Though they haven’t won an NBA title, the decade of the 2010s will likely be remembered fondly in the history of Houston Rockets basketball.
Dating back to 2010, the Rockets have the fourth-most wins among the NBA’s 30 franchises. They’ve advanced to the Western Conference Finals twice in the past five years, which they hadn’t previously done since 1997.
They also added one of the top players in team history — and likely NBA history — in 2018 MVP and reigning scoring champion James Harden.
Led by renowned GM Daryl Morey, here’s a look back at some of the franchise’s most influential moves over the past decade.
(Editor’s note: There will be a separate list of the team’s top games of the decade, since it would be tough to compare any individual game to a transaction — with the latter often shaping the roster for years.)
Honorable Mention
The Russell Westbrook trade — For now, the July 2019 trade of Chris Paul and draft considerations to Oklahoma City for former league MVP Russell Westbrook leads the “honorable mention” category. That’s not to diminish his potential impact, however. Rather, it reflects the limited sample, with Westbrook having played just 28 games with the Rockets.
It’s been a largely successful start to the Harden-Westbrook partnership, with the Rockets at 21-10 and Westbrook averaging 24.1 points, 8.1 rebounds, and 7.1 assists per game. But this trade will ultimately be judged by what the duo does and leads the team to in future playoff runs.
It could eventually be remembered as the decade’s most meaningful move, if it leads the Rockets to their first NBA title since 1995. It could also be remembered as a disaster, if Houston struggles in the postseason and the draft picks given up to the Thunder end up being high ones due to a future rebuild. As the decade concludes, it’s far too soon to tell.
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Hiring Mike D’Antoni — Houston’s current head coach prefers the focus to be on his players. However, he deserves ample credit for his own role in their success. Since taking the team’s reins in the 2016-17 season, the Rockets have the highest winning percentage of any NBA team.
It’s easy to forget, but before D’Antoni was hired in the 2016 offseason, the Rockets were at a bit of a crossroads as a franchise. The 41-41 record of the 2015-16 season remains the only season of the Harden era that Houston did not finish with a winning record, and many around the league believed Morey should make a philosophical change to a more traditional approach. The hire was not well received by many at the time.
As it turned out, the D’Antoni hire doubled down on the team’s three-point-heavy and analytics-oriented approach and brought total alignment to the organization. Since then, nearly the entire NBA has dramatically shifted its shot charts, with the success of D’Antoni’s Rockets blazing a trail that others have since followed.
D’Antoni won the NBA’s 2016-17 Coach of the Year award as Houston improved from 41-41 to 55-27, and he now has the highest regular-season and postseason winning percentages in Rockets history.
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