Rockets Vibes Are OFF After BARELY Beating G League Grizzlies & HISTORIC Overtime Loss To Wolves

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The rockets barely beat the G-league grizzlies

and the vibes are in shambles

since they're historic over time lost to the wolves.

It's all coming up right here at Lockdown Rock.

This is Mission Control Houston.

What's up and welcome to another edition of Lockdown Rock

It's your daily podcast home for everything.

Houston Rockets basketball, as always, I'm your host.

Jackson Gatlin, did a few stoning and credentialed media member.

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Playing catch up a little bit.

I do apologize was under the weather to close out last week.

So playing catch up on these past two rockets games

and we're going to get to the brutally historic over time loss

against the wolves kind of checking in on that game

what went wrong and also just how it has affected

and feels like it's permeated this team.

And what we're starting kind of going in reverse order

is the rocket's most recent win against the G. Lee Grizzlies,

119-109.

A team that they flat out frankly should not have struggled

as much as they did against like this.

They won the game, but at no point did it really feel like the rockets

were in control of this game.

And I think that's concerning.

Like this is a trend that we've seen all season long from the rockets

where they have either played, sometimes they play too often

they play down to their level of opponent.

And that's exactly what it felt like against this Grizzlies team

for the majority of the game.

There were even moments late in the game as the Grizzlies kept making

like a little run, a little push here, cutting into the lead,

you know, six point lead, seven point lead.

I kept thinking to myself, here it is.

Here's going to be another painful collapse

in the closing moments of a game, right?

I'm sure many of you felt that way, right?

Watching this team play, not being able to execute,

failing to get stops on the other end at times.

Thankfully they were able to pull this one out.

They needed this win.

They needed it in a bad way.

But there's no reason why this rocket's team

should have struggled to beat a Grizzlies team

that is basically trotting out a bunch of unproven NBA players,

rookies, and effectively G-leaders,

and the corpse of Taj Gibson.

Zero reason why this rocket's team should have struggled

as much as they did against this iteration of Grizzlies basketball.

And you look up and down the roster and, you know,

starters did their job.

Tari came in off the bench, did his job,

but it was a very kind of, it was kind of an unserious game, right?

Not a single player, except for Katie,

shot over 50% from the floor.

Everybody else, you know, Jabari, seven of 16,

Alp, six of 13, Amin, seven of 15, Reed,

six of 15, like not a great game efficiency-wise

from anybody, Tari, six of 14 off the bench.

The turnovers at times were still a problem.

They wound up committing 14 turnovers in this game.

Grizzlies were at times capitalizing off of that 18 points

off of those 14 turnovers.

Transition defense with suspect at times.

Just a lot of the same old, same old weaknesses

that we've seen out of this rocket's team throughout the season

and had it happened against a better team

than we're probably talking about the rockets on the opposite end

of a blowout, unfortunately.

And this is what routinely happens, right?

Is they have enough talent to be able to kind of scrape by

against bad teams at times.

But even on the other end, you let you look at the way

that they were guarding OMAX, Olivier Maxon's prosper.

Dude got off 31 points on 12 to 15 shooting.

And he had an unreal shooting night.

Give credit where credit is due.

But there was also very little effort

done to make him uncomfortable to actually de-up on him,

kept giving him wide open looks.

And I mean, watching the Grizzlies at times

just slicing and dicing through the rockets defense,

a defense that is supposed to be good.

That's supposed to be the backbone of this rocket team.

That's what Emeodoka wants.

And that's what his whole basketball philosophy is.

And to see this awful Grizzlies team being able to put up numbers

on this rocket team, I'm not saying that they should have held

them to like under 90 points or anything.

But this is this is very much like a vibes kind of feeling

like watching this game, especially in the aftermath of watching

the wolves game.

It didn't feel great.

It was and there were little little moments, little wrinkles

in this game where you kind of felt some of the aftermath,

I think of the wolves game in effect.

And then you also still saw like Emeodoka

resorting to some of his worst tendencies

with some of the substitutions, the lineups.

Jashantate is seemingly like back in the rotation now

for whatever reason.

And it's not a slight to Jashantate.

It's just like what is Jashantate doing out there

over, for example, a Josh Kogi type, right?

