Should the Rockets have hired Udoka? | Photo by Mark Blinch/Getty Images Some Rockets fans are souring on Udoka. Do they have a point? They say that hindsight is 20/20. Are we sure about that? Don’t we bring our biases into hindsight as much as we bring them into foresight? Some Rockets fans are souring on Ime Udoka. They would have hired someone else - or, in some rare cases, they would have kept Stephen Silas. Are they thinking with sober hindsight? Was Udoka the right hire? Can the Rockets justify hiring Udoka? Let’s start with the basics. The Rockets are currently projected to win 36.6 games. That would be an 11-win improvement over last season - almost certainly the biggest jump in the NBA. This was always the primary objective for 2023-24. The play-in tournament was a secondary goal. The primary goal was (or should have been) improvement. Let’s frame it this way: the goal was to improve, and the hope was to improve so much that the Rockets got into the play-in tournament. The Rockets have improved - a lot - so barring a dramatic flameout, they’ve achieved their primary goal. Last season, the Rockets were 27th in Offensive Rating (110.5), and 29th in Defensive Rating (118.6). In 2023-24, they’re 24th in Offensive Rating (112.9) and tied for seventh in Defensive Rating (112.7). With that said, we can’t attribute all of Houston’s improvement to a coaching change. The Rockets spent in free agency like Techno Mechanicus Musk in Dubai during a gap year. Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks would have also helped last year’s team. Is Udoka doing anything that Silas wouldn’t? Have the Rockets changed their style? The Rockets have been a fairly pick-and-roll dominant team for four seasons now. Still, the nature of that pick-and-roll has changed substantially. Last year, the Rockets were fourth in the NBA in volume of pick-and-rolls resulting in the ball-handler attempting a field goal (22.4 per game). This year, they’re 12th in the same stat (19.4). By contrast, the Rockets are fourth in pick-and-rolls resulting in a field goal attempt for the roll man this year (7.8). Last year, they were 10th at 6.7 of those possessions per game. Much has been made of the Rockets’ unique pick-and-roll attack this year. It’s a throwback pick-and-roll. The Rockets primarily use these sets to gain Alperen Sengun a couple of precious inches to score in face-up situations. This is not what Silas had in mind. It seemed like he wanted to build a pick-and-spread system with Kevin Porter Jr. as a primary, Harden-esque ball-handler. Rockets fans will remember The Lob Threat Controversy. Silas wanted to start Bruno Fernando over Sengun to instill that modernized pick-and-roll attack. Otherwise, the Rockets are isolating at roughly the same frequency (14th in isolation possessions both last year and this year). They’re running fewer handoffs - that feels like a problem. Still, there’s limited value in comparing play types across the last two seasons in the first place. After all, the Rockets have barely improved on offense. They’ve made remarkable strides on the defensive end of the floor. Does Udoka deserve credit for that? Did Udoka revamp the Rockets’ defense? Defense is harder to statistically measure than offense, so we’re going to shift from the empirical to the normative here. Adding Dillon Brooks helped. Folks will note that his defense has regressed as his offense has improved. Sure. He’s still a lot better than KJ Martin and Garrison Mathews. Adding VanVleet helped too. He’s an unequivocally better point-of-attack defender than Porter Jr. At the same time, VanVleet is six feet tall in platforms. He’s relentless when navigating screens, has quick hands, and always gives a full effort. He also is not some kind of defensive cheat code - VanVleet can be exploited. So can Alperen Sengun. Yet, here stand the Rockets with the seventh-best defense in the NBA despite starting a non-rim protector, a short guard, and Jalen Green. If you need evidence of Udoka’s impact, look no further. Take a closer look at Sengun. Silas insisted on using him in traditional drop coverage. He didn’t seem to have enough ingenuity to envision him in a different scheme. Questions about Sengun’s defensive viability are (whether you like it or not) still outstanding, but Udoka has certainly brought the best out of him in his hedge-and-recover schemes. Is that enough to justify his hiring? Did the Rockets make the right call? There are too many hypotheticals here to draw a substantive conclusion. Comparing Udoka and Silas isn’t fair because Udoka has a better roster to work with. At the same time, it feels like Udoka has a lot of authority in roster construction. It seemed that Rafael Stone and Silas were in lockstep - they’d build a modernized pick-and-spread offense around a guard. That guard was either going to be Porter Jr., Green, or a star that they traded for. Now, it feels like Stone has conceded some of his decision-making to the coach. So Udoka deserves some of the credit (and/or blame) for how this roster is built. Silas likely would have approved a James Harden acquisition. Let’s be frank - the Rockets would probably have a better record right now if they’d signed Harden. They’d likely have a better Offensive Rating, a worse Defensive Rating, and a better Net Rating. Was that the right idea? Should the Rockets have just reunited with the second-best player in franchise history to have him carry them back to relevance? Frankly, I doubt that’s what’s best for this team’s development. VanVleet is a heady veteran who plays winning basketball despite his flaws. That’s the type of rotation player that Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson, Cam Whitmore, and Jabari Smith Jr. should be used to playing alongside if they’re going to be franchise-carrying players. In a roundabout way, VanVleet was a better signing than Harden because he’s a worse player. In other words, it’s too early to judge Udoka. He needs another season or two to carry out his vision. It is fair to say that the offense is too rudimentary - more dribble hand-offs and fewer pick-and-rolls, please. On the other hand, the roster isn’t finished yet. We need to see how the roster looks in a couple of years, and then we can ask this question in hindsight: 20/20 or not. Source: https://www.thedreamshake.com/2024/2/26 ... alen-green