- 9 hours ago
Perhaps the most frustrating part of the Rockets' offseason is how they didn't hire an offensive coach for their staff. Luke Mauro and Seth Payne discuss it here.
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00:00Maybe the most frustrating part of the Rockets offseason.
00:04It's Payne and Pendergast.
00:04I'm Luke Morrow in for Sean alongside Seth Payne.
00:08713-572-4610 on the text line.
00:13Appreciate all y'all reaching out.
00:15I don't appreciate the guy that thinks that because I don't want to tell my wife the worst thing I've
00:19ever done
00:20that it must be really, really bad.
00:23It's more a matter of trying to power rank the bad things I've done.
00:27I'd gladly tell her the worst thing.
00:29But first I need to submit a ballot to NFL players and have them power rank them for me.
00:34Yeah, that's fair.
00:37Yeah, I'm just looking through all the texts coming.
00:39Appreciate you guys listening and reaching out.
00:42Shifting, though, over to the Rockets here, because I saw this was pointed out actually by Adam Spillane,
00:48and it was a good point made, and I think it's the most frustrating part,
00:52is we know it's been a quiet offseason for the Rockets,
00:55and I can get it from a player perspective because their hands are sort of tied right now,
01:01but the other thing we were all clamoring for as we were watching the playoffs or even the regular season
01:06was the lack of an offensive coach for this team.
01:09Like an offensive coordinator.
01:10Yeah.
01:11The same way Jeff Bisdelic was a defensive coordinator for the Rockets when Mike D'Antoni was here.
01:17He brought in Jeff Bisdelic, and the defense, like Mike D'Antoni's system,
01:22has always had its defensive deficiencies, and it's difficult in some ways
01:26because you've got to account for the way they play on offense.
01:28But, like, Jeff Bisdelic did things that got the most out of a bunch of guys defensively on those teams,
01:35and you don't get the sense that the Rockets even give a damn that their head coach is all about
01:45defense
01:46and isn't an offensive-minded guy.
01:49Yeah.
01:50Yeah, and that's the frustrating part is because, like I said, I get it.
01:55If your hands are tied, you're cash-strapped, whatever, you can't add the players you want,
02:00but there's no sense for coaching staff.
02:04Like, you can bring in whoever you want, and it just seems like a stubbornness or unwillingness
02:09to try to bring somebody in on the staff to help Udoka, who clearly seems like he needs some offensive
02:15help.
02:15And then you look around the other parts of the league, the Spurs, who were just in the NBA Finals,
02:21and, granted, have a young head coach so he can benefit from having an experienced coach by his side.
02:27But they brought in Billy Donovan to be their, quote-unquote, offensive coordinator.
02:32The Warriors, who have Steve Kerr, who's, like, regarded as one of the best coaches in the league,
02:37they brought in Frank Vogel to be their offensive coordinator this offseason,
02:41and that was after having Mike Brown previously as their, quote-unquote, offensive coordinator
02:47before Mike Brown just left for the Knicks this past year.
02:49And so you see the Spurs just in the Finals adding to their offensive staff.
02:55The Warriors, as good as Kerr has been and that franchise has been recently, even they add.
03:00And yet the Rockets, it's like, man, they're not adding much on the roster,
03:03and they're not adding anything to the coaching staff.
03:05This truly is just simply running it back from last year from a healthier perspective.
03:10I get that.
03:10But running back the same plan from last year and just, hey, hoping it's different this time.
03:14Yeah, right.
03:15And, I mean, the only thing that's different about the plan is that, all right,
03:19if you've got a veteran point guard in there, presumably he's not going to tear his ACL again
03:23right before the season begins.
03:25That, I mean, that does smooth a lot of the issues that they had over last year.
03:32But also it's still, you know, it doesn't make you feel as awesome about their ability to fix some of
03:39the other issues
03:40that might arise during the season.
03:43It does.
03:43The running it back part, I'm cool with and I've come to terms with the fact that having a point
03:51guard on the team,
03:52a veteran point guard on the team, should make a big, big difference.
03:55But that also he's going to be one year older.
03:58I would imagine he's going to, just because of age and injury, that his defense might not, you know,
04:05be as much of an advantage for him coming off of that injury.
04:10That it just, it still seems like a little bit of a half measure.