Like Josh Kogi has played an incredible role

for this rocket team.

And it still remains one of the most puzzling decisions

that Emeodoka just suddenly started giving him DNPs,

especially because Josh Kogi checks the exact same box

as you would think that Jason on Tate checks

as far as being like that defense first hustle,

glue guy, role player, whatever,

because unfortunately it feels like that's,

it feels like that's kind of the lens

that Emeodoka views the game of basketball through right

is, you know, and credit to,

for another program, Red 94, for pointing this out,

because it makes sense.

And I think we've alluded to this at times before.

But, you know, Emeod was a role player in his career, right?

That was his job as an NBA player.

He was a role player.

He was a hustle guy.

He did the dirty work like, you know, all of that.

So he values those innate skills

or that mindset, that mentality out of players,

it feels like he values that disproportionately

compared to, you know, being able to embrace players

of a different skill set of a different mentality,

guys who maybe aren't defense first oriented,

but maybe bring other skills to the table.

And that is a very crippling view to have

as an NBA head coach,

when it comes to trying to maximize a roster

with a bunch of different guys who all play the game

different ways, right?

And you need to be able to mix and match parts

and find the best lineups to accentuate

and to build and flesh out your team

and to maximize your stars and all this stuff.

And yet, we're still seeing,

I mean, three man lineups with J-Shantate,

Alper and Shingoon and Min Thompson out there.

And it's like, all right, cool.

Let's trot out the three non-shooting lineups again.

And there are still moments where he's doing stuff

with like the double small lineup with Reed

and Aaron Holiday out there to provide some floor spacing.

And it's like the Aaron Holiday Minute

has been a breath of fresh air.

But then it's like, it's like one step forward,

two steps back at times when you start doing stuff,

when you do some of the good stuff.

But then you're still rolling in some of the bad stuff

as far as lineups and decision making

and things of that nature.

And then when you have the team playing

more or less kind of unserious basketball at times,

allowing Jabari Smith Jr. to be the one initiating

offensive possessions for what have you,

whatever reason where he commits five turnovers

in a given game.

Like that stuff shouldn't be happening, right?

You know, a head coach that had more of an offensive philosophy

or demanded more discipline out of his players offensively

or had a semblance of a system on that side of the floor

wouldn't be okay with Jabari Smith Jr.

And Jabari Smith Jr. initiating offense

or trying to run pick and roll or committing

the five turnovers that he did commit,

that number, a number of those coming as a result

of trying to actually initiate offense

to get things rolling in the half court for the Rock.

It's like those are things that just flat out shouldn't happen.

If Jabari Smith Jr. was a role player on the thunder,

he wouldn't be initiating offense

because that's not how good teams do things.

So they got the win against the Grizzlies,

one 19109.

But it didn't feel like a good win.

It felt like a, all right, cool.

It counts in the W column.

Thanks, I guess.

Like that, that was kind of the feeling after that win.

And it sucks because it was,

there were some really awesome moments in that game.

Like Shingoon put like two Grizzlies on a poster.

He had a like a baseline catch where he was being fronted

and spun towards the baseline and dunked with like two Grizzlies

draped all over him.

A Mentomson had like a sick one handed put back

dunk off of an Alper and Shingoon missed bank shot.

And I feel so jaded because watching this team,

I'm so worried about the next collapse,

the next meltdown, the next like,

oh, they're going to let go of the rope and lose to a bad team

that they had no business losing to.

That it's so hard to even enjoy some of these awesome

individual moments from certain guys

because it just feels like you're just waiting for the,

for the other shoe to drop at this point.

Coming up, I do want to talk about the historic

wolves over time loss and how the vibes feel like

they are in shambles around this rockets team

and how it's eerily reminiscent of a former rockets team.

We're going to get there in just one moment.

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This Rockets wolves game was a doozy, man.

I don't even know where to start with this one.

Honestly, it...

First off, no Anthony Edwards for the wolves.

Oh, wolves seem to mind you that by the end of the game

had basically lost like all of their starters,

all their key contributors.

Jade McDaniels had to leave with a leg injury.

Uh, he lost Nas Reed, who was ejected for complaining

about officiating, rude to go bare fouling out.

And A.O. Disumu wasn't out there with...

It had some kind of injury.

