Shifting Priorities For Houston Rockets As Trade Deadline Approaches

The Houston Rockets will be approaching the NBA’s trade deadline with a much different approach than in years past. Per Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle, due to the team’s current roster composition and future asset profile, general manager Rafael Stone will be prioritizing future picks in any potential trades:

“With two picks in the next draft, if the Rockets are going to deal for more, they would value picks that would come in later seasons. Last season’s deals indicate the priority would be getting picks with as little protection as possible, rather than with more immediate returns.

Neither do the Rockets need to deal for more young projects. Players in their rookie deals who have not panned out with their first teams, as with Kevin Porter Jr. last season, are unlikely to be as attractive this season, given the glut of young players and especially with Alperen Sengun and Josh Christopher showing promise more rapidly than the Rockets expected.

Between limiting the sorts of picks they would find attractive and the sort of building-block players they would want, the Rockets would shrink the pool of pieces they would want in a trade of players they still value. They have moved from seeking many picks or prospects to trying to get fewer assets with higher potential upside.”

The strategy is in stark contrast to the team’s thought process and motivations in prior years. Under former general manager Daryl Morey’s watch, towards the tail end of James Harden’s tenure, the franchise routinely traded future draft picks in an effort to maximize the star guard’s championship window. After Harden asked out last season, the strategy became replenishing the cupboard with future picks, which Stone did in the trade that sent Harden to the Brooklyn Nets, acquiring unprotected first-round picks from Brooklyn in 2022, 2024, and 2026, along with the right to swap selections with the Nets in 2023, 2025, and 2027.

Many may have already forgotten that before Harden was acquired prior to the start of the 2012-2013 season, the organization’s strategy was directly counter to what the report purports it to be today: prior to obtaining Harden in a trade with the Oklahoma City Thunder, Morey’s plan was to accumulate as many assets as possible to have the capital necessary to put together a package for a player like Harden. At that time, internal development rightly was not a focus because the franchise did not yet have the type of high upside prospect which would merit such prioritization.

Purportedly, the franchise does now have such prospects, after an impressive draft haul last summer, including first round draft picks Green, Sengun, and Christopher and sophomore starters, Porter Jr. and Jae’Sean Tate.

The other major distinction is today’s Rockets have the benefit of organic asset accumulation. In the years sandwiched by Yao Ming’s tenure and Harden’s acquisition, the franchise won 42, 43, and 34 games, respectively, landing itself in the back-half of the lottery each year and out of position to draft the type of franchise-altering talent that can allow an organization to put developmental plans in motion.

Conversely, Houston finished with the worst record in the league last season, earning the rights to the second pick in the draft (with which it took Green.) This year, at the time of writing, the team finds itself at 15-37, with the third worst record in the league and subsequently, 52.1% odds at a top-four selection in the upcoming draft. This is all to say that Stone, today, does not need to trade his way to high-profile prospects. They can be expected organically.