Siblings Ime and Mfon Udoka inspire each other through basketball careers

SAN FRANCISCO — While Houston Rockets head coach Ime Udoka and his team must win three straight playoff games to survive, his sister’s coaching job appears much tougher.

Udoka and his NBA Western Conference No. 2 seed Rockets are down 3-1 in their first-round series against the seventh-seed Golden State Warriors. The talented but relatively young and inexperienced Rockets’ season will end tonight if they lose to the veteran Warriors in Game 5 in Houston. Meanwhile, Udoka’s sister, Mfon Udoka, is coaching a Beacon College (Leesburg, Florida) women’s basketball program that only had five players last season — each with unique challenges.

“This school itself is a school only for students with a diagnosed learning difference,” Mfon Udoka, 48, told Andscape in a phone interview Monday. “So, that is a challenge in itself recruiting-wise. But it’s also a good thing for people to see and know that you can have ADHD, dyslexia and play a college-level sport at a smaller level. They can be coached and challenged hard.

“I probably coach them how I would coach anybody. And I’ve coached high school and middle school and the Nigerian women’s basketball team at the highest level. I wouldn’t coach them any different and they respond to being challenged.”

For Mfon and Ime Udoka, their basketball careers have always come with challenges on their road to success.

Mfon Udoka starred at DePaul University from 1994-1998, going to three NCAA tournaments and logging more than 1,000 points and 1,000 rebounds. After going undrafted by the WNBA in 1998, she played three games with the Detroit Shock and missed the 1999 season after recovering from an ACL injury. After a four-year hiatus from the WNBA, she started 25 of 27 games for the Houston Comets during the 2003 season.

Her final WNBA season was with Los Angeles Sparks in 2004. She played for the Nigerian women’s national basketball team during the 2004 Athens Olympics, finishing second in the tournament in scoring and rebounding after averaging 22 points and 10 rebounds per game. She also played professionally in Turkey and France.

Ime Udoka cites his older sister by a year as his basketball role model.

“She was who I idolized growing up,” Ime Udoka, 47, said. “She was a year ahead of me, but much more heralded on every level. I was a late-bloomer. She was doing it since Day 1. She led the nation in rebounds in college and went to the WNBA. She was someone I could always look up to. She was the standard right ahead of me.”

Ime Udoka went undrafted out of Portland State in 2000 and began his professional career playing in the International Basketball Association, Argentina, the G League and the U.S. Basketball League from 2000-04. The 6-foot-6 guard didn’t make his NBA debut until Jan. 14, 2004, with the Los Angeles Lakers. Ime Udoka played four games with the Lakers during the 2004-05 season, spent a season playing in Spain, France and in the G League and then returned to the NBA, playing with New York, Portland, San Antonio and Sacramento from 2006-2011.

Ime Udoka averaged 5.2 points and 2.9 rebounds in 316 NBA games before finishing his professional career in Spain in 2012. He then coached as an NBA assistant coach with San Antonio, Philadelphia and Brooklyn before having a brief stint as head coach with the Boston Celtics, in which he led them to the 2022 NBA Finals. The Rockets hired him in the summer of 2023.

Mfon Udoka still marvels at what her brother has been able to do in basketball.

“I’m very proud of him,” she said. “I watched him work very hard. He battled some of the toughest tests in life, even as a kid. He was hit by a car when he was young. He tore his ACL three times. To work his way into the NBA from that with no nepotism, no family connection and no name, so to speak, it’s just sheer determination and hard work.

“It’s having a goal and being super-laser-focused on it. It’s incredible to me. He’s probably the hardest working person I know.”

Fast forward to now, Ime Udoka is facing a tough challenge to rally his Rockets to stay alive in the playoffs.

The Rockets fell into a 3-1 first-round series deficit to the Warriors during a 109-106 loss in Game 4 on Monday night. The Rockets have been competitive in the series with their three losses to the Warriors being by an average of 7.2 points per game. Ime Udoka, who acknowledged he may consider a lineup change, hopes to have his team focused on one game at a time, beginning with a do-or-die Game 5.

