Why The Houston Rockets Shouldn't Add More Players
The current discourse around the Houston Rockets have little to do with actual basketball, and entirely to do with domestic violence, at the hands of Kevin Porter Jr.
What makes the situation surrounding his off-the-court news even more frustrating is how the Rockets have engaged teams in trade talks for Porter Jr., fully proving that they are incapable of reading the room.
(This isn't a story about him. Promise, I'm getting to my point.)
The basic idea of a trade, in which the Rockets would relinquish draft picks as compensation for any team to take on Porter Jr., and get a rotation player in return, is also a weird one, frankly.
Has the organization just entirely forgot how big of a roster crunch they already have? And - more importantly - have they forgotten they just drafted Amen Thompson back in June?
Setting aside the worst possible timing the Rockets could ever have displayed, it just doesn't make much sense to add more rotational pieces to this team. Even if Porter Jr. had kept himself out of trouble, several players were already projected to get squeezed out of the rotation.
Thompson - the team's prized draft pick - shouldn't be a long-term project to the extent where he needs to compete for minutes in his rookie season.
The fourth overall pick should get significant rotation minutes right off the bat, as he's a 6-foot-7 dynamo defender, and one the most athletic players in the entirely league. The Rockets should clear the way for his takeoff - as well as for other players - and not clog the roster with more players.
He's already looking at sharing minutes with Fred VanVleet and Jalen Green in the backcourt.
Even if the organization wanted to get a wing or a big forward in there, they're also loaded there. Tari Eason, Jabari Smith, Dillon Brooks, and Cam Whitmore are all on the roster looking for minutes.
Oh, you wanted a center? Well, that's probably bad news for Alperen Şengün, who is probably going to be the team's best or second-best player this season.
It's generally just a bad idea to clog the pathway for young talent, but for a roster that's absolutely loaded with it? Even worse, to the extent of malpractice.
Let's return to Thompson here.
What Porter Jr. did assuredly means his Rockets days are over. That isn't how anyone wanted Thompson to get more minutes, but here we find ourselves regardless.
The Rockets stumbled into a basketball-related scenario that actually benefits them, in that every single second otherwise occupied by Porter Jr. now goes to Thompson, a player who is projected to be far better, far more influential, and immediately so.
So why would you, as an organization, potentially undermine your own benefit by seeking out more talent? It's entirely counterintuitive.
The Rockets shouldn't seek a trade of Porter Jr. for a variety of reasons, the first million of which shouldn't even be about basketball.
But seen purely through a basketball lens, it still doesn't make a lick of sense for the roster they're trotting out there.
This leads me to a concern I've had for a while with this team.
Are the Rockets, via the signings of VanVleet and Brooks - and now their sudden need for another rotation player - less enthusiastic about their youth movement than they should be?
I'm not going to pretend to know the answer, because I don't work for them, but anything below a full long-term commitment to Thompson and his fellow youngsters on the team would be a problem, and a mistake.
Letting the kids grow, even with VanVleet and Brooks around, has to be priority number one. Anything else falls short.
Unless noted otherwise, all stats via NBA.com, PBPStats, Cleaning the Glass or Basketball-Reference. All salary information via Spotrac. All odds courtesy of FanDuel Sportsbook.
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