HOUSTON — It’s been six years since Mike D’Antoni patrolled the sideline of Toyota Center, but the pain from a playoff loss to the Golden State Warriors still stings like a fresh wound.
“We thought we had ’em,” D’Antoni said in a phone conversation last month. “We could have won the series. … You need some breaks, some calls and gotta make big shots. That’s the thing about championships: You have to have a lot of factors that work in your favor to get over the hump. It just wasn’t in the cards for us.”
D’Antoni was talking about his 2019 Rockets, but he easily could have been talking about current head coach Ime Udoka’s squad, dispatched in Game 7 last week by the same franchise.
As the Rockets head into a pivotal summer, eliminated yet again by the Warriors and facing internal debate over next steps, their options look familiar. Their current crossroads — continuing to develop the young talent or going all in for a star — could unlock progress or lead to stagnation.
During the 2018 and 2019 seasons, D’Antoni’s teams — which won 65 and 53 regular-season games, respectively — succumbed to Steph Curry, Draymond Green, coach Steve Kerr and the rest of the Warriors in the Western Conference finals the first year, the semifinals the following year. Two Sundays ago, Udoka endured a similar fate in the first round, his second playoff-series loss to the Warriors in the last five seasons as a coach.
Game 7 could be an inflection point for the organization. There is frustration on Udoka’s part, having lost another series to a coach he thought he had figured out, and to an inferior team by his own account. That this wasn’t the first time he’d felt this way made the feeling worse, as his Boston Celtics fell in six games to the Warriors in the NBA Finals in 2022 after leading the series 2-1.
Despite the disappointment, the postseason loss was necessary for an inexperienced Rockets team. This was the first time many of the young Rockets have been to the playoffs. It shouldn’t be their last.
“They have an incredible identity that Ime has instilled in them,” Kerr said of the burgeoning Rockets. “Grit, toughness, you know what you’re going to get when you play them.”
Udoka’s team, as talented and aggressive as it was, simply wasn’t ready for this stage. But it bodes well for the future, and Udoka’s expectations for the summer heading into next season are only growing.
“We’ve taken steps, and that’s shown not only our record but guys’ growth and understanding,” Udoka said. “We always want more — selfish, greedy, whatever you want to call it as a coaching staff and team — so, not happy how it ended. Felt like we should still be playing, but (there are) a lot of learning experiences that will help us going forward. Everyone’s goal is to be better and come back better.
“This is a huge offseason for everybody.”
Amen Thompson took a big developmental step after becoming a Rockets starter in January. (Ezra Shaw / Getty Images)
On the Wednesday afternoon the Rockets learned their first-round fate, there was a familiar sight inside the Memorial Hermann training center. Udoka and Amen Thompson were engaged in deep discussion long after practice had ended.
Thompson and Udoka understand each other. They are wired similarly, both ultra-competitive and defensively sound. Houston doesn’t have the recipe for shutting down a superstar like Curry, but any hope of offsetting his impact rested with Thompson.
This season, Thompson established himself as the Rockets’ most versatile and aggressive defender. The 22-year-old began the year as a reserve but was inserted into the starting lineup in January after forward Jabari Smith Jr. fractured his non-shooting hand in practice. Since then, Thompson, who finished the regular season obliterating nearly every advanced defensive metric, assumed the reins as Houston’s most important defender and an Udoka mainstay.
“He sets the tone in a lot of ways, as well as Dillon (Brooks), Fred (VanVleet) and those guys,” Udoka said. “But since he’s been in the starting lineup, we feel his versatility all over the court, guarding multiple guys. That’s probably a big part of the reason why, because he guards a little bit of everybody and is really disruptive as far as that. We’ve relied on him to do that throughout the season.”
Udoka works well with Thompson and the Rockets as a group because of his own player experience as a hard-nosed defensive type.
To prepare for the first round, Udoka and his assistants used what they called a “second training camp” in the week leading up to Game 1. During this period, concepts were reintroduced, points of emphasis were driven home and extensive film work was done.
Having been on both sides, as a player and coach, Udoka understood what playoff preparation entailed. He laid out his game plan.
“It’s different as a coach and as a player,” Udoka said. “The amount of time you prepare … you may only go through ABC for the players, but you have everything else in your back pocket as a coach. As a player, it’s just getting mentally ready for what’s to come. If you play a certain way, that’s how you approach it anyway.
“You don’t have to flip a switch and do something different. But what I’m trying to impart on our guys is at the end of the day, what you’ve done well throughout the season, carry that over. It’s nothing different.”
The problem for Udoka and his young team, as the playoffs quickly unveiled, is that sometimes, even the best plans go awry. Rockets fans know what happened.
