Four Calling Outs
Welcome back to The Twelve Takes of Christmas, a writing gimmick sure to entertain, amuse and delight.
Today instead of Four Calling Birds we have Four Calling Outs, of coaching.
Last night’s loss was basically my complaints about Ime Udoka’s coaching in a nutshell. Mind you, I’m very happy about where the Rockets are, as I believe that Udoka’s approach of intensity, toughness, and player responsibility is in large part responsible for the Rockets revival as a competitive team.
But I also believe a competitive team, in the playoffs, is all the Rockets will be, unless they can improve in certain ways. Given how good their defense is, which is good enough to lead the NBA in an average modern season, they should be capable of more. The more, essentially, comes down to offense, as well as in game decision making.
Recognize an in game situation as it is, not as you’d like it to be
The Rockets in their game against Minnesota managed to come back from, and then take, and then quickly lose, a large lead. This was done, in my view, by playing the starters a far more than ordinary load, on the second night of a back to back, the previous game being on the road. Udoka played his bench, on said night, roughly half as much as normal, despite being down a starter and key bench player already.
Now, if you want to place the blame strictly on the players, that’s fine. But to do that you’re going to have to essentially take the position that somehow tired players, when they look tired (and a gauge of that is the very comeback Minnesota made, to me) should just muster up more energy. Maybe that’s fair to say of a team that’s not well-conditioned? Ask yourself if at any point this season has it occurred to you that the Rockets weren’t well-conditioned? It certainly hasn’t occurred to me.
So in my view, when well-conditioned players look tired, and play tired, and you’re on a back to back, and you’ve played your bench roughly half as much as usual in said game, it’s very much on coaching to do whatever is necessary to help the players succeed in that situation. A death glare, manliness, or thoughts on conditioning will do absolutely no good in the face of exhaustion. Coaching must be done, not later, now.
If you watched the Boston team that Udoka lead to the Finals lose to Golden State closely, you might see more than Curry magic. You might see Udoka getting outcoached as the series went on. That’s fair, he’s still a young coach, and Steve Kerr, as self-righteous and annoying as he can be, is still a great coach. Especially at adjusting to opponents over a series.
You don’t get interest from saving your timeouts. They don’t carry over to the next game. You’re allowed allowed to call timeout and run a play
Last night in his post-game remarks coach Udoka roughly said of the last, failed, clogged, Rockets possession that he wanted to see the Rockets attack a defense of Minnesota what wasn’t set, that couldn’t set up after a timeout.
Well, he did see that, and the offense stalled when the Timberwolves, after surrendering 38 points to Alperen Sengun, and essentially never double teaming him, double-teamed Sengun. Sengun passed out of the double team for a bad Fred VanVleet heave.
There was time, after the double team, to use the final timeout to call a play. Minnesota had set themselves in an ideal position to stop a crucial Sengun possession. Call. Time. Out.
Call a timeout, and get shooters and attackers on the floor, with approximately eight seconds left. Yes, the Rockets failed to score to win the fail, but in my view, that failure lies squarely on the shoulders of Udoka. Because he can’t seem to react to what he’s seeing in real-time and fix it.
Udoka reminds me of Kevin McHale, who was great at responding to opponents, in the next game, but if asked to do something in the moment, utterly failed. Over and over.
Udoka may learn to do this, but I’m not currently hopeful of it.
Take responsibility for your own actions
Whenever there’s a failure attributable by many people, or really any people, to coaching Ime Udoka steps right up and…says it wasn’t his fault at all. Does he say something else behind the scenes? Probably? Maybe? I certainly don’t know. But if you have any evidence of him taking the blame for literally anything, ever, in his tenure as the Rockets coach, I’d actually be greatly relieved to see it. The main approach seems to be “I made a great decision, and the players just failed to see it done properly.”.
That, to me, isn’t actually the Old Spur Way at all, despite Udoka’s pride in coming from the coaching lineage. When Gregg Popovich turns the blowtorch on his players, they deserved it. When he turned it on himself, which he often did, he deserved it.
I’ve seen Udoka do the former, but never, ever, the latter.
Defense is the secret ingredient in the modern NBA, but…
Defense is the thing that will carry a team with ambitions of greatness to the top. It’s the differentiator. But only, and I can’t stress this enough, if you already have the offense to compete in the modern NBA. The Rockets just…don’t.
They seem to win in spite of their offense. They shoot poorly as a team. They aren’t, collectively, a good offense. Every bit of offense seems effortful.
When a whole NBA group isn’t good at something you can conclude:
A – It’s down to the whole group. They’re just bad at the thing.
B – They’re only young. They may actually become good at the thing. That’s probably a fair statement about a core of players all under 25. But it only goes so far, if you have ambitions now, not in two or three seasons.
C – The group isn’t well lead in the area they aren’t succeeding in. They haven’t been given the proper tools, instruction, and leadership needed to succeed.
Which answer you choose is up to you.