All of the young guys drafted or on the roster prior to Udoka dont have a guaranteed future with this team. Seems as if his input on Thompson/Whitmore allows him to be more gushing in their reviews vs the same sort of support for Jalen, Sengun, Jabari, Eason etc... I hope the ego Udoka is bringing with him is justified.
It’s usually Udoka making the ladies get all gushing down below. These guys are so good it’s a role reversal.
I normally don't like coaches meddling too much on personnel decisions. Of course they should have some inputs because they need the type of players to do what they envision the team to do. But coaches are generally shortsighted (always win now) by the nature of their job, which is to win games. Their jobs are always on the line by the immediate results, not by long term building. But, after 3 years of ineptitude by the FO decision makings, and the spinelessness of Silas as the HC not standing up to anybody from the bosses to the players, I welcome a more assertive coach at the helm. I don't think Udoka is a miracle worker like some posters here fantasize. I don't even know if he is a very good coach. Exceeding Silas is an extremely low bar. He said all the right things. But I've learned a long time ago that these people saying the right things in the media means very little. It's how they handle their job that matters. So we'll see. I am kind of cautiously optimistic.
How can we go from “3 years of ineptitude by FO” to one of the most talented young cores/rosters in the league? I look at our roster and get the impression the FO did everything right since Harden left — well, not everything, but clearly they did something right or we wouldn’t have five 20 year olds that all have a chance to be very good to great players in this league. The FO did what they did with what we had — which wasn’t much after succumbing to Harden’s demands prior to his quitting. It’s not all Hardens fault. Morey didn’t have a back bone nor did Tilman. They placated Harden instead of making more subtle roster moves. Harden wanted to get rid of Howard. Harden wanted to get rid of CP3. Harden wanted Westbrook. Harden wanted to get rid of Westbrook. For all the flack Tilman gets for the CP3 contract and subsequent trade, Harden and Morey deserve just as much. And to make it worse, as soon as they didn’t get what they wanted — they ran off “together” (Eventually). I don’t like tanking. But ultimately we have the roster we have because we let Silas and Stone do their thing. They put out **** lineups and lost games. We drafted well 3 years in a row. I don’t see the ineptitude, I see success.
There's a fine line between rizz and sexual harassment! Hopefully Udoka doesnt start benching and trading guys who dont "fit" and in the end we get another Bill OBrien egomaniac that doesnt deserve his self entitlement and sets the franchise even further back.
Tanking is not hard. What have they done right other than having created a chaotic environment for them to lose a lot of games? They got lucky getting #2 and #3 picks. (#4 this year was somewhat unlucky.) They drafted the most obvious players at those positions. They had a choice to pick between Green and Mobley. We still don't know which player will turn out better. And Mobley had made it clear he didn't want to play with KPJ, so in effect they didn't really have a choice. Picking Smith was also a no brainer after Paolo and Chet were taken. Even this year, taking Amen was pretty much expected by everybody after Wemby, Miller and Scoot were taken. Whitmore was also dropped to their lap. The only good move in the past three drafts was trading up to take Sengun (and they let Silas grossly misuse him). Everything else was pretty much consensus BPA. In terms of trading and signing FA, they almost signed Dipo to a max. Only luck prevented them from doing so. They signed Theis and started him for no reason. They signed Fernando and wanted him to be the starting C. They hung on to Gordon for 1.5 seasons too long. The most egregious bad decision was making KPJ the head honcho and stuck to it even though everybody and his mom knew it had no promise. This offseason, they almost wanted to sign Harden, which would have been a bad decision. They overpaid for Brooks (overpaid FOR him, not just TO him). Yeah these are just off on top of my head.
Udoka has a menacing look about him. Like, if you don't follow my instructions I will beat the hell out of you. Nothing personal.
Ime and his killer stare command respect. The previous coach, at best, triggered a sentiment of sympathy and pity. Alpha vs. Beta, winner vs. loser type. Killer vs. "nice guy". Confidence vs. insecurity. I am confident it will set the tone for the team, will translate, and will be a key to turning the culture of the team around, towards accountability and success.