04:14Like if you were, even if you're a really good team, like every team in every sport after they win
04:18a championship,
04:19the coach will invariably at some point say, well, it's never as simple as just coming back
04:24and all of a sudden you're the same team.
04:25But it feels like the Rockets aren't even doing that.
04:28They're saying like, well, no, we'll just, you know, we'll add a little thing, a few things around the edges.
04:35But by and large, we just want to run it back to July of 2025, you know,
04:41and we'll run back that version of what we wanted.
04:44And it's just, it's frustrating.
04:47It's like, it's sometimes, sometimes inaction is actually the best course of action,
04:52but there's got to be a limit to it.
04:55And there's got to be a little bit more than just assuming that, man,
04:58we had a good plan last year in July before the Van Vliet injury.
05:04So now we still think it's a really good plan.
05:06Yeah.
05:06And I get that.
05:08It's just tough to try to run it back.
05:09It's almost like when you try to plan the perfect, like, date for your girlfriend
05:13or someone you're taking out on a date and you have all these things lined up
05:16and like, okay, we're going to do this, then we're going to do this, then we're going to do this.
05:18And just, let's just say something went long and something like you missed.
05:23It was supposed to be, we were all, we were supposed to be in the park at this time
05:26to see the fireworks, but dinner ran too long.
05:28And so the following week, it's like, hey, what are we doing Friday night?
05:32And you say, well, we're going to try to do the same thing we did last week,
05:35except this time we're going to make sure we see the fireworks.
05:38It's kind of lame.
05:39Like, it's not very exciting to just try to do it again.
05:41It's like the people that try to duplicate.
05:43We had such a great date this one time.
05:45Remember, we had such a great trip to the Bahamas, like, let's go back to that resort.
05:48And it's never quite the same when you try to do it again.
05:52It's never as good as you think it's going to be.
05:54The thing that surprises me is that, you know, Fertitta was the owner
06:00when they rehired Vizdelic.
06:03Vizdelic had been with the Rockets.
06:05They were top five defense.
06:06He ended up kind of abruptly retiring because some kind of family situation.
06:10And they fell off a cliff.
06:12Then they hired him back.
06:13And I think the results weren't the same, but it was also after he'd had all this turmoil
06:16in his personal life.
06:18Somebody will correct me on the timeline on all of that.
06:22But, like, Fertitta has seen exactly the difference that it made when Mike D'Antoni,
06:26an offensive-minded coach, had a counterpart in Jeff Vizdelic on his staff.
06:30And there doesn't seem to be any kind of wanting to go back to that well of, like,
06:35all right, let's address things on multiple fronts.
06:38It's not just about the players on the court.
06:41It's about the entire system and the coaching staff and everything else like that.
06:45That's the part.
06:46The running it back from that perspective is actually, in my mind,
06:51worse than the running it back on the player side.
06:54So on the coaching side, what did we see last year?
06:56On the player side, we saw, okay, boy, without Van Vliet in there,
07:00things really got gunked up.
07:03It's not the way it needs to look.
07:04But at the very least, you can say, all right, well, but if Van Vliet comes back,
07:07then we won't have that same number of issues.
07:11But in going through that season, you saw very much the deficiencies of this coaching staff
07:18being able to engineer any kind of a dependable and reliable and structured offense
07:22in the absence of Jeff Van Vliet.
07:25Like, let's try to do something about that.
07:28And maybe it will come at some point in the next month or two.
07:31But it's kind of late to be adding all the guys that want to coach
07:37and are good coaches are under contract right now.
07:39Yeah, it's just I think it's like stubbornness.
07:43And it reminds me of when Nirvana was putting together their iconic album
07:49and Kurt Cobain didn't want to layer his vocals,
07:53you know, just have two different tracks of his vocals doing both parts.
07:57And the producer said, hey, John Lennon did it.
08:00And then Kurt Cobain realized, like, okay, if it was cool enough for John Lennon,
08:04then I guess I can layer my vocals.
08:06And that's a bit of a deep cut of a reference.
08:08But my point being, if the Spurs can do it, who are just in the NBA Finals,
08:11and if Steve Kerr can do it, who's regarded as one of the best coaches in the league,
08:15and even he's like, yeah, I need an offensive coordinator,
08:18then Ime Adoka and the Rockets should do it as well.
