And even if you don't think much of Redick, he's got Scotty Brooks and Nate McMillan alongside him as assistants. Regarding whether or not Ime has lost the locker room, I would imagine most of the players are checked out at this point. Not to say they won't play hard, but they're not stupid. They see what the rest of us see. That this team is going nowhere under this coach. And it has to be especially frustrating for certain players like Reed and Josh. Reed has singlehandedly won us numerous games this season and has an 8-2 record as a starter. Yet he's forced to continue playing as a reserve while he sees Tari get to start 23 of the last 26 games(in which the team has gone a lousy 13-10 in his 23 starts) despite playing embarrassingly bad ball for nearly a month and a half now. And Josh not only lost his starting spot to Tari, but he's now behind even a washed up DFS in the rotation.
Has Reddick coached a team to the finals? Going back to last year the Lakers went 1-4 against the TWolves. At least Udoka's Rockets took the Warriors to a game 7.
The Rockets were better than the Lakers last year. But LA also went through some major changes last season and is now a much better team than us as a result. Now that Luka has settled in as their best player, LeBron is accepting his role as second fiddle, and Austin Reaves has developed into an All-Star caliber player, they're clicking on all cylinders. Meanwhile, the Rockets are on pace to have a worse record than last season, only Reed and maybe Amen have shown improvement, the defense has regressed, and the offense has been the worst in the league for months. The Rockets are in such a pathetic state now that they're banking on Fred VanVleet to save them next season. The Lakers meanwhile will go into the summer with a crapload of cap space(assuming LeBron is gone) to improve an already really good team that possesses a top 5 talent in Luka.
The key part is that they were gifted Luka. Even though LeBron is in his twilight years he can still produce at a high-level and provide leadership to the rest of the team. My order of blame goes this way -> (1) GM/Front office, (2) the players on the roster (bad roster construction), and then (3) Udoka. I don't think it's logical to talk about replacing the coach until you address the first two issues. Udoka deserves blame in that he had a hand in the roster decisions, but the ultimate accountability lies with Stone.
Reddick figured out that the Rockets crash the boards and don't get back on D, so he had someone leak out every jump shot, after challenging the shooter, and it led to 30+ something fastbreak points over 2 games. DD
I'm not absolving the front office, but I'd put Ime first on that list. Yes, DFS was a disastrous signing, but Okogie was a fantastic pickup at the league minimum. Ime has had the latter at his disposal all season. He's the one who decided to remove him from the starting lineup in favor of Tari and then push him even further down the pecking order in favor of DFS. Now let's look at Fred's injury. It was devastating for sure. But Reed has had a breakout season and is second only to Naz Reid as the favorite to win Sixth Man of the Year. When he has gotten to start, the team has gone 8-2. Yet Ime has kept him as a reserve and refused to give him an extended run as a starter to see how good the team could perform. Then we move on to Steven. Again, a devastating injury. But just like Josh Okogie, Stone brought in Clint Capela as insurance. Yet Steven was averaging 23 minutes a game before he was lost for the season and Capela has averaged only 14 minutes as Sengun's backup since then. Sure, Clint isn't as good of a player as Steven, but a discrepancy like that means that Ime has decided to go with more wing-heavy lineups which is not working. We saw it first hand last week against the Pelicans when he inexplicably decided to start DFS in place of Alpi and eventually had to bench Tari in the second half because playing those two guys together for extended minutes was a trainwreck.
I personally don't think playing more Reed, Okogie, and Capela would've changed a lot in the overall outcome. The main issue to me is the lack of shooters which was a problem even when VanVleet was healthy. Stone did nothing to address that issue. I was puzzled why he didn't attempt to bring in another combo guard, but I think his reasoning was that he wanted to give the opportunity to Reed to play more minutes. I'm not sure, but if I'm right that means there could be some tension between Udoka and Stone. I don't think Stone learned his lessons from the phase 1 Silas days, that force feeding young players minutes does not equate to development. He told us he thought maybe this isn't our year, and did nothing at the deadline to address a team that was clearly on the decline. This tells me he wanted to use the remainder of the season to see what Reed can do. Reed's been developing, but we are really missing a veteran primary ball handler that can organize the offense. That probably wouldn't have won a championship but we wouldn't look this bad. My grievance is mainly with Stone. He sold Fertitta on tanking for high draft picks and none of those high draft pick selections netted us a star player. He drafted specialists, but no true star without any tradeoffs. I think Stone owes his job to Udoka since he probably would've been gone if Udoka didn't change the culture when he came here 2 years ago, and in return he's hanging him out to dry with this poorly constructed roster like he did Silas. Stone shouldn't survive two head coaching changes.
As I've pointed out in the Tari thread, since 2/10, Tari is shooting 16.2% from 3, Reed is shooting 40.5% from 3, and Josh is shooting 46.2% from 3. I'm tired of this "lack of shooters" talking point. We HAVE shooters. Ime refuses to prioritize them because of his obsession with wing players and his bizarre fixation on starting Tari. And it's inexplicable to me that people still maintain that playing Reed and Josh more wouldn't make a difference. The team is 20-9 in games Josh has started. They're 8-2 in games Reed as started. They're 19-13 in games Tari has started and with the Alpi, Amen, Jabari, Tari, and KD unit that Ime has for some reason settled on(they've started 15 out of the last 25 games), they're 9-9 on the season. The data speaks for itself. Sure there are roster construction issues that need to be addressed. But Ime could mitigate a lot of our current problems if he'd just stop starting Tari every night and either go back to Josh or finally insert Reed on a permanent basis.