You'd think it was a calf something.

Um, so basically like none of Minnesota's key contributors

were available by the end of this game.

And yet this game still went to overtime.

Um, a game that, uh, frankly, again, on paper,

probably shouldn't have made it to overtime.

And the fact that it did was...

courtesy of Alport and Shingoon at the end of regulation

with what was a insane, like, kind of game-saving block.

One of the best individual defensive moments

of Alport and Shingoon's young career.

And this is where, like, I genuinely hate playing, like,

body language doctor for a team.

Because at the end of the day,

you really don't know the inner, like, locker room dynamics.

And here's the reality of the situation.

Is that anybody who pretends to understand

the inner, locker room dynamics, you know,

by talking about, oh, being around the team

and, like, at games and practices and stuff.

Like, the reality is,

even they don't really have a firm grasp of it,

just because everything that, that media is allowed to see,

it's all more or less very curated, right?

Because, like, media gets, like, players are warned

whenever media is going to be around.

Like, whether it's in the locker room or, obviously, at games,

that's, there's an understanding that was just unspoken.

Practices, all that, like, media is, like,

heard it off, like, cattle into a different area

of the practice facility, whatever.

And then, like, we're allowed into practices.

And it's always at a distinct point in the practice.

So there's never, there's not really hardly ever, like,

truly, like, an unfiltered, like, behind the scenes look

at the team.

And yeah, you'll see a little bit of camaraderie

and some chit-chat and all that kind of stuff.

But, it is a lot easier to identify and see

weird vibes kind of moments in a game

where, like, the lights are brightest

and you're reacting to negative emotions in real time

without being able to, like, hide what you're feeling

or how you're reacting to certain things.

Which is why I do, I do buy into it to a degree, right?

And this is something we've talked about all season.

This rocket team has just felt off, right?

Like, this isn't the first time that we've talked about

the vibes being iffy or things being kind of weird.

It's got like, it's just, it's had a,

the seasons just had like a weird feel to it, right?

And especially ever since the KD file stuff happened,

like, all that cloud has been lingering

over the team since that moment.

And I think that, at least on the court,

that play at the end of regulation, that block

by Alper and Shenguin, a game saving block,

which wound up not mattering at the end of the day.

But that game saving block where he blocked the shot

and then collapsed, fell, busted his lip wide open.

And it was the reaction from everybody else

that just didn't make any sense.

Like, nobody rushing over to help him off the floor

and nobody, like, hyping him up, congratulating him,

high fiving him, none of that stuff.

And you can maybe make the argument like,

oh, guys were just, they were, they were stressed

and they were locked into the moment.

They wanted to focus on the play and all this stuff.

I mean, I don't really buy that.

Like, it was a dead ball.

It was a game saving block,

one of the biggest moments of the game

that allowed them to get into overtime to begin with,

off the backs of a really impressive run

that was ignited by Shingoon and KD

late in the game, sparking a 12-0 run

to kind of put the rockets in front

in order to have a chance for overtime, right?

Like, KD and Shingoon were both awesome in this game.

And so I don't, I don't know, man.

Like, there's just, like, that moment,

that individual moment was, was really weird.

And then obviously, the actual, like,

the collapse in and of itself was so embarrassing

to go up, to go up 13 points

and then to allow the wolves

to rip off 15 in a row unanswered

and to just completely unravel

the way that we've seen this team unravel

countless times before.

This season and prior seasons

all throughout this email, Doka era.

I'm almost numb to it at this point.

Like, it's almost like a, yeah, well,

just another day at the office kind of vibe.

But do instant, like,

no adjustment sticking to, like,

allowing, allowing Alper and Shingoon

to be the one to bring the ball up the floor

when you have serviceable guards sitting on your bench.

Just the decision-making, man,

at the end of that wolves game

after going up big.

And part of it, you can attribute part of it

to the team maybe running out of gas a little bit.

But at the same time, then, okay,

if your team is running out of gas,

you have other guys that you're allowed to play.

You can lean on other guys.

You can, there's no rule that says,

oh, well, you hit overtime,

well, all the five guys,

all your five best guys that you want on the floor,

well, they got to play the next five minutes straight.

Like, you are more than allowed

to swap out a guy or two

and give them a quick breather on the bench

at the start of OT

and then sub them back in.