08:21And that stubbornness there of like, nah, we're good.
08:23We got this under control.
08:24When clearly you haven't, that's even more frustrating to me
08:27than the lack of free agent signings, which I can understand that a little bit better.
08:32There's more excuses you can make for that, but not for the coach.
08:34I wonder, though, okay, so you tell me.
08:36You know a lot more about music than I do, but tell me if I'm wrong here.
08:40The Beatles didn't start doing a lot of things until they started using the multi-track recording.
08:46And that was after they had already established that they would layer John Lennon's voice.
08:51Like when they were just a young, raw band, they were like the studio version of their songs
08:57was the same as their in-concert version of the songs, right?
09:00Yeah.
09:00Yeah, right.
09:01And so actually for the Beatles, what happened, and it's why I think it really elevated them,
09:05was they were touring so much.
09:06They finally stopped touring in like whatever it was, 1966.
09:09In the last like four years, they were just recording music and able to spend more time in the studio,
09:14which is why they were able to like experiment and do these different things
09:17and produce, I think, even greater music.
09:19But that turns into, yeah, and they didn't even want to perform live.
09:22But then you also can't replicate those songs in a live setting.
09:26True.
09:26I like the guy.
09:27I like, Kurt Cobain really screwed up on that.
09:30He probably feels awful about it.
09:32He should have kept it as raw as possible to the point where the, like, you're a young band.
09:36Like, you know, when you go to a Nirvana concert,
09:39you're going to get exactly what you hear about on the, um, uh, what you, what you hear on the
09:44album.
09:45Damn it.
09:45Yeah.
09:46They're never going to make it, these kids.
09:47It's fair.
09:48Tom Petty was my favorite musician of all time.
09:50And I always hated when he played Free Falling live, at least in later years,
09:53he used his voice from like the album copy as the backing track when he sang just that line.
10:00Oh, really?
10:00Oh.
10:01So he would still sing it in person, but then you'd hear it in the background is like,
10:04almost like the harmony, the recorded version.
10:06I was like, oh, that's kind of lame.
10:08Did you pour to hire a singer to do that?
10:09I don't know why he did it.
10:11Well, his, his best background singer did, did pass away, but, but they had another guy,
10:15Scott Thurston, who was good.
10:16I don't know.
10:16I don't know why he did it, but that always annoyed me.
10:18Cause yeah, to your point, it's like, I want to see you guys perform this live.
10:21I don't want to hear like you in your concert.
10:24That's, that's weird to me, but so be it.
10:27Uh, Rockets.
10:28I think we were talking about this.
10:29I had never realized that Dave Grohl's, um, the Foo Fighters first album,
10:33he played every instrument on that, that like, that was him just like going into a studio
10:38and recording every instrument and him doing all the vocals and everything.
10:42And like, so, so when he, when it came time to tour, he had to actually like find, find
10:45an actual band for the Foo Fighters.
10:47That wasn't just Dave Grohl.
10:49It would, uh, he would have had a hard time pulling off playing every instrument and doing
10:52the vocals.
10:52That would be fascinating.
10:54Yeah.
10:54Uh, which reminds me of that whole thing when like Kanye into Beck, the musician Beck
10:58Hanson, uh, won like album of the year.
11:01I think it was, and Kanye, uh, disrespected him because I think it was supposed to be
11:05Beyonce.
11:05I think he did it twice.
11:06I think he did it once to like Taylor Swift, but he also did it to Beck or people were
11:09upset
11:09that Beck won the album over Beyonce, but same thing back.
11:12What people didn't realize was he did every album.
11:15He played every instrument on the album.
11:17He produced it himself.
11:18Like that was true musical talent, as opposed to just singing and having 20 people write
11:24your songs and lay down the tracks and everything.
11:26It's the equivalent of the social media videos.
11:27I really like where one dude does like three different characters on a social media video.
11:31Yeah, exactly.
11:31That's talent right there.
11:32That is talent.
11:33Yeah.
11:33I do like those.
11:34Yeah.
11:35Beck's incredibly talented.
11:36Somebody's having an argument with himself, like just in a different costume.
11:39Yeah.
11:39They throw a wig on or something.
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