.

Cam Whitmore , and tari could also turn out to be better defenders than offensive players .

The important thing on offense right now for Udoka , it seems , is to get looks according to the math and to limit bad turnovers.

I'm sure that was one of his main messages .

Hopefully we don't shoot 37 percent from the floor and 30 percent from 3 as a team again.

I'd put in jaesean Tate . I really hope he is healthy

 

Now I watched the presser .

Entirely agree with his assessment

 

• Vecenie feels like Next Season will be Year Houston improves a lot as a whole team.
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• Vecenie said Charlotte without Mark Williams ..... that is a disappointing home loss
• Double teaming Sengoon in the post will be hard on Houston's other shooters, this strategy is real.