Very apt and on point, never thought someone nationally would put it so bluntly and accurately: Loser: The entire Rockets organization I'm not especially sympathetic to Durant's absence as an excuse here. The Rockets have known they had half-court offensive issues since Fred VanVleet tore his ACL before the season even began. The Lakers addressed shooting at the deadline with a single second-round pick. Houston has more tradable draft picks than they know what to do with. More broadly, they spent three years accumulating high lottery picks at the bottom of the standings. Being this dependent on Durant to create everything for you offensively at this stage of your roster-build is inexcusable. The players weren't good enough. Alperen Sengun is a two-time All-Star. Yes, he faced a packed paint – they're near constants with Houston's shooting woes – but 6 of 19 shooting with six assists just isn't going to cut it. Amen Thompson struggled to finish as well. Reed Sheppard took almost half of the team's triples and struggled to do much of anything inside the arc. These are your foundational pieces. Getty Images Your coach didn't put them in a position to succeed. Houston's offense has been sloppy and uncreative all year, and Ime Udoka did little to relieve it of its Durant dependency – a 37-year-old Durant playing the second-most minutes in the NBA during the regular season is inexcusable. General manager Rafael Stone probably should have addressed the offense in some fashion, if only by adding another shooter on a minimum contract for the back of the bench. But this roster was seemingly constructed to force Udoka to play Sheppard. The end of their bench is full of defensive wings like Josh Okogie and Jae'Sean Tate rather than anyone with offensive upside. Udoka still barely trusted Sheppard, refusing to start him until the end of the season (they would wind up going 17-4 with him in the starting lineup). Durant would've helped. Fred VanVleet would've helped. Steven Adams would've helped. But the Rockets aren't some plucky young upstart anymore. This is a team playing with real expectations. Your offense can't be so bland that it boils down to "save us Kevin" or "get all of the offensive rebounds." This game should be a wake-up call throughout the organization that something here isn't working. - Quinn
The organization is fine, they are all rich beyond imagination. Me on the other hand? I’m not doing too well.
Admitting that Ime Udoka is a large part of the problem is the first step towards fixing things. The more public the criticism, the more likely the owner gets embarrassed into making a move
The rockets organization uses a lot of excuses …specifically for problems their decisions helped create too many injuries and wearing down of player. “ we wanted to sign old veterans and didn’t think 40 mpg was too much” Overly focus on defensive wings. Problem? Oh we don’t have anyone that can shoot lack of development of any of their core. “Udoka likes to focus on defense, the offensive side of the ball will come” Sheppard still getting rookie mistakes out of his system. “We didn’t play him much his rookie year because he needed to be forced to learn” the teams just bad overall. The coach will change starters to DNP at the drop of a hat , indicating his stubbornness ultimately roster construction the nepo kid that started this train wreck forced the organization to trade for a cocaine bear turtle chucker and everything has been downhill since
Exactly. This is on pretty much everyone but the players. Primarily Udicker, but also everyone else for failing to see it in the organization.
Okay this has been written. Now nothing will happen from our organization. There be no accountability just like no adjustments from Coach. Get ready for more of the same.
The more pressure on Tillman Fertitta and Ime Udoka the better off the organization. Seeing how Joe Mazzulla ran the offense as a Assistant Coach and giving Payton Pritchard the keys to be the PG instead of Ime Udoka ignoring Payton Pritchard. Exactly the same thing is happening with Reed Sheppard. I had absolutely no idea that Boston Media knew Joe Mazzulla was drawing up plays as a Assistant Coach. Ime Udoka must be fired and replaced by a smarter Coach that can draw up many plays.
I think this is really underselling the failure of our rebuild, and then overstating everything else. The "everything else" decisions cannot paper over the fact that we went through a full tank and a full rebuild and came out of it with 0 great players.
