I have no idea. At least the McFail 3-year extension came a third of the way into what was the final season of his initial 4-year contract. So locking him up before he went into coaching free agency the following summer made sense. Ime still had 2 years left on his 4-year deal. He'd had success here, but he still hadn't won a playoff series. Why not let this season play out, see what happens, and then extend him this summer if he does well? Cuz I can guarantee if it weren't for that extension, there'd be serious heat on him right now and his job would be in jeopary if the team didn't make at least the semifinals.
Knicks came calling, agent likely leveraged it into an extension “Two head coaches who are not currently available but said to interest the Knicks, according to league sources, are Dallas’ Jason Kidd and Houston’s Ime Udoka,” Stein wrote. “One source with knowledge of the Rockets’ thinking told The Stein Line categorically that permission to speak with Udoka would be rejected if the Knicks requested it.” Udoka: extension Kidd: extension Donovan: extension Week later, extension! (Maybe it was gonna happen anyways “Muh 52 wins” & “Muh 2 seed”)
He did turn a 21-win team into a 41 win-team within one season. And Stone thought he was an all-world coach. This is why you can't just use W-L records without context. First, anyone improving on Silas has to take the improvement with a grain of salt. Second, we replaced KPJ with FVV, thanks to KPJ's own personal crap. Say whatever you want about FVV, he is a vast instant improvement over Head Honcho. The cultural turnaround is as much Ime's credit as Fred's and Dillon's, especially getting the team to play defense, not to mention vets like Jeff Green who is a consummate professional. Even if it is solely the work of Ime to get this team playing hard, his inadequacy on offense was already showing back then. You could see that he's a high floor low ceiling kind of coach. I've always felt that the "play harder clap clap" kind of coaching can only take you so far on the highest level. You don't just work harder. You need to work smarter than your opponent. It was very unwise to give a guy a big and long term contract when he only had three years of head coaching track records.
