Rockets Receive Vindication Regarding Cam Whitmore Trade with Wizards

The Houston Rockets received scrutiny this past summer when they traded Cam Whitmore to the Washington Wizards. The obvious logic was that Whitmore was just a 21-year-old prospect who had just completed his second season in the NBA.

And it was very clear that he could score. In fact, he averaged 12.3 points as a rookie, in just 18.7 minutes of action.

(Much of it was garbage time, granted, but the point remains).

Questions arose regarding why Whitmore, a lottery-level talent in his draft class, couldn’t earn more minutes. He fielded them without taking shots at the franchise or Rockets coach Ime Udoka.

The short and skinny of it was that Whitmore couldn’t impact the game without scoring or having the ball in his hands.

Defensively, he wasn’t quite a needle-mover. Which is one of the key ways to gain favor from Udoka.

And again, offensively, he was a bit of a ball stopper. Udoka prefers a free-flowing offensive approach.

Ball movement is key.

The trade seemed to be more of the Rockets giving Whitmore an opportunity to earn developmental reps as the Wizards are in rebuild mode. Contending teams don’t quite have the time to dish out developmental reps.

However, it was viewed as one of the “most lopsided” offseason trades, according to Bleacher Report, as the Rockets ridded themselves of his scoring upside with two years left on Whitmore’s rookie-scale deal and didn’t fetch a first-round draft selection.

However, 21 games into his Wizards career, Whitmore hasn’t quite blown Washington away. In fact, Whitmore is averaging 6.6 points, 34.8 percent from the field, and 1-of-14 from deep in the last five games. He even logged a DNP-CD in Saturday’s game against the Atlanta Hawks.

And the latest reporting is that the Wizards have grown concerned with Whitmore’s practice habits and day-to-day work ethic. Yikes.

One can only imagine that this type of stuff was also going on in Houston. Practice habits start early on.

However, the Rockets never put anything of the sort out there publicly about Whitmore.

If this was also happening during his Rockets’ tenure, that explains the decision to move him even more. Ditto for his lack of playing time.

The Rockets next face off against the fading LA Clippers on Thursday, Dec. 11. Houston currently stands at 15-6, good for fourth in the Western Conference. They're 7-3 in their last 10 games.