Ime Udoka and his quartet of vets

Ahead of the Houston Rockets opening training camp in Lake Charles, Louisiana, new head coach Ime Udoka and new point guard Fred VanVleet met at the team hotel near the campus of McNeese State University.

Both were taking over as the de facto leaders of a young Rockets team that had stumbled their way to 22 wins last season. Udoka knew he needed experienced players to set strong examples at the top of the roster, and so he urged the front office to sign VanVleet to a three-year, $128.5 million contract last summer.

“He is who he is, and that’s the reason we pursued him in free agency,” Udoka said of the 29-year-old VanVleet. “The first discussion I had with him, he was the guy I thought he was and I knew how good he’d be for our team as an extension of our coaches on the floor.”

Along with VanVleet, the Rockets signed Dillon Brooks (27 years old), Jeff Green (37) and Aaron Holiday (27) to complete a veteran quartet that could serve a role in helping Houston’s franchise players – all of whom are between 19 and 22 years old – develop and lift the Rockets to their first winning season since 2020. Nearly halfway through this season, the Rockets are 18-18 and squarely in the race for the play-in tournament. 

Winning is happening, but so is development, and the Rockets are showing why adding veterans to a young roster is essential to the team-building process.

Under former coach Stephen Silas, the Rockets were 29th in defensive rating in 2022-23 and the franchise’s building blocks weren’t showing signs of progress.

The 2021 draft’s No. 2 overall pick Jalen Green, an electrifying talent, wasn’t bottled up by the previous coaching staff and was developing bad habits as a volume scorer. He shot 41.6% for the season. Only three players in the league shot a lower percentage on as many attempts. 

Jabari Smith Jr, the third overall pick in 2022, was being outshined by his draft classmates. Alperen Sengun showed offensive flashes, but questions remained about whether the Rockets could ever be better than a below-average defense with him in the middle of it.

After three seasons, Silas was fired and Udoka, who took the Boston Celtics to the 2022 Finals but was let go because of an improper relationship with a female staff member, was hired. 

While most rebuilding teams hire a first-time coach and use the roster to churn through toolsy talent and draft picks, the Rockets took a different approach. General manager Rafael Stone felt good about the picks he had made but thought they needed better leadership to reach their potential before it was too late to salvage them.

Stone hired Udoka and agreed to use their cap space to bring in players who have won at a high level. VanVleet had won a championship with the Raptors in 2019, Green was coming off a run with the Nuggets in 2023 and Brooks had played many playoff series in Memphis.

“It was a bunch of guys doing their own thing the last few years,” Udoka said. “But now you have accountability and more aggression in general. That’s obviously coming from the coaching staff and the players that we’ve added to the roster."

“[The younger players] have been good,” he continued. “They like being held accountable, they like being challenged. We got the right guys to not only say things but show them on a day-to-day basis.”

The key was VanVleet, who not only had the experience but also the chops on the court to push the young Rockets to actual wins. During last summer’s free-agency period, Udoka sold VanVleet on a leadership role with the Rockets. VanVleet signed and immediately took Green under his wing, meeting with him in the offseason and leading workouts ahead of the start of training camp.

When the Rockets reported to Lake Charles in October, Udoka pulled VanVleet into a meeting at the team hotel to discuss his role.

“Quarterback, be a coach on the floor, help these guys along,” VanVleet said Udoka told him.

“You’re helping some of those young guys grow and break some of those bad habits,” Udoka said he told VanVleet.

Udoka and VanVleet went through every player on the roster, reviewing what they had done the previous season, where they were in their respective careers and what they needed to improve. But Udoka also made it clear that he wanted VanVleet to thrive individually.

“Just trying to be a help to those guys while obviously being able to perform in my own right,” VanVleet said. “Just setting things straight and letting me know to feel comfortable and be myself.”

VanVleet this season is posting career highs in True Shooting percentage (56%) and assists (8.5 per game). 

Meanwhile, Green’s numbers are down but so is his usage, and the film shows that he’s starting to shed some bad habits. He’s taking fewer mid-range shots and passing out of drives more than last season. A greater rate of his shots have come from beyond the arc, and his 3-point shooting percentage has ticked up. A breakout could be coming.

Sengun has been sensational and is making an All-Star push as Houston’s offense has been reworked around his passing and size. Defensively, the Rockets coaches are having him come up to the level of the screen on pick-and-rolls, rather than drop to the basket.

“Alperen is not a rim protector,” Udoka said. “So we’re not going to have him sit back and defend 2-on-1s in the pick-and-roll.”

The staff strategically hides Green on weaker offensive players and uses Smith as a roaming help defender. Those things are structural and can help mitigate mistakes.

But the biggest reason why the Rockets have gone from the second-worst defense in the league to top-five this season is effort. Udoka and his quartet of vets are holding the young players accountable when it comes to fighting over screens, boxing out for rebounds and getting back in transition.

“First thing is changing the mindset on [the defensive] end and getting some guys who that is not their natural tendency to buy in on that side,” Udoka said.

Dig into the defensive numbers and the results speak for themselves:

• Defensive rating: 118.6 points allowed every 100 possessions → 111.4
• Transition defense: 134.8 points allowed every 100 possessions (30th) → 106.9 (1st)
• Box-outs: 4.5 per game (29th) → 7.4 (7th)

“They didn’t have great defensive teams in the past,” Holiday said. “Us being here and talking them through it and trying to help change the culture a little bit and how people see us, and hopefully they see us more as a defensive team.”

Along with VanVleet, Holiday, Green and Brooks are encouraged to talk with the coaching staff about things they see on the floor that can be tweaked or improved. 

“If we see something we can bring it to him and see what he thinks about it,” Holiday said. “It’s an open door of communication, for sure.”

VanVleet and Udoka will meet periodically at the team hotel on the road, over lunch, or at the gym.

“We’re in communication daily,” VanVleet said. “It’s a constant relationship that will continue to grow, but it’s good to have that communication early on.”

The Rockets still have growing to do. They can struggle to execute late in games (they’ve lost 12 of 19 games within five points in the final five minutes) and on the road (3-12), including their last two against the Miami Heat and Chicago Bulls before traveling to see the Detroit Pistons on Friday night.

The Rockets are on pace to win twice as many games as they did last season, but the goal isn’t to merely be a .500 team. Adding an experienced coach and experienced players is supposed to fast-track the winning part, but most of the optimism inside the Rockets organization stems from how the new additions have helped the new-to-the-league players.

“I don’t look at it as we’ve won 17, 20, 22 over the last three years and us winning ten more is a good step,” Udoka said. “It’s based on the personnel we’ve added, the coaches we’ve added, and challenging the young guys to grow.

“They bought in from day one and, once you see the competitive side and mindset, you know you have the right guys.”