No. 5: Drafting Clint Capela
Now in his sixth season overall and fourth as the team’s starting center, Clint Capela is currently averaging 13.9 points (64.2% shooting), 14.4 rebounds, and 1.9 blocks in 33.6 minutes per game. That 14.4 rebounding total is the second highest in the entire NBA this season. But it’s easy to forget that Capela wasn’t supposed to be this good, considering he was drafted just 25th overall in the 2014 NBA Draft.
For title contenders like the Rockets, draft picks are often trade assets for immediate veteran help. For example, Houston’s last three first-round picks were dealt as part of trades in 2017, 2018, and 2019 for Lou Williams, Chris Paul, and Iman Shumpert. Thus, a contender such as Houston needs to hit on some of the limited draft selections it keeps in order to maintain a pipeline of younger talent.
Capela isn’t considered by most to be a star, but he’s a very good role player at a minimum. And at just 25 years old, he’s still one of the youngest players in Houston’s current rotation — even though he’s in his sixth season.
Another reason drafting an impact player is crucial is because it allows the team to take advantage of the player’s initial contract. In Capela’s case, being drafted near the end of the first round, that meant a four-year contract near the league’s minimum salary. When the max-salary contract of former center Dwight Howard expired after the 2015-16 season, Morey was able to re-allocate those funds into additional shooters for D’Antoni’s offense such as Eric Gordon and Ryan Anderson. That shift happened in large part due to Capela’s presence as a cheap, in-house replacement as the starting center.
While Morey has certainly brought in other excellent role players this decade — Gordon, P.J. Tucker, and Trevor Ariza at the top of the list — those players were signed using either cap space or the Mid-Level Exception (MLE). When using those types of resources, the player is supposed to be good, or at least to an extent. To draft a player as accomplished as Capela late in the first round is rare, and that’s why it’s one of Morey’s finest moves of the decade.
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