Fred VanVleet says a season on the bench gave him migraines and taught him he doesn’t want to coach

Fred VanVleet spent the whole 2025-26 season in street clothes, and he says the year cured him of any wish to coach. Speaking on the NBA on Prime postgame set after the Houston Rockets beat the San Antonio Spurs 114-110 in Austin on Friday, October 23, with his young son Fred Jr. on his lap, the 32-year-old guard said watching from the bench had left him with migraines and sent him home angrier than playing ever did.

“I definitely learned that I don’t want to be a coach,” VanVleet said. He added that his voice only carried so far without the ball in his hands, but that the losing stretches the young Rockets went through without him should pay off this season.

Game Center: Rockets at Spurs, box score and play-by-play

Two games, zero turnovers

The numbers back up the organizing role he described. VanVleet scored 14 points against the Spurs in 31 minutes, making 3 of 8 threes, including one at the halftime buzzer, with five assists, three steals and no turnovers. In the opener against the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday he handed out 11 assists with three more steals in a 128-110 win, again without a giveaway. That is 16 assists and zero turnovers across his first two regular-season games since the spring of 2025, after he tore the ACL and meniscus in his right knee in a September 2025 workout.

He was not ready to call himself fully back. VanVleet said his knee feels great but his legs are still coming, with some jumpers falling short, and he admitted the Spurs targeting him on defense bothered him enough to cost him sleep. He also said this roster means the load no longer falls on him alone: Alperen Sengun carried the fourth quarter on the way to 29 points, and Amen Thompson sealed it by blocking Victor Wembanyama in the final seconds, a play VanVleet said almost no one else could make.

The link to Ime Udoka

Asked whether Ime Udoka ever smiles, VanVleet described a coach who jokes all day and turns fierce at tipoff, mad at his players, the referees or the opponent. “He’s just a angry bull out there,” he said, adding that he sees his own job as loosening Udoka up during games and acting as the link between the coach and the locker room.

The undrafted guard from 2016, a champion with Toronto in 2019, said he now measures his career by how much he lifts the people around him. Houston planned to rest him on the second night of the back-to-back, and the Rockets won in Atlanta on Saturday without him to reach 3-0.

What comes next

The Rockets host the Atlanta Hawks on Monday, October 26, at 8:30 p.m. ET, the first chance for VanVleet to return after his planned night off. Game Center: Hawks at Rockets.