Official Game Thread: Hawks at Rockets

[lethalweapon3]

“You Mad, Ime. You Mad.”

 

Sitting in the reading parlor, over at Chez Ime Udoka, one can be sure to find a guide offering graphic scientific descriptors of every element and function within in the female and male anatomy. And that book, titled “Dem’s Fightin’ Words”, ain’t dusty.

There was once a time, when you thought sportsmanship, you thought Ime Udoka. Back in the spring of 2006, when LeBron James was guiding the Cavs to its first playoff visit since 1998, the D-League was handing out its season-ending hardware. Playing in Texas with the Fort Worth Flyers, Udoka was among the first recipients of the developmental league’s Sportsmanship Award, the first hooper bestowed with the honor since the league renamed it in memory of the late Hawks center Jason Collier.

Undrafted out of his hometown college Portland State, Udoka wasn’t simply trying to stick in the NBA’s minor leagues.  Ime wanted to follow his WNBA sister Mfon’s path into top-flight North American pro basketball. Later that year, he got a training camp call from his hometown Trail Blazers. Despite the setback of his father’s passing during preseason, Ime impressed Nate McMillan’s staff (including assistant coach Monty Williams) enough that he cracked an opening-day roster for the first time in his NBA journey.

Even more impressive, he started the entire season at small forward, the lottery-level Blazers still improving by 11 games year-over-year, thanks to Udoka and the rookie lotto-pick acquisition, LaMarcus Aldridge. Then the Spurs came calling, and Udoka, now in his 30s, found himself getting reserve minutes, running with the defending NBA champs and eventual Western Conference finalists.

He thought that gritty resume was enough to earn the inside track and secure the final roster spot in Portland’s 2009 training camp. But when the smoke cleared, McMillan’s Blazers elected to enter the regular season with a second-round rookie guard named Patty Mills.

After a single-season odyssey in Sacramento, San Antonio came calling again. Only this time, Gregg Popovich and the Spurs staff began grooming him for a transition into coaching and player development. By 2014, his second season as a Coach Pop assistant, he won his first NBA championship, the Spurs with Patty Mills and Tiago Splitter besting LeBron’s heatles in five games. It was his connection to Portland that helped draw the free agent Aldridge to South Texas.

That Spurs imprimatur helped fast track his candidacy for, first, lead assistant jobs around the league, in Brooklyn and Philadelphia, then for top jobs, when the storied Celtics signed him to his first full-time head coaching gig. The Celts’ season began rough, with chemistry issues among their stars brought to the fore, but took off soon after the calendar turned to 2022, as Udoka’s maiden voyage landed Boston in the NBA Finals.

All of that association with the pinnacle of NBA success, sprinkled with just the right amount of charm, also helped him pull a TV/movie starlet. Nia Long wasn’t a big fan of marriage, yet she happily hooked herself informally to Udoka for over a decade, forming one of the most notable and heralded celebrity-sportsman couples.

It was all quite a fairytale story, one laden with good fortune for a gentleman who once bounced from the Fargo-Moorhead Beez, to Argentina, to the Adirondack Wildcats and the Charleston Lowgators, toiling for his big break. And sportsmanship was central to his hard-working but Lady Byng-style identity throughout.

All of this is to ask aloud: why is Udoka, now the head coach of the Houston Rockets and not the Celtics because ((waves around wildly)) wasting everyone’s time, in 2023, trying to be such a bad guy? Creepin’ around like no one knows, think you’re so criminal…

The Memphis Grizzlies took it upon themselves to publicly declare that under no circumstances can Dillon Brooks play another minute of basketball alongside their prized wannabe gangsta Ja Morant (welcome back, you son of a gun!). Brooks moves on down to H-Town, in an offseason sign-and-trade, his defensive-minded veteran presence to provide significant influence on young Rocket scorer Kevin Porter – oop, scratch that – Jalen Green.

And here they were, Udoka and Brooks in tandem, this past weekend making Giannis look like the sane NBA contributor at the conclusions of basketball games. Dillon the Villain, and his head coach, dueling vulgarities like banjos toward game officials on their ways off the floor, each ejected (later fined at least $25k each) as the Rockets put the finishing touches on their 135-130 loss to Milwaukee.

It baffles me that Udoka finds it essential to keep himself with the good graces of Brooks, and not the more impressionable, 21-year-old Green (17.5 PPG, frequently benched in fourth quarters of late). “Play harder like the group that was in,” Coach Ime told The Athletic of his advice, extolled with an air of, “anyone can get it,” toward the short-hooked Green. “It starts with effort.” Both Green and Alperen Sengun found themselves sitting by coach in the final frame of Brooks’ victorious return to Memphis this past Friday, Houston’s last victory before back-to-back road losses at Milwaukee and Cleveland.

