Making Udoka will be the new coach of the Houston Rockets from the 2023/24 season, As announced by Adrian Wojnarowski, a journalist from ESPN. The Texas franchise signs the former Celtics coach, who led Boston to the NBA finals last year before being dropped by the team and fired in February. The Rockets quickly find a replacement for Stephen Silas after three years in a project that seeks to consolidate in the West. The franchise has done all the relevant research and has decided that Udoka he was the right person they wanted for the next phase in Houston.
Barely eight months after being dropped by the Celtics, Ime Udoka finds a new seat on the NBA bench wheel. The Boston franchise decided to remove the coach despite reaching the Finals in his first year as head of the locker room for breaking various codes of conduct of the team due to a relationship with a worker of the organization. He was initially furloughed without a job and pay, leaving the interim position to Joe Mazzulla, but after the All Star and with Boston leading the conference, they finally decided break Udoka’s contract and appoint Mazzulla as coach. Since then, Ime has been in every conversation about a vacant NBA bench.
And it is that in his first season as head coach, tfter a decade as an assistant between San Antonio, Philadelphia and Brooklyn, Ime Udoka revolutionized the NBA. From defense, he got the Celtics to be finalists and the big surprise of the season. They beat the Kevin Durant and Kyrie Irving Nets in the first round before beating the Milwaukee Bucks and Miami Heat in two Game 7s, to fall in the finals against Golden State. In the regular season they had gone 51-31, the second-best record in the conference. With Udoka still, the Celtics entered the ‘training camp’ in September as the main favorite to take the ring in 2023 until the franchise decided to put it away. Now in Houston he will finally have a chance to explain why he was fired in detail.
It now comes to a franchise that is still in the process of rebuilding. The Rockets have been the third worst team in the competition with only 22 wins and 60 losses. It is a young project with talents like Jalen Green, Jabari Smith Jr, Kevin Porter Jr or the Spanish Usman Garuba, in addition to the option of getting the #1 pick of the next draft in the lottery, which will be held on May 15. A project that needs a solid guide both in the figure of veteran players and a coach with experience in the NBA, especially after the years under the mandate of Stephen Silas. In three seasons, Houston has finished with a 59-177 record. and was fired the same day the regular season ended, April 9.
What has surprised have been the times. This same week the Raptors announced that Nick Nurse would not continue as coach of the Canadian franchise, and automatically, Ime Udoka became the top candidate to relieve Nurse in office. At the same time, Nick sounded like a favorite for the Houston job. The work has been carried out ahead of ex-coaches such as Frank Vogel, James Borrego or current attendees like Adrian Griffin, in Toronto. There are still two vacant positions to fill, in the absence of the playoffs being over: the bench of the Raptors and the Detroit Piston
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2023-04-25 05:42:06
#coach #Houston #Rockets #Relief