‘It’s about pride’: Ime Udoka explains Houston’s improved rebounding

Ime Udoka on Houston’s sudden rebounding improvement: “It’s got to be a group effort, a team effort, and everybody has to take ownership on that.”

When the Houston Rockets suffered a disappointing road loss last Saturday to the rebuilding Utah Jazz, they were out-rebounded by 17.

Since then, though? The Rockets went +16 (53-37) on the glass during Tuesday’s victory over the Milwaukee Bucks and +19 (60-41) in Wednesday’s dominant win against the San Antonio Spurs.

Those performances are much more in line with Houston’s totals for the 2024-25 NBA season as a whole, in which the Rockets lead the league in rebounding.

Prior to Wednesday’s game, head coach Ime Udoka was asked about the rebounding improvement, and he pointed to a film session in between the Saturday and Tuesday games. Among his comments:

We obviously had a good film session (between games) showing the big fella, (Walker) Kessler, getting 8 or 9 offensive rebounds.

We understand what we need to do on that end to impact the game. I didn’t love how we got shoved around against Utah. Obviously, guys are going to take pride in that. We had a few days to practice and got some physical stuff in, but more so than anything, it’s about pride on that end.

We talked about how we’ve fallen off a cliff, in terms of defensive rebounding, and that’s impacted our defense a little bit. It’s got to be a group effort, a team effort, and everybody has to take ownership on that.

Udoka also credited wing players, such as Dillon Brooks and Jalen Green, with making a better effort on the glass. Brooks and Green each had 8 rebounds apiece in an impressive win against the Bucks, who have a massive frontcourt in size between Brook Lopez and Giannis Antetokounmpo.

Among Udoka’s remarks there:

It makes the biggest difference. A lot of times, the big man (Alperen Sengun) is battling, one on one, and his job at times is to just keep the other big off the glass and let everyone else come clean up. It was Kessler (the other night), and we’ve also seen it this year with Clingan (Portland’s rookie center, Donovan Clingan, who had 19 rebounds against Houston) in the game where he was in a wrestling match with our guys.

So, everybody else has to do their part to come get those long rebounds, or use their athleticism. We tell Amen (Thompson), Tari (Eason), Jalen, and all those guys to come in and gang rebound and crash, or get hits on guys. They’ve got to do it as a unit. They took that to heart, and they did a great job last night.