With the second-worst record (11-23) in the Western Conference and a 13-game losing streak, the Houston Rockets are widely expected to be sellers at the NBA’s March 25 trade deadline.
Houston has a number of veterans on expiring contracts (Victor Oladipo, PJ Tucker, Sterling Brown, Ben McLemore and Dante Exum among them), and those are the types of players that often get moved once a team concedes a playoff run in that season is unlikely.
After all, perhaps the biggest incentive to take the risk of an expiring player leaving for no compensation in free agency is because of that player’s potential contributions to the team’s success in the final year of his deal. Once the upside of “team success” becomes limited, general managers often conclude the risk/reward balance dictates a move.
In the case of Houston, though, the upside of any sell-off is complicated by — at least on paper — the presence of an unproven front office. With longtime general manager Daryl Morey leaving for Philadelphia before the season, the Rockets promoted from within with first-time GM Rafael Stone. While it’s been an eventful first few months, headlined by blockbuster trades to send All-Star guards James Harden and Russell Westbrook elsewhere, he’s still a relative newbie.
Yet, Stone already seems to have turned heads around the league for how he handled those negotiations, and the influx of future draft assets Houston has received in the process. “Rafael’s a pretty shrewd operator,” one Western Conference official told Bleacher Report‘s Jake Fischer.
“They’re too smart to just whiff and get nothing off of him,” the West official added, referring to the situation with Oladipo. Fischer notes that a sign-and-trade arrangement in the offseason — Houston will have Bird rights on Oladipo — is also an option, if the trade options available to the Rockets by March 25 aren’t deemed to be satisfactory.
The Rockets are staring at that big red button. "I keep hearing they're going to fire-sale," said league voice. On Houston's potential rebuild, and the latest Oladipo, Tucker talks, plus the Rockets' other two-way wings.https://t.co/SuZujAQ5CS
— Jake Fischer (@JakeLFischer) March 9, 2021
Per Fischer, one of the team’s scouts was impressed with the move that Stone pulled off to bring in second-year guard Kevin Porter Jr. from Cleveland. “I think the Kevin Porter trade was very telling,” the scout said. “If we can rehab this guy, maybe he can turn into a player.”
In the grand scheme, Stone’s track record remains limited. However, based on the evidence thus far, the Rockets have good reasons to be confident in their approach leading into a crucial transaction window.
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