Would This Former Golden State Warriors Star Make Sense? With James Harden On The Brooklyn Nets And The Houston Rockets Rebuilding

According to Kelly Iko and Alykhan Bijani of The Athletic (see Tweet below from September 4), the Houston Rockets had NBA veteran Monta Ellis in for a workout last week.

Sources tell me and @KellyIkoNBA that Monta Ellis worked out for the #Rockets this week.@ShamsCharania and @JonKrawczynski reported earlier this week he worked out in Dallas. https://t.co/3JSIc0D5vN
— Alykhan Bijani (@Rockets_Insider) September 4, 2021

Ellis is a 12-year NBA veteran who has played for the Golden State Warriors, Dallas Mavericks and most recently the Indiana Pacers.

He has, however, not played in the NBA since 2017 and is 35 years old.

How would Ellis fit on the Rockets?

For starters, the workout does seem strange considering where the Rockets are as a team right now.

James Harden is gone (traded to the Brooklyn Nets last season) and the Rockets went from a team that was expected to compete for an NBA Championship to the worst team in the NBA very quickly.

They finished last season at 17-55 (good for the worst record in the NBA), and while they did not get lucky enough to win the NBA's draft lottery, they did get the second overall pick where they selected Jalen Green.

Right now, they currently have an average on their roster of 24.6 years old, which is the ninth youngest team in the NBA, (the entire list of youngest to oldest teams in the NBA can be read here).

Therefore, they are young, and not going to be good.

Ellis, a 35 year old veteran, who has not played NBA basketball in over three years does not really fit the ideal for mold for the roster.

Over his 12 year career Ellis was an elite scorer with career averages of 17.8 points per game.

In 2010, he averaged 25.5 points per game as a 24 year old and he has averaged 19+ points per game over his career in seven different seasons.

That being said, he is not going to be anywhere near the player he was in his prime.

The only thing that he could really bring to the Rockets is veteran leadership if they were to sign him.

Likely there would not be a lot of minutes to go around for him, because teams in the NBA would rather see what they have in a younger player than a much older player taking their minutes on a bad team.

The Rockets team two years ago that was led by Harden and Russell Westbrook could have used a player like Ellis off the bench to put up points in a high-powered offense.

However, on this version of the Rockets he would make no sense.

A lot of times a team will bring a player in for a workout and the team never signs him.

That could be the case here.