Kelly Iko
speaker
390 appearances
9 recordings
1 series
first heard Nov 2024
last heard 11 Feb
Kelly Iko’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
Trend
recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Feb 2026 with 1.
Appearances
If you've watched Jalen over the years, that's the biggest key to having to seeing the games he has that are productive. When he gets cooking early, you know, the Rockets kind of feed into him more. They allow him to progress and go through his reads, and they play off of his aggression. And ironically enough, you know, that thing started early defensively. He was locked in on Curry.
He was in the passing lanes. Two jump balls in the game. Two jump balls and just being aggressive as – that lead a defender and that kind of fueled his offense because it gives you more juice, more energy to want to score and want to be that go-to guy.
And obviously, you know, given the kind of player he is and the kind of person he is, you understand that he's extremely confident in his own abilities. And this is the biggest time of the year where those big time players show up. So,
impressive for him to come back and respond after you know the last five games that's where he was averaging i think like 5.25 points a game and just not looking the kind of score that we know him to be so yeah for him to go and have that kind of performance he really galvanized the group and now heading into game three they should be full of confidence that they can have a similar type performance
I think the biggest thing now is trust, trust in the coaching staff, that renewed sense of communication and honesty between those guys and seeing the deficiencies in his game and where he needed to improve on defensively. Because, you know, early on when he first got to Houston, it was a common thing to take him out end of games whenever he needed to get a stop.
And as a player, your pride and ego is affected by that. That happens five, six, seven times because in this day and age, that becomes a label on you. So what Jalen did is have those hard talks with EMA, have those hard talks with Ben Sullivan, the coaching staff, and figure out exactly what he was doing wrong defensively. And now you're seeing his tendencies are improved.
His reaction time has improved. The overall IQ has improved. And because of his size and length and his speed, If he's able to lock in defensively, it really raises the ceiling more than anyone else on that roster because of what he can do offensively as well. Right. And given his I guess his ceiling, you know, as a potential, you know, a one guy.
These are the games that you have to show that your teammates can trust you in because this is the first time all of you are going to the playoffs as the young core. It's going to be a lot of information that's going to be carried over to the offices now will affect some of our decisions, future contracts, stuff like that. It starts now.
And credit to Jalen, he's put in the work behind the scenes to become – That dependable player, especially on the defensive end, he's worked hard to not be a liability on the end of the floor. And because of that, he's become a positive team defender. And as you saw in game two, when he's aggressive and he's spearheading that scheme, there's no telling what that team can do.
So I think to kind of forecast his projection, It's really hard to say because, you know, is this a one-off or is this, you know, going to be a big moment of consistency for me?
Yeah. Yeah, the coming out party for me. So I think it's a good thing for young players to kind of have those moments like tonight where you kind of feel good about yourself and you understand what it really takes to win at the highest level. It's not just about scoring 30 points 15 times in a month or more. You have to be able to lock in against the best of the best
in a slugfest like tonight was.
I think Steve Kerr talked about it. Like if Jimmy's out, it really changes everything. They have to rethink everything, which is very true. I think for Houston, you know, given that they've been able to impose their will physically in this year, I think they're up. I think they're a plus 34, 33 on the rebounds over this, the last two games tonight, they had almost nothing.
what, 20 more points in the paint than Golden State. And just from the eye test, like you're watching a team dominate, you know, them on both ends of the floor with their physical abilities. Right. They're huge. I think if there's going to be a counter... I think if there's going to be a counter for Golden State, you know, they did have some success. I mean, you saw the 1-3-1 zone.
The Rockets kind of struggled against that. And that goes back to their overall half-court issues.
I think initially it kind of took them by surprise because, you know, Kaminga still has that size and speed as an impact player. I think the problem for Kaminga is that because as a player, you need that rhythm as well.
you know, it's obvious that Steve Kerr doesn't play him for certain reasons in terms of how he fits in with Jimmy and the other guys. And he's kind of like, Pat Spencer gave them more problems. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's, it's tough. Like when you have those kind of,
dark horse type players yeah it's really hard to scheme for them because you're not sure with this warriors team who's going to step up now if jimmy's not able to play game three who's going to be that next go-to guy is it going to be is it going to be pods is it going to be jk is it going to be buddy like who moses if he'll get the shots up right
I think if you were to look in the vacuum, it has to be Kuminga, but who knows to see how they actually scheme.
I want to say it's nothing, only because I've seen teams have skids at the end of the year and it's like, is this going to be an indication on the fact that this is a team that's had 12 game winning streaks three times this season, 15 game winning streaks two times this season. However, in those four games, there were a few things I noticed.
Showing 161–180 of 390 · page 9 of 20
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