Report: Without draft picks, Rockets can take time with coaching hire

Because the Rockets don’t have a draft pick in the first or second round, Houston can reportedly be more patient with its coaching search.

As of Thursday, it has now been well over a month since Mike D’Antoni’s Sept. 13 announcement that he would not be returning as coach of the Rockets. At the moment, Houston and Oklahoma City are the only two NBA teams who do not have a head coach in place.

The Rockets’ search is clearly moving at a slower pace than many others, and one possible reason is the shakeup in the front office — with new GM Rafael Stone taking the reins from outgoing GM Daryl Morey.

There’s also another potential reason: Since the Rockets don’t have any picks in the NBA’s Nov. 18 draft, they don’t have the incentive to install a coach as quickly as other teams. ESPN’s Brian Windhorst explains:

They’re not any sort of time pressure [to make a hire], since they don’t have a pick in this draft. It’s not like he has to work draft workouts.

The current coaching frontrunners for the Houston job are believed to include veteran NBA head coach Jeff Van Gundy; Dallas Mavericks assistant Stephen Silas; and John Lucas, who has worked as D’Antoni’s director of player development with the Rockets since 2016.

Houston’s first-round pick belongs to Denver as part of the blockbuster four-team trade in February 2020 that brought Minnesota forward Robert Covington to Houston. (Future draft obligations)

Meanwhile, Houston’s second-round pick in the 2020 draft belongs to Sacramento, dating back to the three-team trade in February 2019 that brought Kings swingman Iman Shumpert to the Rockets.

The Rockets are still meeting with various draft prospects, and it’s possible they could trade for a late pick and/or buy one. Even if not, they will certainly consider adding undrafted free agents to their training camp roster. But those prospects would be at a relatively low level, and thus unlikely to be immediate options for the new coach’s rotation.

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As such, Stone and Eli Witus — now the top two officials in Houston’s basketball operations department — appear poised to lead the team’s scouting work for the time being. Without any picks at the moment, there’s no reason to rush a coaching hire for the sake of draft preparation.

With that said, the Rockets almost certainly do need a coach in place before 2020 free agency, since anyone considering Houston as a destination would certainly like to know how they might fit in the system of a new coach. But since the NBA isn’t expected to open free agency until late November or early December, ample time still remains.

Morey is sticking around through Nov. 1 in a short-term advisory role to assist with the coaching search, which seems to indicate that the Rockets plan to conclude it by then. That date arrives a week from Sunday.

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