It was just two seasons ago that they were playing on different teams, with Brooks in Memphis and FVV in Toronto. Whenever the young Houston Rockets standouts had to play against either guy, it’d go something like this:
“It was just so hard to set a screen, this motherf-er,” Alpi says, talking about Brooks. “He was just f-cking trying to go through your chest. And I was like, I ain’t doing that, like, Jalen you’re on [your own]. And Dillon is just screaming, Close his right, close his right, close his right! in his devil voice.”
Jalen remembers those matchups all too well. “[Dillon] was always guarding me, so there was already hoop beef there,” he says. “He’s just…”
“Annoying,” Alpi chimes in.
“Yeah, he’s annoying,” Green adds. They’re both sitting right next to Brooks and VanVleet inside the Rockets’ practice facility on a January afternoon. Fresh off a big-time win against the Dallas Mavericks the night before, the vibes are all good now, but back then? Totally different story, especially for the Rockets, who prior to last season were at the bottom of the standings.
“We never beat Toronto when [Fred] was over there,” Green adds. “So that kind of rubbed me the wrong way.”
The feelings were mutual. “I just thought they were losers, to be honest,” VanVleet admits, when asked what he thought about the Rockets before he got there. “Nobody really paid attention to them the three years that they were not winning, tanking and all of that. You knew they had some talent. But like, every time you played against them, it was a dub. You’re trying to get 30. Go out the night before. You just never really took them serious.”
Green doesn’t hesitate to address the elephant in the room either, in terms of how the team played his first two years.
“I would say our first two years were basically like AAU,” he admits. “We were just coming out there, just playing every night, we didn’t really have no goals as a team or anything like that. We didn’t really have the structure for real, it was just going out hooping. If you look at the first two years to these last two years, it’s been like night and day. It’s been obvious, too. We were at the bottom of the standings those first two years, worst team in the NBA. Now we’re in a different category.”
The Rockets have now risen to the top of the Western Conference this season. They’ve completely flipped a switch, whether as individuals or as a unit. They are leading the NBA in rebounding and have one of the most menacing defenses in the entire League. It’s safe to say they are so back.
Not only are they fun to watch, but they’re also having fun playing their best basketball together. Spend an hour with the four of them and it’s constant inside jokes.
“There’s no cliques,” as Brooks tells us, and they genuinely hang out. They go out to eatas a squad and chill on the team plane. Some of them play Booray, a card game that Green describes as “like Spades,” except they play, “the NBA version.” We don’t fully get what that means until he clarifies: “It’s a lot of money. Alpi don’t even come over to the table.”
To which Fred chimes in, “Next year [he will] when that contract kicks in,” alluding to the five-year, $185 million rookie extension Sengun agreed to in October. They all chuckle at Fred’s banter. There’s a lot to smile about right now; the future is looking hella bright in Houston.
How does one of the worst teams become one of the toughest to beat? It all started when they hit the reset button at the start of the ’20-21 season. The Rockets traded James Harden to Brooklyn in a four-team trade also involving the Cavs and the Pacers, receiving several first-round draft picks in the deal. This is what’s known as Phase 1 of their rebuild.
Then they acquired new, young talent by selecting Green second overall in the 2021 NBA Draft and trading with the Thunder to get Sengun, the 16th pick. Alpi is a 6-11 wizard (and huge Harry Potter fan) who will dish out no-look, behind-the-back passes with three defenders swarming him or hit the smitty and then, after leaving his defender in the absolute dust, hang from the rim (true story). By the 2022-23 season, he had become a full-time starter and caught the attention of guys around the NBA, too.
“I like Sengun. He was dunking on a couple of people. I didn’t know he could get up like that. He’s nice,” said Kevin Durant in 2023.
Then there’s Green, a high-flying, athletic, 6-4 shooting guard who has been poised for stardom since he became the first high school player ever to join the (now discontinued) G League Ignite.
Since then, he’s averaging 21.6 ppg and shooting a career-high 43.8 percent from the field. His versatility includes smooth and creative finishes at the rim, knocking down shots and an ability to dunk in a way that’s just diabolical. Like everything he does, JG exudes coolness, from the painted nails and tats to his New Year’s resolutions, which include meditation, self-care and empowering his mind.
Together, Alpi and Green showed incredible potential, but what they needed in those early years was to be held accountable.
“In Europe, when you lose, you act like somebody died,” explains Alpi, who is now averaging a double-double of 19.4 points and a career-high 10.5 rebounds per game. “The first couple of weeks I was acting like that, and then I saw everyone was laughing and all those things. And I was like, sh-t. And then I just accepted losing.”
In what’s often referred to as “Phase 2” of their rebuild, they hired Udoka, who won a championship with the Spurs as an assistant coach under Gregg Popovich in 2014 and led the Celtics to the 2022 NBA Finals as their head coach.
With a new franchise and a clear vision, Udoka brought that same gritty, defensive-minded approach with him to Houston. During his introductory press conference, Udoka even sent a message to his new young team. “To the players, one of my first messages would be, youth is not an excuse,” he said.
With Udoka now at the helm, the Rockets continued to make moves that would push them toward becoming a team that could really compete. They needed reinforcements, and this is where Brooks and VanVleet came in. The summer before the 2023-24 season, VanVleet, a former NBA champion and established point guard, signed with the Rockets as a free agent in July.He and Jalen, who share the same trainer, Mike Guevara, started working outtogether around then, too, and right away VanVleet saw a high level of competitiveness and a desire to win. But he also noticed some bad habits had been formed, especially when Green started showing up late to their workouts.