It was déjà vu all over again for Udoka, who had seen this play out in the NBA Finals with Boston. The Rockets’ plan to disrupt Curry’s rhythm worked to some degree, with an 111.3 defensive rating to show for it, but the Warriors were a sum of their parts, not because of Curry’s gravitational pull. Bitter lessons from Celtics losses were back to haunt Udoka.
“The experience and IQ that they bring is a big part of it,” Udoka said. “Their continuity over the years has been a big part of it. Now you insert (Jimmy) Butler in there, it gives another dimension, but what they do as a whole hasn’t really changed: a really good team that’s in symmetry with each other. At times, that experience showed in the Boston series. They were on point with a lot of different things, and we were kind of going through it for the first time on that stage, which hurt us.”
The idea of Giannis Antetokounmpo joining the Rockets is intriguing, according to team sources. (Stacy Revere / Getty Images)
Despite the recent heartache, the mission for the Rockets extends well beyond one team in the playoffs.
They not only want to build a championship team, but also one with a lengthy window to contend. And while there was significant disappointment with the loss to the Warriors, the belief remains that this group, with enough player development, could grow into a title contender.
That’s where it gets complicated.
Depending on how these next few months play out, star NBA players like the Milwaukee Bucks’ Giannis Antetokounmpo, Phoenix Suns’ Kevin Durant and New Orleans Pelicans’ Zion Williamson might be on the market. And that list could grow.
The prospect of landing players of that ilk presents a fork-in-the-road moment for the Rockets, who are in prime position to upgrade their roster with a bona fide star because of the draft picks and young talent they’ve collected in recent years. But will they take the big swing, one that could cost them a young star (or more), or take the patient approach and resist the temptation to accelerate their contending timeline?
While Durant is widely seen as the most attainable of that group, and he is known to be very interested in playing in Houston, team sources said the Rockets still have significant reservations about that possible partnership, in large part, because Durant’s age (36) would be so out of sync with their younger timeline. It’s worth noting that previous talks between the teams about Durant, team sources said, were initiated by the Suns.
The Rockets have previously held serious interest in the Suns’ Devin Booker, but team sources said that is no longer the case. Not only do team officials still have faith in Jalen Green, who is five years younger than Booker and $66 million cheaper over the next three seasons, but also Booker’s struggles last season shifted the thinking on this front. As for Williamson, who has spent the majority of his first six seasons falling short of expectations while experiencing health issues along the way, team sources said the Rockets see him as too risky.
That brings us to Antetokounmpo.
Of all the possibilities this summer might bring, the idea of the “Greek Freak” donning a Rockets jersey is seen as the most intriguing within the organization. The cost most certainly would be exorbitant, with a collection of draft picks, veterans to make the money work and a young talent or two likely to be part of the package. And because of how Antetokounmpo best operates, as a primary playmaker and a hub of the offense, the prospect of him playing alongside Alperen Şengün in the frontcourt — if he wasn’t dealt — would come with its challenges. But not only is Antetokounmpo widely considered one of the league’s top three players, but also he’s still young enough at 30 that the runway for a Rockets future would be long.
But as Rockets general manager Rafael Stone made clear during exit interviews, there is confidence in this roster even if they don’t go star-chasing. Thompson, in particular, is seen as a foundational piece and special two-way talent who is just scratching the surface of how good he can be. Şengün took a major step forward this season in making his first All-Star Game, and he is expected to get even better. The Rockets remain high on others, too, from Smith to Tari Eason and their little-used No. 3 pick in last year’s draft, Reed Sheppard.
As it relates to Green, whose struggles against the Warriors were widely seen as a red flag when it came to his Rockets future, the internal view is quite different. As the Rockets see it, the Warriors’ choice to eliminate Green on the offensive end with double-teams and blitzes should have been punished to a far greater degree by his teammates. In that sense, there was a shared fault there that they’ll all grow from going forward.
In the short term, the Rockets will need to address the status of two players whose impact in the playoffs was pivotal: VanVleet, who agreed to push back a decision on a $44.9 million team option to June 29, and veteran big man Steven Adams, who will be a free agent.
“We’re in the business of people,” Stone said. “They’re unpredictable. If we trade for a player, assuming that player will be the same player in our environment that they were in the last one, that’s not always the case. You have to make the best choices you can. But Plan A has always been to develop our current group and hope that we can be good enough within it.
“On that front, we improved, and I’m very happy with that level of improvement.”
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; top photos: Alex Slitz, Tim Warner and Noah Graham / NBAE / Getty Images; Cary Edmondson / Imagn Images)