{"id":494265,"date":"2026-04-25T19:24:18","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T17:24:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/?p=494265"},"modified":"2026-04-25T19:24:18","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T17:24:18","slug":"rockets-udoka-urges-team-to-grow-youre-not-that-young-anymore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/rockets-udoka-urges-team-to-grow-youre-not-that-young-anymore\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockets, Udoka Urges Team to Grow: \u201cYou\u2019re Not That Young Anymore”"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ime Udoka didn\u2019t hold back in his comments toward his players after the third straight loss of the Houston Rockets against the Los Angeles Lakers in their first-round playoff series.<\/p>\n

On the late-game collapse<\/strong>:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cHorrendous mistakes. I don\u2019t know if you want to say youth or scared of the moment, or whatever the case, but yeah\u2026 you have a six-point lead with 20 or 30 seconds to go, get a rebound, and just have to hold the ball and get fouled\u2026 or it\u2019s basically one-on-four and we throw it away. Foul, a terrible foul on Marcus Smart to give him three free throws. Next play, backcourt, you got it. Double\u2019s coming, you try to split it instead of throwing it to Alpy [Alperen \u0160eng\u00fcn] wide open. Another turnover, and then James makes a tough shot. Then the final play, for the last shot, we don\u2019t run what was drawn up. All of the above.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
On closing out games<\/strong>:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s obviously a weakness of ours to close out and finish. The amount of mistakes or the type of mistakes are egregious, and you can\u2019t have those.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Message to the team in the locker room<\/strong>:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span>\u201cGrow up. You\u2019re not that young anymore. You\u2019ve been to the playoffs once, and we watched every situation just now.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
Final message:<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong>\u201cNow, you\u2019ve got to go get one on Sunday and don\u2019t let this one beat you twice.\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Rockets blew a 6-point lead in the final 30 seconds of regulation<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":148,"featured_media":494264,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_spbk_hide_featured":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[399],"tags":[],"rumors":[],"typology":[],"posizionamento":[],"class_list":["post-494265","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-nba"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/5\/2026\/04\/houston-rockets-playoff.png","digistream_id":0,"digistream":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494265","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/148"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=494265"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/494265\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/494264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=494265"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=494265"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=494265"},{"taxonomy":"rumors","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/rumors?post=494265"},{"taxonomy":"typology","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/typology?post=494265"},{"taxonomy":"posizionamento","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportando.basketball\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posizionamento?post=494265"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}