Dang it Silas why won’t you let @Clutch take down your picture and give the Udoker his proper place on the front page of CF? @WestendMassive @Os Trigonum @DaBeard @don grahamleone @udoker
https://theathletic.com/4714139/2023/07/24/rockets-ben-sullivan-assistant-coach/ Ben Sullivan sat down with The Athletic to discuss the recent happenings in Vegas, thoughts on Houston’s rookies, coaching philosophies and more. Now that you’ve had some time to reflect on summer league, what was the overall experience like for you serving as head coach? I love doing summer league. It’s an awesome experience. You get a chance to do something different, the head coaching role and to have different responsibilities, use different skill sets. And it’s a tremendous developmental stage, not only for the players who get to showcase what they can do and what they’ve been working on. But also for the coaches to grow their skill set and expand what they’re able to do. Watching that, seeing and being a part of that, it’s great. You had a unique vantage point of the early stages of Cam Whitmore’s development. What about his upside intrigues you the most? Where do you want to see improvement? Obviously, the raw talent jumps off the page, right? Like his physical gifts, speed, athleticism, explosiveness. He’s finishing around the rim, able to cut and score, shooting 3s and pull-ups and getting to the basket. He displayed a lot of different stuff. And I really, I really like it. And he’s just so young, like he’s 19 years old. He’s going to have to grow in all areas of his game — his defense, his offense, understanding of concepts, what we’re trying to execute as a team, spacing. There’s a list that goes on and on for any young player that comes into the league. So to say that there’s one thing specifically, it’s really hard to narrow it down to just one where I would want to see him grow because he has so much room to grow in all areas of his game. From a tactical standpoint, how strong is the correlation between some of the X’s and O’s you guys ran in Vegas and what the new coaching staff plans to implement in training camp and the regular season? Just the overall philosophy of competitiveness, unselfishness, and defensive toughness. Those core principles of what we’re about and having that defensive mindset that Ime (Udoka) always talks about. Those are the types of things that really correlate. And then also the terminology, the language that’s used, the overall defensive structure and technique, all that stuff gets put in place. And so now for guys like Cam, Amen, Jabari and Tari, they went through a training camp so a lot of that will feel similar to them when we started training camp. Defensively, the team switched quite a bit in summer league. Has that been a point of emphasis over the past few weeks? To be completely honest, for our particular summer league journey, we almost had two different teams. So we started with a different starting five and by the end, four of those five starters were gone. So I wouldn’t say that switching is just the end all, be all of everything but it’s a personnel-driven philosophy. If you have players that can guard multiple positions then that’s a strategy that you would want to use and if you don’t have that, then you wouldn’t. In the first two games when we had more size, we had Jay Huff and Jabari, we didn’t switch as much. By the end we were very small so we had to try and switch, bother (opponents), create some turnovers and battle. So we had to do some things a little bit differently and switch more frequently. But I wouldn’t say just switching in and of itself is something that we’re just trying to emphasize. But I do know Ime likes switching — we switched a lot at the last place — but he’s not the type of coach where you just do things one way. We’re going to look at our personnel, we’re going to get who we’re playing and then try to employ the best strategy for our team against the other team. What was the collaboration process like between you and the other assistants on staff during summer league and how do you see that translating to the regular season? That was one of the huge benefits of summer league. We had almost the entire staff out there. We were able to meet, talk, get dinners and do bus rides and all those types of things were really great. It’s like a bonding experience. We got to know everybody a little bit better and got to work together. It’s one thing to know a person on a human level like a friend and another to know how we work together, workflow, all that kind of stuff. And so using that time to get to know everybody was a really cool thing. You’ve long been regarded in some league circles as a shooting guru. What are your pillars as far as improvement in that area is concerned? Just to clear it up, I’m not a shooting guru. I’ve never said that. I don’t think of myself like that. As far as shooting, I’ve talked about this before. I worked in San Antonio with Chip Engelland, one of the great teachers of shooting and the game. And he’s also, to me, one of the best coaches of coaches out there. He really taught me how to teach. And for that I’ll never be able to repay him fully. He’s one of the people I owe a lot to. He gave me a guide on how to go about (shooting), how you assess, and how you come up with a plan. In which order do you go evaluating not only the biometrics of a person’s body, how they physically are able to hold the ball or extend their wrist and elbow and hand placement and all those things, but then also the mental side and growing their shooting mentality. And so with each individual person, it’s kind of like a baseball swing or a golf swing or a snowflake. They’re all similar, but they’re all uniquely different. And each person’s shot is very specific to their own body, their own mind and how they’re made up. And so you have to go in and evaluate where they are physically, mentally, what’s their relationship with their shot. You build a plan around that after getting to know them, what they’re about, what they’re looking to improve. That’s the mentality of going into each project. Being a shooting coach, that was my title but that’s not my current title. Now it’s more something that I do, it’s something that I’ll work on guys with, but that’s not all that I do.
