LAKE CHARLES, La. — One thing the Houston Rockets have been missing over the last three seasons was an identity.
Individually, they did receive compliments from other players around the league. But they were rarely acknowledged as a unit, which left many to wonder if the young core would ever become like Houston’s teams from the past, whom opponents often feared to play.
Buy Rockets TicketsBut if newly signed forward forward Dillon Brooks and head coach Ime Udoka get their way this season, they will help the team regain some of its swagger and put the Rockets back on track to becoming a dangerous team in the Western Conference.
“When you come to play Houston, it is going to be a physical battle,” Brooks said at Monday’s media day. “It is going to be a challenge. It won’t just be a walk in the park anymore. It is going to be a challenge every time you come to Houston.”
Houston opened day one of training camp in Lake Charles at McNeese State University, where they initially watched 28 minutes of film featuring clips and statistics from the past three years.
“The numbers were ugly, to be honest, the last few years,” Udoka said on Tuesday afternoon. “When you rank 25th to 30th in a lot of categories, there’s a lot to improve on and grow. I kind of hit them right between the eyes in the areas we struggled in the last few years and (where) we want to get better.”
Houston Rockets HC Ime Udoka said he wrote 3 numbers on the board today for the Rockets during film study:
17, 19, 22
Which is Houston’s win totals in the last three seasons. He reiterated to me that the culture of this team will change. #Rockets #Sarge @TheRocketsWire pic.twitter.com/qpWACKDEdZ— #SARGE (@BigSargeSportz) October 3, 2023
With the media being able to watch the last five minutes of the team scrimmage, you could feel the intensity from the court with the way the team communicated with each other. They called out defensive assignments and hustled to every spot they needed to be in. That is the passion Udoka wants to see from his players to start camp.
“We know how much we struggled the last few years,” Udoka said after practice. “A big part of the film session today was I put the numbers 17, 19 and 22 up there, and that was the win totals from the last few years. And how do we take a huge step up from that? We want to be a different team and let teams know when they play us, it’s not the same as the past three years.”
