Ime Udoka saved the best highlights for last.
After nearly 45 minutes of in-depth Houston Rockets analysis on his pre-training-camp PowerPoint presentation, with players soaking in their coach’s messages like students in a basketball classroom inside the team’s practice facility, the montage of mayhem began.
First, it was the clip of Udoka telling LeBron James and his Lakers to “stop whining like little b—-” back on Dec. 2, 2023, when the then-first-year Rockets coach started a NSFW argument with one of the greatest players of all time that led to Udoka’s ejection. Then came the dust-up in Milwaukee on Dec. 17, 2023, when resident Rockets villain Dillon Brooks and Udoka were ejected in the final minute for their aggressive dispute of a late call. The tape of 15 separate altercations from their previous season kept running — and entertaining them all — from there.
“It’s his personality,” Rockets guard Fred VanVleet said of the presentation and Udoka’s role in it. “He’s a confrontational guy, a fighter, so it was funny to watch them all in order and see the build up. But it’s about building that identity as a group and as a team. We’re built on toughness and just not taking any s— from anybody.”
The fisticuffs weren’t the featured part of the film, though. Udoka had gone into great detail about the defensive improvements that had been made, how the Rockets went from among the league’s worst in every relevant category before his arrival to “top six,” Udoka said, in his rookie Rockets campaign.
The message, in essence, was that they needed to get even better on that end if they were going to become a perennial playoff contender. But to get there, it would require a commitment to the motto Udoka constantly preaches — “No friends on the floor” — and that was on full display during those fiery moments.
“We started to look at the frequency and the dates (of the incidents), and there was something every week from January on,” Udoka told The Athletic recently. “The broadcasters would say, ‘Here goes another dust-up with Houston. It’s becoming an every game thing now.’ So that mentality had changed. And I told the guys, ‘You have to earn the respect of the league and not take a backseat to anybody.’”
Meet the all-gas, no-brakes Rockets, this modern-day version of the “Bad Boys” Pistons that is as feisty and unapologetic a team as the league has seen in quite some time.
Read my feature on the Rockets here.