It makes just as much sense to see Udoka, at his big age, coming at The King. Their sideline repartee, ignited by Ime as Bron doth protest a questionable call with the refs, was uncouth and threatening enough to catch several fans in the rows behind the Rockets bench blushing, including some for whom blushing can be a bit of a challenge. The double-techs got Udoka, issued his second technical after berating officials earlier, ejected late in what was the Rockets’ third-straight loss.

“To kind of get punked by a team that’s not known for physicality or punking people is not a good sign,” the surly Udoka grumbled postgame, applying the logic of an under-supervised schoolyard wannabe bully. LeBron sought the high road with his comments after the Lakers’ win, but his birthday party invite list would soon show Ime, and everyone, that James is not above playing the Long game.

What’s crazy is, despite Ime’s histrionics and hysterics, his Rockets (13-11) are having a fine season, for them. 22 wins was the ceiling, 17 the floor, over Houston’s past three seasons on executive Rafael Stone’s watch. Yet with a win tonight over the Atlanta Hawks at Toyota Center, they’ll have logged 14 wins before the Christmas break, including five in a row that followed Udoka’s spiteful spat with Bronny, Sr.

Rocket fans, rightfully, love Sengun (19.9 PPG, 8.9 RPG, 5.3 APG), taking the mantle as his young mates Green and Jabari Smith find their bearings. They’re loaded with veteran support well beyond Brooks, spanning from steady point guard Fred Van Vleet, to former Hawk backup Aaron Holiday (17.9 MPG, most since 2019-20), Reggie Bullock and Uncle Jeff Green. Even Boban’s still bouncing it on occasion.

They’ve got hustlers coming in waves off their bench (2.9 team bench Net Rating, tie-4^th-best in NBA), in Tari Eason, Jock Landale and Jae’Sean Tate, to say nothing of rookies Amen Thompson and Cam Whitmore, receiving tutelage from Splitter, the Rockets’ player development coach. Together, with Brooks, they’re locked in on the defensive end, top-five in the league for both defensive rebounding and D-Rating (2^nd this season, 29^th last season).

So what’s all the fuss? Udoka just wanna be starting something, when he needs to show he can be relied upon to make it to the ends of games, or at least to the starts of his second seasons, on behalf of his talented upstarts.

Quin Snyder won’t be peeling off his red-rimmed glasses to sell wolf tickets to anybody, refs included, anytime soon. But he’s aware that the Hawks’ little triple-digit scoring streak (100 points tonight moves ATL to 3^rd all-time by themselves at 84 in a row, most since the Nuggets’ streak ended in December 1982) could be in jeopardy in the run-up to the Christmas break. A back-to-back in hardest-working Miami then back home versus Morant and Memphis closes out this three-games-four-nights stretch.

Fortunately, Coach Quin has discovered that on games like tonight's (8 PM Eastern, Bally Sports Southeast and 92.9 FM in ATL, Space City Homeboy Shopping Network in HTX) he can rely a bit more on ex-Rockets Garrison Mathews (four-straight games with a pair of threes for One T) and Bruno Fernando, and even Mills, as the Hawks sort through their injury/absence issues (Bogi Bogdanovic is again Questionable due to ankle inflammation, while Waldo Griffin remains on personal leave; there’s little word on recovery timelines for Jalen Johnson and the Rooks).

Both Sengun (3-10 when he takes 15+ FGAs) and Green (37.0 FG% in last 10 games) can become scattershot when their shots aren’t falling early, leading to defensive lapses for their floormates to make up. Keeping defenders pasted onto the Rockets’ leading scorers, including VanVleet (39.1 FG%), and guarding and boxing out without piling up cheap fouls, might adequately neutralize the Houston offense.

Trae Young and Dejounte Murray had some nice pairings together at the Rockets’ expense early last season (first NBA duo with 10+ assists in their debut together). In their last visit to Houston, Trae dropped 44 points, and Dejounte followed up with 39. But the duo combined for 5 assists (all from Young), and the Hawks didn’t spread the wealth well enough to avoid raising Houston’s record to 4-14 (Getting outrebounded 59-28, and Garry Bird’s 3-for-5 3FGs and 9-for-9 FTs off the Rockets bench, didn’t help, either).

As Young and Murray will be tasked with speeding up the game on the Rockets (29^th in Pace), an effort by Atlanta (11-15) that is as balanced on the scoring sheet as it in securing defensive stops may be all that is needed to make Green and Sengun’s night, and Ime’s temper, short.

It’s hard to tell if Udoka prides himself at bearing the perpetual countenance of a stick-up kid. Or, if he simply has a stick up…

 

Let’s Go Hawks!

