Rockets Reportedly Wouldn't Have Made Kevin Durant Trade with Knowledge of Injuries

We’ve seen a very active year in the NBA, from a transactional standpoint. There have been a lot of moving parts.

The trade deadline has become the new free agency. Last week’s deadline saw a record number of players change teams: 73 players in total across 28 trades.

The previous record was 63, which was set two years ago. All told, 27 of the NBA’s 30 teams made a move of some sort.

The Houston Rockets were one of the three teams that did not, as they opted to stand pat and hold onto their young pieces and assets.

However, they made arguably the greatest splash move since the start of the new calendar year in last summer’s deal that saw them swap out Dillon Brooks, Jalen Green and draft capital for Kevin Durant (and Clint Capela, in the same deal).

The move sent a clear message. The team was going all in.

The rebuild was long over. The team had just nabbed the second seed in the Western Conference.

However, the Rockets still have holes on the roster. To many, there was no point in making an all-in deal for an aging Durant to take them over the top if they weren’t going to be willing to get rid of their assets and load up the roster with the necessary ingredients to be justifiably viewed as a title contender.

The most glaring need all season has been a table-setting point guard.

The Rockets rank bottom ten in passes, points scored off assists and 27th in total assists.

And it’s been a bit too challenging to get Durant the ball at times, although you wouldn’t deduce that based on the stat sheet, as Durant is averaging 25.8 points, 5.3 rebounds, 4.4 assists, 50.6 percent from the field, 40.3 percent from three, 88 percent from the foul line, 62.7 percent true shooting and 57 percent effective shooting.

This isn't what the Rockets' brass envisioned when they made the trade last summer. And according to Ben DuBose of Rockets Wire, they wouldn't have made the trade at all if they knew they would've been without VanVleet.

“So the KD trade agreement was reached on June 22nd of last year. On June 18th, the Rockets had made it clear that Fred VanVleet was not going to be a part of the KD trade talks because they didn’t think they were a good enough team for KD to be worthwhile if they lost Fred. And low and behold, just three months later, a freak accident and they lose Fred.

A lot of these people that are talking about the lack of alignment, ‘oh you bring in Kevin Durant but then you don’t go all in.’ The Rockets wouldn’t have brought in Kevin Durant if they had known they wouldn’t have Fred. They specifically kept Fred out of the talks for that reason.

This is not PR spin after the fact. They said it, I reported it before the trade. This was their mindset.

Now after Fred got hurt, obviously they tried to spin it, ‘well we hope we can contend, we’ll give more reps to Amen and Reed.’ They’re going to put on a brave face.

They knew last June that they needed Fred for a chance at contending with KD.”

DuBose was essentially re-reporting, following the backlash received by Rockets GM Rafael Stone after the deadline for being inactive.

VanVleet has spoken about returning in time for the playoffs from his torn ACL, but that could prove to be too aggressive of a timetable.