It was Bruce Lee who said, “Be water, my friend”.
Water is shapeless. Formless. Water will take the shape of whatever it’s in.
Water is weak, right?
Marcus Aurelius said that one should “Be like the rock that the waves keep crashing over. It stands unmoved, and the rage of the sea falls still around it.” Should an NBA team want to be the rock, or the waves crashing over it?
The Houston Rockets’ brain trust has shown signs of being each. Rafael Stone has some H20 in his approach. Perhaps he should lend
his surname to Ime Udoka, who is rock solid in his principles. At times, it’s felt like Udoka’s rigidity has overridden Stone’s flexibility. The Rockets have been seemingly exclusively interested in signing “Udoka guys”.
Not anymore.
If you expected Marcus Smart to be the Rockets’ first signing of the summer, you weren’t alone. He is officially a Rocket now, but he wasn’t first in line. That would be Bogdan Bogdanovic. He is decidedly not a Udoka guy:
But he’s exactly what the Rockets need.
Rockets sign elite movement shooter
The last two seasons have not been kind to Bogdanovic. Last season, he managed just 23 appearances. The year before, he played 54 games, but scored just 10.3 points per game while shooting a solid-but-unexceptional 36.3% from long-range.
If you want a best-case scenario, look to 2023-24. In 79 games, Bogdanovic averaged 16.9 points per game while shooting 37.4% from deep. The year before that, he hit 40.6% of his triples.
Bogdanovic can hit movement threes, come off screens, and shoot off the dribble. He isn’t strictly a shooting specialist, either. Bogdanovic can handle the ball and set up teammates. He can do just about anything you like:
Besides rebound or defend, that is.
It’s not that Udoka would insist on rebounders at every position, but the idea that the Rockets would ever sign a subpar defender under his watch was unthinkable before now. This could represent an organizational shift:
Hopefully.
Rockets badly need spacing
The details surrounding the Bogdanovic signing haven’t emerged as of this writing, but it’s a one-year deal, so we can safely assume it’s a minimum.
Quick: Find a list of players with Bogdanovic’s offensive skillset who are also strong defenders. Sort them by salary. You’re going to find that these are $25 million-a-year players at a minimum.
Yet, the Rockets need shooting. They also need additional ball-handling. They do not have $25 million to spare.
Simply put, they need non-Udoka guys.
They got one. The extent of Bogdanovic’s role remains to be seen. Udoka may not trust him defensively.
Still, he is a Houston Rocket. That’s the point here. The Rockets made a signing that was contrary to Udoka’s principles. They were able to address roster needs in the process.
They were water.