But to watch this team

not be able to put a single point on the board

after going up 13-0.

And then to see

Kevin Durant make it to the free throw line

and have a chance to tie it up

and with on for as good a free throw shooter as KD is

to with on the free throw.

And then obviously like the intentional miss

and all that like it.

I don't know.

I can't wrap my head around this team.

They had no business

being in overtime to begin with.

Then it looked like they were going to win OT

ripping off 13 straight.

And then they just,

they couldn't do anything

to execute down the stretch.

And it's at how many times

we've said that sentence this season

and how many more of these kinds of losses

does this team need to experience

does this organization need to experience

before enough becomes enough?

Now here's the issue, right?

Is I firmly believe

E-mailed Oak is not going anywhere.

Like he is as close to Teflon as you can get

in large part because

feels like they were a little too

trigger happy with giving him that extension.

It wasn't in place.

Conversations would be drastically different right now.

And look, I get it.

E-mailed Oak brought the rockets out of the basement

of the NBA, brought them accountability,

respectability, brought them a culture

that they desperately needed.

Like E-mail is not a quote-unquote

like bad coach.

But he's a very stubborn head coach at times.

And he's very fixated and set in his ways.

And those are not good redeeming qualities

that you want out of an NBA head coach.

And so the fact that this team continues

to lose in the exact same ways

that they've lost all season long,

the fact that this team continues to look unprepared.

Oh, that was a big one.

Is post-game.

I think E-mail said something along the lines of like

the team looked, they looked unprepared

or something like that.

I'm paraphrasing.

And it's like,

whose job is it to prepare them?

Like, at what point?

And this is the same kind of tired stick

is at some point,

you can't just keep

that the negativity is just too much, right?

Like E-mailed Doca,

his go-to after seemingly every bad loss,

is to basically just call out the team.

You weren't tough.

You weren't physically.

They weren't prepared.

Like, and it's, I don't,

I think except for that one moment this season

where I think there was one post-game

where E-mail said something like,

I need to do a better job of like XYZ

or whatever.

I think there was one time where E-mail basically said,

like, it's on me and I need to do a better job

of prepping the team or doing this or doing that,

whatever.

And,

like, it's fine.

Some coaches just have that,

like, they're all rough, toughness above all else,

drill sergeant, whatever mentality.

That's cool.

And it works to a degree.

Clearly it worked for the first couple of years

that E-mail was in Houston

and the rockets needed that type of mentality

to be able to get all the young guys playing

like acceptable basketball

and respectable basketball and all that.

But it also feels like there's diminishing returns on it

where once that message

starts to fall on deaf ears,

once you lose the locker room,

which I'm not, I don't know that E-mail

has like truly lost the locker room.

But,

I don't know.

It feels like it's very limiting

and it feels like the negativity

has really permeated the seam

and it's not all on E-mail.

It's a variety of factors.

It's a bunch of different things all layering on top

of each other that has just this feeling, like,

one of the most abysmal,

like,

I don't know,

dysfunctional rocket seasons

in recent memory, relative to expectations

and also relative to, like,

how good this team should be

even in the face of some of this adversity

because obviously this team's not at 100%.

Right? Obviously, things changed

the moment Fred Van Vleek got hurt.

But here's the thing,

is like, we're still talking about this Fred Van Vleek,

this stuff.

Fred didn't get hurt yesterday

or even a week ago,

or even a month ago.

Like, Fred got hurt all the way back

in September,

I think, is when it was like announced.

And so, this team made no move to fix that.

Like, that is so perplexing to me.

And it's confusing to a lot of people.

And so, you have the injuries with Fred

and Steve Oh, and you're missing now Fred and Dylan

and so you miss your culture setters

and then you've got the Katie stuff.

And, you know, I'm not, I'm also not blaming Katie

for, like, the, the,

or not blaming him exclusively, I guess,

for, like, the body language and all that stuff.

But Katie's never really been that kind of, like,

a vocal raw, raw kind of leader.

And so, it just, like, weirdly enough,

it feels like there's a major disconnect

between, like, Aimeo Doka, Kevin Durant,

and Alper and Shingun.

