Now we come to the part of the Rockets that I think needed to change at the end of the previous playoffs: coaching. This isn’t because I dislike Ime Udoka on a personal level (as much as a stranger to the man can), although I do. It’s because he’s given everyone plenty of evidence that he’s simply not up to the job of taking the Rockets to the next phase of their (hoped for!) ascent to the upper echelons of the NBA. I’d like to say “return to the upper echelons” but it’s been a while since the Rockets were
there. We’re long past the “going out for a six pack, back soon” stage of things, I’m afraid.
Unfortunately the coach that management extended for big money last season isn’t the guy to lead that ascent. If you read my article on The Players, asking if they were suited to running the systems they are required to run by their coach, you’ll know where I’m coming from on that score.
Here’s the problem: Udoka’s lack of recognition that the team he actually has isn’t capable of running the offensive scheme he insists upon. You may be a defense first coach, but if you can’t score (or stop opponent scoring, or let’s be honest, coach) when the chips are down and a Godawful (and historic for a winning team!) 19 blown fourth quarter or OT leads says you can’t (this isn’t new, it happened in Boston, btw), you’d better pay more attention to offense. Or maybe you’re not really fit to be a top level NBA head coach. 19 blown leads for a 52 win team isn’t some weird randomness in my view (as there’s not previous example of such that I’ve been able to find – only truly terrible teams blow that many leads normally), it’s a deep flaw in coaching.
It’s one thing to run an incompatible offense for a season, but we now have a three year sample. At no point in those three years has a James Harden Tribute Band level initiator played for the Rockets. The closest the Rockets have come to that are: Jalen Green and Fred VanVleet. There’s a real problem with each, as you probably have noticed.
In Green’s case, he’s simply a terribly inefficient offensive player, despite occasional outbursts of All NBA level offense. If he’s consuming a ton of shots, your offense has a serious problem. On the other hand, at least he COULD get to the rim off the dribble. Fred VanVleet can’t do that. I’m sorry, but it’s true. I love Fred VanVleet as a player. I think almost no other player that I’ve seen in the NBA (except maybe Jalen Brunson) has maximized the talent and body he was given more than FVV. While Fred is a steady and low risk passer, and a great floor general, he’s not really much of an offensive threat, especially if you look at his last season.
Isn’t three years of running a scheme without the key player necessary for that scheme enough of a sample? What more do you need to see? If the most stubborn, unreflective, coach I’ve ever seen with the Rockets will change his tune?
And yet, the Rockets have been a good team anyway! The talent on the team, in my opinion, is essentially masking Udoka’s incompetence to a great degree. Except when the playoffs come. Then the mask comes off, and Udoka’s lack of any sort of adaptability very evidently dooms them. If you don’t think it did against Golden State, I can almost see it, but what the hell was that against the shell of a Lakers team with a rookie head coach?
If you look at the Rockets lineup and think you can run a James Harden style, heliocentric attack without James Harden, but also without a center who is either a rim runner or a 3pt shooter, and with another almost total non 3pt shooter on the court to go with your non 3pt shooting center (though it would have been better to put Alpie in the corner than Amen Thompson) then you are simply not fit for your job.
If a coach can, or will, only run one system, no matter his personnel, despite the terrible fits almost across the board for that system, that coach is honestly not fit to be an NBA head coach in the modern game. The competition is too good, too versatile, too swift to punish mistakes. If a coach can’t change what isn’t working, despite ample evidence, what chance does he have against the upper echelons of NBA coaching? As the playoffs have demonstrated: not much.
Maybe Ime Udoka, like Mike Brown, will learn from his mistake, and build a title winner. I can’t imagine that happening in Houston, and I can’t imagine it happening while he’s still a head coach. If I’m honest, I don’t see that happening at all. I expect Ime Udoka to get fired in season, or after another humiliating playoff loss. I expect he will either vanish without a trace, or become an assistant somewhere. If you were a GM, seeing this, would you hire him?
If you were a GM, would you keep a coach who never, at any point, takes responsibility for anything? I’ve watched nearly four years of Udoka post game pressers. He’s got a linguistic tell that he never believes he’s responsible for anything bad. It’s pretty simple. When he’s talking about a Rockets game “We” win, and “They” lose. Listen and you’ll hear it, unless someone’s told him about it, and he stops, I guess.
I have come to believe the Rockets in Rafael Stone and Ime Udoka are an NBA basketball example of The Peter Principle, which (briefly) states that people in a hierarchical system rise to the level of their incompetence. Stone might have an excuse, to some degree, in terms ownership wishes leading to decisions he wouldn’t have chosen. It’s impossible for the likes of me to know for sure, but it’s easy to see other mistakes outside of that anyhow. Also it makes me question how much Stone actually knows about NBA basketball, instead of lawyering and contract negotiation? What does he think he’s seeing out there? This isn’t some subtle thing that only the most experienced basketball minds can understand, a tiny but dangerous flaw in approach, this is obvious stuff.
Ime Udoka, though? It’s straight up incompetence at this point. Whatever got Boston to the Finals with him is looking more and more like a one off event. It’s nice that he got the Rockets to take a level of responsibility for their play, and it’s great he got them to try much harder than they had been trying. On the other hand, the Rockets also got an infusion of sound veterans to provide a leadership backbone on the court, and the slip in in defensive intensity without Dillon Brooks was evident last year.
I wish I had any hope, any positivity about Ime Udoka and His Black Clad Cultists (hear about any head coach interviews for any of them this off season?) but I simply don’t. Ime Udoka has shown what he’s capable of doing, and it’s not good enough for a team that wants, well I was going to say contend, but I’ll go with “win a playoff series” until proven otherwise.
Maybe he’ll surprise me. Stranger things have happened.
PS – You want some positive Rockets coaching news? The Houston Rockets have disbanded their Shooting Coach Committee and hired the consensus best shooting coach in the NBA, Chip Engelland. This might be due mostly to pressing need for Amen Thompson to shoot better, but it should help the entire team. In a summer of Mr. Adequate moves from Rafael Stone, this was a great one.
PPS – Ok, so what should the Rockets be doing on offense? Lots of teams are running some version of the heliocentric Hardenesque offense, what happens if you don’t have that guy? That will be coming up in September.