“It was kind of my time to start to plant some seeds with him and get his mind ready for what was about to happen during the season, and stop being late all the f-cking time, sh-t like that,” VanVleet says. “We started that the first week, just back and forth communication [from] somebody that was gonna help him shake some old habits that they may have had before we got here.” “We” as in him and Brooks, who joined the team a day after VanVleet signed.
Together, Brooks, who played in Memphis for six seasons, and VanVleet bring a lot of experience and exceptionally high basketball IQs. They believe in Udoka’s coaching philosophy, especially defensively: everybody has to guard and don’t be the weak link. That’s exactly what VanVleet repeats when we ask them about it. “Once you have a good defense, you build a base and a foundation, then it just becomes a pride thing,” he says. “Nobody wants to be the weak link. Everybody hates getting scored on.Everybody hates making a mistake when another team scores.”
In VanVleet, who is averaging 14.8 points, 4.1 rebounds and 6.0 assists, the Rockets have a highly instinctual defender and true disruptor. He can guard the perimeter and hold his own through screens, has quick hands and over-communicates what he sees on the floor. “Obviously I’m the smallest guy out there, so that comes with its own challenges, but always just trying to bed isruptive, trying to kind of quarterback the defense,” VanVleet says. “Talking a lot, helping guys with things that they can’t see, following the game plana nd whatever the coach is implementing in terms of scouting report.”
Brooks is a villain personified. It’s not an act, but an art. He describes his defensive approach as being “an agitator, guarding 94 feet, trying to tire out the best player or the player that scores the most.”
When Brooks, who is averaging 13.2 points and 3.9 rebounds, first joined theRockets, what he saw was an opportunity to instill that relentless edge in his teammates, especially the younger guys. “I knew they had a lot of talent and they just needed the right direction to find ways to win games. Me and Fred instill the toughness,” he says. It’s working. Green and Sengun admit there was a time when they wouldn’t even want to do defensive drills in practice, but things are completely different now. “I feel like we’ve grown a lot, me and Jalen. Our communication and how we want to win so bad,” Sengun says. That mentality has permeated across the entire roster, too, from Jabari Smith Jr and Amen Thompson to Cam Whitmore and Jae’Sean Tate among others. The Rockets are playing a tough style of basketball reminiscent of the ’90s. Guys weren’t afraid to square up back then, and Houston has made it clear that they aren’t ducking smoke from nobodyeither…
“We understand what winning is like,” Alpi says. “Dillon is guarding the whole court, making the best player tired. He is just making our job easy. Fred always does the nasty sh-t like driving, hitting, all that sh-t...I enjoy doing defense and offense now…I’m happy when I’m guarding, when I’m blocking, whenI’m stealing, sliding—”
“Sliding your feet,” Brooks says, like a proud teacher to his student.
As much credit as Brooks and VanVleet get as leaders, they make it clear that it’s the entire team that’s bought in. “As much as everybody gives me the credit for leading and teaching and all that, like, they were ready for it, too. That attitude, to be able to take what I’m saying and not take it personal, that’s more credit to the young guys than it is to me,” VanVleet clarifies. “When you really want to win, you want to get better, that’s what creates the culture of where we are just communicating at a high level, and the chemistry. To be able to have tough conversations, whether you argue, whether you want to fight, whatever the case may be in the moment, it’s gonna pass, because we are [all] on the same journey together. As a leader, it’s a perfect match for me because you got toughness, you got chemistry, you got guys that really want to win. I just gotta put my little sauce on it and my finesse on it and, sh-t, they do the rest.”
As we go to press, the Rockets are riding a five-game winning streak and have beaten opponents like the Los Angeles Lakers, Brooks’ former Memphis squad and the Nuggets, a game in which Green dropped an electric 34 points. Even though they’re playing their very best basketball, exceeding expectations and will likely be playing in the postseason—which would mark the first timeHouston has made the playoffs since ’19-20—they’re not settling for being just good. Not under Ime’s glare.
“It’s Bill Belichick type of coaching,” VanVleet explains, when describing Udoka. “Where it’s like, you’re up 10, you’re supposed to be up 20.You’re up 20, supposed to be up 40. There’s no credit points with him. He’s just tough. He keeps everybody in check and holds everybody accountable. Nobody’s off limits. And he just keeps you focused, keeps you on track. Ain’tt oo much congratulations and back rubs going out.”
When things get chippy and fights ensue, Udoka’s the type of coach to tell the media that clearly one guy is stronger than the other. When things are going exceptionally well for them, he’s not the type to celebrate just yet. It’s that level of realness that they all try to embody. “At halftime you could be up 17, he’s mad about whatever. He’s always mad about something,” VanVleet continues. “I think we kind of take that personality on and we play with that, especially defensively. If you know that whenever you make a mistake you’re gonna hear about it running down the other way, you try to not make mistakes. I think that’s probably the biggest thing. He just set the bar so high for us to be good defensively, because we can doit.”
And it’s together—with an all-in coach, veteran leaders and a stacked roster that has yet to reach its full potential—that the Rockets are sending a message to the rest of the League. There’s still a lot of basketball left to be played this season, and this team is moving in one direction.
Oh, and they have a message for the fan base, too, which has been waiting for this redemption era for a long, long time.
“We appreciate y’all sticking with us, holding us down through the journey,” Green says. “It’s been a lot of highs and lows. It’s been a lot of lows, but now we’re at the high moment. There’s a
lot more coming.”
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