Like, the three, what should be,

like, the three most, like, prominent voices

or the three most important voices,

like, that have to do with what happens

on a game-to-game basis for the Rockets.

It all just feels so clunky and mismanaged this season.

And so, I don't even know where the Rockets kind of go

from here, because it just kind of feels like

we're waiting for them to get to the playoffs

and then just lose and for the season to be over,

which is such a, like, debilitating way

to watch this team and to try and, like,

appreciate this basketball club.

Because I don't think that anybody has any, like,

like, actual expectations of this team in the playoffs.

And most, the way that the rest of the NBA world

is talking about the Rockets, the way that other fans

of other teams are talking about the Rockets,

the Rockets are an afterthought.

Nobody cares about the Rockets.

Everybody would want to face the Rockets in a first round series

or in a playoffs series.

Like, teams are licking their chops,

looking at Houston right now, seeing how dysfunctional they are,

seeing all their flaws, all their weaknesses.

And while I agree that, like, other teams do have weaknesses

and flaws, right, there's, you can point to the Lakers,

you can point to the Wolves, you can point to the Nuggets.

Like, every team has their issues,

but the Rockets are the the most glaring of all of them, right?

They are the easiest out in the playoffs,

in the Western Conference, at this very moment.

And what's funny is they have this absurd amount of talent

to wear if they line up in a seven game series

and if the talent just happens to show up on the right nights,

right?

Generally, Shingun or Katie, Shingun and a man

have been fairly consistent over the last month or so

and Shingun in particular after coming back

from resting his back, those few games,

those couple games that he was out.

But like, the Rockets role players have been so wild

being consistent, Reed Shepherd is wild being consistent,

because he's a year to player.

This is also why he should have been getting more run

at the beginning of the season,

because you can live with the highs and lows earlier in the year.

Now they have less than 10 games for him to kind of

iron out that consistency part of his game

when he could have been getting all this runway

much earlier in the season.

And frankly, with some of the way that he saved them

in some of the earlier games of the season,

they might have, he might have saved him in some of those losses.

He also might have contributed to more losses.

We really don't know.

But that could have been at least an answer

to the Fred Van Vleet stuff,

instead of like ham fisting it through point guard

by committee for so much the year,

and also getting away from Alper and Shingun

distributing the basketball,

which has been like an ongoing thing

throughout the Udoka era as well,

with Shingun not being utilized as a passing hub

as his main focus on the floor,

making him a play finisher instead,

which is not ideal.

That's not his best strength on the floor.

And we've seen that play out with the,

with the poor efficiency around the rim, right?

Like let him let your players excel

at what they are a great at

and don't put them in positions to do things

where they're not going to excel.

Like it seems like a pretty simple concept

at the end of the day.

I just,

it is exhausting with this team at times

and I think that

the negativity of everything from this season,

of everything, of the injuries,

of Eme Udoka,

riding these guys,

of the Kevin Durant drama stuff,

of the young guys being like,

of the young guys kind of doubting themselves at times

and worrying about,

am I doing the right thing?

Am I, am I going to step out of line?

Am I going to get benched?

Does Eme like,

it's all just so messy this season.

And it reminds me a lot,

at least just on the surface,

the vibes kind of remind me of like the 15-16 rockets

with like hardened and white

and they were on their last legs

and like obviously tie laws and got brought in

and that was a clown fiesta.

Like, I don't know.

This, this is the most dysfunctional rockets team

that I've seen since that year, for sure.

And there's still like a playoff team.

Can't even, can't even say that

they're a top four team anymore.

There's still a playoff team,

which is just like the standard for acceptance, I guess,

has been so diminished,

whereas just like at first it was like,

okay, well, there's still a home court advantage

and they're still,

they still got like this decent record ever.

They are going to be probably the 16

when it's all said and done.

I do not like their chances of like

eclipsing the wolves in the standings.

They're now fully two games back of the nuggets

and the third seed was gone the moment they lost

those back-to-back games against the Lakers.

So in all reality,

this rocket team is probably headed for a first round meeting

with Luca and LeBron and the Lakers.

And that's three Ls right there.

And they're going to take,

at some point in that series four Ls.

I don't know if it's going to be like a sweep

or anything like that, egregious,

but the idea of playing the Lakers on their home court

with the refs in their back pocket,

you know the Lakers aren't going to get upset

in the first round, not with Luca and not with LeBron

and not with this like one last rodeo for Brawn.