~lw3

[lethalweapon3]

That little croup-like malady that's all the rage in our crowded airports these days already swept through the Rockets roster once. Spinning the block, it has now ensnared OTE-based rookie Amen Thompson and Jae'Sean Tate, who had just returned from a brief illness stint to play in recent losses at Milwaukee and Cleveland. Tate and Thompson are listed as Questionable on the early-morning Boo-Boo Report, ahead of tonight's contest.

Victor Oladipo and his troublesome patella tendon remain encased in a Mason jar. Rookie Cam Whitmore is on G-League assignment (Go Skyhawks btw!) with a couple of Houston's two-ways.

On the Hawks' Bogi (inflamed ankle) is again listed as Questionable ahead of this game. Seth Freakin' Lundy is back on G-League duty, although Trent Forrest is still runnin' with the big dogs. You can maybe find AJ Griffin on TwiXter at @whereisAG21.

~lw3

[JayBirdHawk]

Play BIG!

[lethalweapon3]

The Nov. 2022 loss in Houston squandered Atlanta's chance to tie-up their all-time season-series versus San Diego/Houston (80-82).

Rockets GameNotes posts that VanVleet's tally of 27 points, 17 assists, 8 boards and 2 steals in the loss at Cleveland (2 TOs) made him the first Rocket and the 7th NBA player since at least 1996-97 to clear those thresholds in a game.

Meanwhile, another ho-hum 31-and-15 for Trae has him closing in, as per KL Chouinard, on the cheerful Jerry West for 6th all-time in career 30+ point, 10+ assist performances. A fifth-straight Thirty-Ten-masterpiece would move Trae into a tie with His Airness, Russ, and Tiny Archibald for the longest such streak, two behind THE Big O's seven.

Lately, Swiss Bank is giving Navy Federal a run for their money when it comes to rejections. Three-straight games returning at least three shots to sender has Clint Capela tied with Chet Holmgren for the league's active streak. Another three blocks tonight would move Clint into a tie with Sap at 12th-place in the Hawks' franchise list.

~lw3

[HawksNWaffles]

Let's make sure the Rockets are blasting off again.... If you know you know

 

[JayBirdHawk]

Please don't let this be the game that Jalen Green finds his shooting touch. Please and Thanks.

[Chrimturn]

That Home win streak ends tonight!

 

[Diesel]

This is going to be a tough game.   They have good players and their coach should be up for COY.  We're going to need for Quin to uncover every rock.  Whether that be the Big lineup.  Playing the hot hand.... Hey what's up with Quin pulling guys with the Hot hand?  And even PNRing them to death if they let it...

Let's go Hawks.

 

[Spud2nique]

Thanks lw3! 
 

Go Hawks!

Trae got 40 dimes RECORD! 

[AHF]

@Spud2nique nothing says "video game" like the idea that Bogi scores 46 points, Trae gets 40 assists (and 5 steals), and OO gets 24 rebounds (and 4 blocks) all in the same game.  But I definitely want to be watching if the Hawks pull that off!

[SalvorMallow]

1 hour ago, AHF said:

@Spud2nique nothing says "video game" like the idea that Bogi scores 46 points, Trae gets 40 assists (and 5 steals), and OO gets 24 rebounds (and 4 blocks) all in the same game.  But I definitely want to be watching if the Hawks pull that off!

@Spud2nique turned down the difficulty and is comp stomping now (and actually hitting 3s)

[kg01]

1 minute ago, SalvorMallow said:

@Spud2nique turned down the difficulty and is comp stomping now (and actually hitting 3s)

Nah, my guy squd only plays on 'eggspert mode'.  He's just that good. 

[Gray Mule]

ESPN has gone crazy!  There is no doubt in my mind.  They have the Hawks favored tonight.   

If I were a betting man, and I'm not, I wouldn't put any of my money on Atlanta winning tonight's game.  I know that, on any given night, any NBA team is capable of beating any other NBA team.  Hawks may win tonight.  I really hope that they do.

GO ATL HAWKS !!

[Dnice]

Just don't hit rookies on the head again Murray.

[lethalweapon3]

Added to the Questionable list for the Rockets is Tari Eason (sore lower leg).

~lw3

[JayBirdHawk]

 

 

[hawkman]

Trae is torching Brooks.

[terrell]

4 minutes ago, hawkman said:

Trae is torching Brooks.

I see a technical foul coming..... lol

Edited December 21, 2023 by terrell

[terrell]

Why is Wes taking baseline mid range jump shots?? smh

Backcourt feeling it so far

Dre with 2 nice PASSES earlier

Good to have Bogi back

Edited December 21, 2023 by terrell

[hawkman]

Excellent basketball. Trae has been on fire the past month.