Is Coach Ime losing the locker room?

Ime clearly favors wing players. He gave Tari a ridiculously long leash even though he was playing embarrassingly bad ball for over 5 weeks. And he plays DFS and Jae'Sean over Okogie even though the latter has been by far the better player this season.

He doesn't just suck at coaching offense. I keep harping on this, but it needs to be emphasized. He genuinely doesn't seem to care about that end of the court. There's a reason he has this insane strategy of going to those wing heavy lineups when the Rockets have a lead in the 4th(see the game at the Knicks for example). He thinks the team can just get a bunch of stops, hold that lead(even if it's chipped away at a little), and then KD will come back in and close it out.

And repeatedly that approach has blown up in his face. Yet he keeps going to it.

 

It’s so wild cause if you have even just a tiny bit of awareness, you will notice we have a tendency to like and hire others similar to us, that’s a well-known bias. Anyone inspiring to be in any sort of people management role needs bias training.

 

....the irony here is I keep wondering why he plays Sengun late in close games when if there is going to be a defensive breakdown, it's likely going to be because of Sengun....and Sengun isn't the only one but the point is - if you are a coach who hangs your hat on your defense - the defense has NOT been good since January and is particularly bad in 4th quarters. I can give a longer leash if it's just the offense that looks bad but your defense is otherwise stellar but Houston has like a 20th ranked defense of late here - we are giving up 132pts to lotto teams - and 15 points in the final 4 minutes. If you still think our coach is prioritizing defense for offense and you haven't been noticing how bad the defense has become.....

 

Cam Whitmore was right, he knew Ime sucked and wanted out.

DD

 

That, or Stonedoka thought, Let's just get a really tall lineup and defense will be grrrrrrrrrrrreat!

Hell, I saw in preseason that our defense was awful, especially perimeter D. I didn't know it would crash this spectacularly, though.

 

You answered your own question. He plays Sengun late in close games because we need buckets. Ime is a stubborn moron, but even he knows he can't go to the wing heavy lineups late in the 4th if we're in a tight contest.

It's the first 42 minutes of the game where he seems indifferent towards offense. If the Rockets have a comfortable lead or are trading baskets with the opponent in a close game(like vs Miami last weekend), he'll sub in a bunch of wings to try to get stops and hold that lead or keep things close til late in the 4th. But this almost never works because he puts in too many guys who can't dribble or shoot.

Someone on his staff should've explained to him months ago that he needs to have at all times either Reed or Aaron on the floor for ballhandling and shooting and at least 3 guys who can reliable make an open 3-pointer. And for all I know, maybe he has been told that and dismissed it since he loves defensive wings so much.

 

He showed 0 leadership in the Durant burner fiasco and Durant washed his hands of it. The players probably feel betrayed.

 

I think Ime has lost Sengun - not sure about others....and I think KD knows that IME is a fraud.

DD

 

...but that does sound like a team construction problem not a coaching one, right? If you have too many one way players and have to drastically concede offense or defense with every lineup then you kind of failed at basic roster construction. Ime shouldn't have to play offense vs defense specific lineups with frequent substitutions the whole game - players can't get in rhythm that way and its a nightmare to manage as a coach - especially if it just takes one player getting in foul trouble to completely disrupt those rotations in drastic ways for the rest of the game.

 

He's likely lost them long ago.

 

Sengun was also in foul trouble and both he and KD were super tired. Go look at how much our starters played vs theirs. Just one aspect of bad planning - he needs to learn to live with whatever bench he has at some point, but whatever - then you’re 13 pts ahead with two timeouts and the guy who makes dumb defense-focused lineup changes all the time at the most illogical times, sometimes even at the expense of losing games, takes no timeouts and doesn’t make any adjustments. Put a defensive lineup out there, have the guys just run out the shot clock and they would win. This is a rookie-level blunder - or he’s fixing games or setting up guys on purpose. I can’t come up with any other explanation.

 

You're always gonna have players who excel more at one end of the floor than the other. Amen is a far better defender than he is a scorer. Alpi and Reed are the opposite.

My issue is when Ime puts too many one-dimensional, defense-only players on the floor at the same time. And even worse is that those units suck at getting stops. They're not even accomplishing what he subbed them in for.

 

I doubt the intent was to have a bench unit that was all defense and no offense. DFS was such a blunder that alone deserves to get someone fired. You need to have the right management in place to execute a rebuild and we picked a lawyer with no connections as our GM and a hustle and grit guy who was never good enough to make a career in the NBA and whose bball feel and knowledge is getting exposed more and more every day. We got bamboozled. These choices should have been questioned much harder back then.

 

Yeah - I think this is really where Ime has to take some accountability. If you sub defense for offense - then your defense better be good - otherwise players(even all stars and hall of famers) need to sit on the bench until you find the guys doing what you asked.

 

Alpi had a lot of trust in Ime after the Silas fiasco. But Ime sold him out for Kevin Dickerson.

 

These lineups never work which is the funny bit. I think there’s definitely some obvious lack of preparation and discipline in how they workout cause the defense lineup looks even more clueless at points even though they have a much simpler job. They will either defend well and let that gas them up and start making dumb headed offensive moves to be heroes, or will neither defend nor score. 80% of the time they give you super ugly ball.

 

You leave it to the hands of the professionals

 

Which is actually ironic because looking back, Sengun's breakout was in his second season under Silas. And then while he kept most of his efficiency in Ime's first year, since then he's been taking a step back. People keep equating Silas with poor coaching, when really if you look at the progression of our young players, none of them really got any bump when Ime came in. Ime won more games because the Rockets start signing players and accumulated lots of young talent through Silas' tanking. Not because he's some miracle rebuild coach like Kenny Atkinson who really make the most of his young talent.

 

Kenny A was who I was originally campaigning for, but was happy we moved on from Silas and hired Ime who I thought was better.