Like it's not going to happen.

So the Lakers favoritism that takes place in that series,

it maybe won't feel as bad as like Game 7

Scott Foster against the Warriors.

But it's not going to feel great feeling

like you're playing five on eight

with as dysfunctional as this team already is.

That's fighting uphill both ways.

And I wish that I could pinpoint an answer.

Like I really could.

I think the answer has to come from within.

And I think that getting some of the guys back

that the Rockets do have out due to injury

will help this team.

Like having Fred, having Steven out there

would certainly be helping things.

But those guys just kind of mask more

deeper seeded issues with this team.

And it's funny because you're seeing national media now

starting to pile on to what the Rockets are dealing with

and going through after this wolves loss.

And like these are things that we've been talking about

all season long.

It's just the national media is finally starting to wake up

to it a little bit.

Calling for email.

Doke to be fired.

All these things.

And I'm not going to do it.

I'm not going to waste my breath on it

because it's not going to happen.

Like the Rockets are going to stay committed to Eme

for better or for worse.

And so where I land on things is that

I think that he is a good enough coach to be able to

coach a team to obviously 50 plus wins

under the right circumstances with the right pieces

in front of him.

That's not how it really should be.

Coach should be flexible and be able to coach the talent

he has available.

Shout out to guys like Eric Spulster who can do that.

But I still think the Rockets can find success with Eme.

My worry is that they are going to have to gut this

current roster and replace some of the parts with it.

Some of the key contributors with pieces that fit

again, Eme's

preferred style of basketball, right?

Guys who fit his mold of how he wants the game played

because he sees the game through a very specific certain lens.

And at times feels it feels very

rigid and inflexible.

And that's not what you want out of an NBA head coach.

So I'm worried that there's going to be sweeping changes

in the off season that like a honest trade is almost

all but inevitable is what it feels like for this team

because that would be a guy that Eme can just give the ball

to and say, hey, go be honest on offense, right?

That's the game plan.

Go be honest.

Do your thing.

Be a wrecking ball.

And on defense hustle and block and do all that stuff, right?

Like do what you do on defense.

Instead of finding creative ways to mix and match

the pieces that exist and to try to get the most out of them.

Like I'd be so curious to see what a different head coach

could do with this roster.

Like if you just rewound the clock all the way back to game

one of the regular season and you gave this team

Eric Spolstra, for example, or Michael Malone

who's not currently coaching a team, right?

It's doing studio analyst stuff.

How much success would either of those guys had

with this current squad, with this current collection of talent?

Part of these inclined to believe that they would have had more success

than what we've seen out of this team this season.

But there's also no way to prove that, right?

So that's just a feeling that I get having watched this team

lose in the exact same way so many times this year

doing the same, making the same silly mistakes,

seeing the same silly lineups out there to close out games,

seeing the same issue of not trusting Reed Shepherd

in big moments, not going to your ball handlers

having your center.

I don't know.

It's just, it's kind of a dumpster fire, honestly.

And maybe this is too much dumerism

and maybe they'll turn right back around

and reel off a bunch of games in a row

and things will be good.

But I think there's an underlying feeling

that the vibes are very much off with this team.

And they need a reset.

But that reset isn't going to come until the off season.

They're just kind of trying to muddle their way through the mess

right now and get to the end of the season

and then get through the playoffs,

whatever that may look like at the end of the day.

And it's going to be, it's going to be,

it's going to be messy.

It's not going to be fun.

Like whatever playoffs series they do line up in,

I am very worried about their chances

of actually getting out of the first round

and at a minimum, even with this team's injuries,

there's no reason why this team shouldn't be able to make it

out of the first round.

They're talented enough.

They really are.

With that, I'm curious your thoughts.

I've been blathering on for a minute.

I'm curious your thoughts on both of these games,

the Grizzlies game, the Wolves game,

the vibes with the rockets currently.

Let me know your thoughts in the YouTube comments.

But as always, thank you so much for watching.

Thank you so much for listening.

We look forward to having you back right here

at Locked On Rockets, your daily podcast home for everything.

Houston Rockets are basketball.

Let's go, let's go.

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