Rockets Ime Udoka Ends Hope of Fred VanVleet Return this Season

The 2025-26 Houston Rockets have been an entertaining group. On some nights, they play beautiful basketball.

If they were able to consistently hit open shots, they'd likely be much further ahead in the standings. Yet and still, they've been a point guard away all season.

Sure, they've lacked bench scoring. They rank 15th in that category with 27.7 points per contest, which is a tad misleading, since Reed Sheppard has technically been a reserve essentially all season and accounts for half of that production by himself.

Speaking of Sheppard, he's mostly been used in an off-ball capacity all season, although his skillset is the closest to Fred VanVleet’s. Perhaps Rockets coach Ime Udoka has been preparing Sheppard for VanVleet’s return?

Hopefully that's not Udoka’s calculus, because VanVleet will surely not be returning this season. Udoka all but confirmed it himself.

"On-court shooting, cutting, moving, non-contact. That’s pretty much the extent of the on-court (work). Obviously getting right around the six-month mark and you can start to ramp up things but no contact at any point soon or nothing we’re looking forward to."

Udoka continued.

"You’re obviously not looking at playing if you’re not getting on the court and making contact this late in the season.”

This is the most transparent response we've gotten about VanVleet all season. VanVleet hasn't even been this transparent.

In fact, he's teased the idea of a return on multiple occasions, although he's consistently stated that it wasn't his goal or intention to fan the flames and get diehard fans excited about his ability to fill arguably the Rockets' biggest void this season.

It shouldn't be a surprise, however, that VanVleet won't be back in a Rockets uniform this season. Despite the advancements that we've seen in the medicinal vortex and healthcare industry, an ACL tear is still an ACL tear.

Meaning, although it's no longer a career-ending injury, like it was in yesteryear, it's still a significant knee injury. It's unusual to return sooner than one year.

The fastest return that we've seen was that by future Hall of Fame running back Adrian Peterson, who suffered the injury on December 24th, 2011 and returned on opening day, which was played on September 9th of 2012.

Even that was a little over eight months. VanVleet has only had about six months to recover. And considering how important he's proven to be, the Rockets have to reason to rush him back.

Steven Adams is still out for the season. The best bet is to let VanVleet take his time and come back healthy next season.