“Go get a win. Let’s play a sound, disciplined game, full game, and not have these lulls that we’ve had that allowed us to lose a lead or them get a big lead and we have to fight our way back,” Ime Udoka said. “It’s all good fighting your way back and showing that heart but you want to do the disciplined things to stay up when you get the lead or not let them go on runs like that. So, you have to be much more consistent, which was a big mantra coming into the series.”

When asked what Udoka told the team after the Game 5 loss, Rockets forward Amen Thompson said: “Go back home. Win that one. Come back here.”

Mfon Udoka began her coaching career with the Nigerian’s women’s national team as an assistant in 2011 and also coached women’s high school basketball in the Dallas area. She has long had a rapport with former NBA guard Sam Vincent, a former Nigerian women’s basketball head coach who coached the Beacon College men’s basketball team from 2022-25. After being turned down a couple times, Vincent convinced Mfon Udoka to return to coaching and she took the Beacon College women’s basketball coaching job in 2024.

Vincent said in a statement that Mfon Udoka was passionate about the game and had the personality and patience to develop her players. Ime Udoka had some simple advice for her in taking the job.

“I told her to have some fun,” Ime Udoka said. “It was a surprise to her. Sam Vincent offered it to her a few times, but I don’t ever think she foresaw herself doing it. Just have some fun with it. Don’t stress out. It’s hard coaching young folks. We got a young team and I can only imagine coaching younger…

“Teach these kids. And keep your patience.”

Said Mfon Udoka: “I know what you have to do to be really good at [coaching at Beacon]. It’s a lot. I wanted to test it out to see if it was something I could really do.”

The season before Mfon Udoka arrived, Beacon College women’s basketball program was winless in United States Collegiate Athletic Association action while playing in the New South Athletic Conference. Adding to the challenges of recruiting was that Beacon is the first American college accredited to award bachelor’s degrees exclusively to students with learning disabilities, ADHD and other learning deficiencies, and every player on Mfon Udoka’s team must fit that criteria. Moreover, all games and practices are down the street at a local junior college.

Mfon Udoka had a total of five players on her team during the 2024-25 season after losing one before the season began. The Blazers were still able to have a 5-7 record despite all the challenges. She plans to return to coaching Beacon College next season, and the school is building a gymnasium.

“One of [the players] came from Morocco, but her VISA wasn’t processed in time… There was a girl that kind of showed up at the school and quit because it was way too much for her to [go to] school to play like that,” Mfon Udoka said. “We had five players and we were supposed to play 20 games. We had to cancel some because of illness and injury.

“There are a couple other schools in Florida that don’t have what they need to have sports teams. So, a couple other teams canceled games because they didn’t have either money or players. So, it was a big mess. But it was fun because we won some games and technically won our conference championship against one other team. Everybody on our team played 40 minutes. One time we had a player foul out. It was 4-on-5 for about seven minutes, but we still won because we were up 20.”

On the key to coaching students with learning disabilities, Mfon Udoka said: “Patience, for one. Sometimes you have to repeat yourself a lot. But honestly, on all teams you have people like that. To me, it’s not that big of a difference. The biggest thing is getting them to be confident in themselves on that court. That carries over to the classroom and whatever they decide to do.”

Mfon Udoka has watched as many of her brother’s games as possible on television this season and attended Game 1 against the Warriors in Houston. She won’t be able to attend tonight’s game in Houston due to a scheduling conflict, but she believes her brother can rally the Rockets for survival and would like to attend a potential game later in the series.

“It’s tough. I think we knew it was going to be tough,” Mfon Udoka said. “I don’t think seeding matters necessarily in the West this season. Everybody is good. Steph [Curry] is one of the best all-time to play and one of the best shooters. He’s hard to stop.

“On the other hand, it’s a first for the young Rockets. They don’t know what to expect. You have a year of that and you don’t know how they will come back differently. This is a big jump. They’re fun to watch. I love how hard they play. They play totally [intense] like Ime is [perceived] personality-wise even though he is really very chill.”