Report: Despite future obligations, Rockets would still trade 2020 pick

According to the Houston Chronicle, Rockets GM Daryl Morey won’t hesitate to trade his team’s 2020 first-round pick for the right player.

Though his stockpile of future draft picks is less than usual, it doesn’t appear that Houston Rockets GM Daryl Morey will let that change his aggressiveness heading toward next Thursday’s NBA trade deadline.

In last offseason’s trade for Russell Westbrook, the Rockets lost two first-round draft selections in 2024 and 2026. Houston can still trade first-round picks before then, as long as they are not in consecutive years, but many around the league had wondered if a lack of pick assets in the long-term could make Morey more stingy in the interim.

According to the Houston Chronicle‘s Jonathan Feigen, that does not seem to be the case. Citing a source, Feigen writes of the team’s strategy:

Their scarcity of future first-round picks will not be a factor in determining whether to deal the 2020 pick they still hold. …

Given the draft obligations owed to the Thunder to land Westbrook, an argument could be made in favor of caution with the pick they still hold. That does increase the value of the pick to the Rockets… but that is balanced by a sense of win-now urgency.

From 2015 onward, Houston has not kept any of its own first-round draft picks. Typically, Morey has moved them before each draft in trades for more immediate help around franchise star James Harden as they pursue an NBA championship. The last time the Rockets kept their own pick was in 2014, when they drafted current starting center Clint Capela.

Per Feigen, the Rockets’ priority in any trade this year is a player “likely to get playing time,” rather than any specific position. Though The Athletic reported last week that Houston was targeting a wing player, Feigen says the Rockets are also open to frontcourt acquisitions.

To that point, on the day of Gary Clark’s release in early January, Feigen reports that the Rockets “were optimistic about completing a deal for a range-shooting power forward that in their system would have been viewed as a potential floor spacing center.”

That deal did not transpire, and Clark’s roster spot remains open.

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The trade deadline arrives at 2 p.m. Central on Thursday, Feb. 6. With Morey having made a deadline deal in nearly all of his seasons in Houston since the late 2000s, the safe bet is on yet another one in 2019-20.

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