It feels so long ago since the Houston Rockets were eliminated from the postseason at the hands of Golden State, that I can’t even remember if I wrote anything looking back on the season. Possibly I didn’t. We also had a lot to discuss with the D’Antoni hiring and the rumors surrounding that process. But here we are in the middle of June, in the days leading up to the NBA draft, but having no first round draft pick. That’s the most depressing outcome possible after coming off a disappointing season.
The thing I just can’t get over is how quickly everything changed from just last season. I maybe started thinking about this deeply after all of the commemorations recently of Houston’s title teams. I don’t know that I was emotionally present during the ’94 title run, but in 1995, I watched all 82 games + the postseason, even if needing to finish certain Pacific coast fourth quarters from my headphones, under the safety of my covers. The most striking thing, looking back, is that I took winning for granted. I was overjoyed, but I didn’t grasp even a fraction of the magnitude of the circumstances. Even in the ensuing years, culminating in 1997, when the team made deep playoff runs, I still assumed relevance was a right.
I grew more jaded with time. Steve Francis was the first great young prospect of my time and so naturally, I assumed he’d fulfill greatness. I had yet to witness individual failure. Now I approach potential through the lens of skepticism, sometimes even assuming the worst as the default outcome. Longtime readers of this page will note that I rarely dabble with college basketball or preview the draft; I often don’t even account for rookies in my season predictions. Surprise me, like Clint Capela did, otherwise I won’t set myself up to be disappointed.
With the discussion right now surrounding Dwight Howard, and his impending decision, I’m reminded that this time last year, the question wasn’t whether or not we would want Howard back for this upcoming season, but whether we could stomach the latter years on his inevitable extension after his decline. But the decline has happened already, with almost all reasonable observers in unanimous agreement that a divorce would do well for both sides. Who would have ever foreseen that this was how the Dwight Howard saga would end! Not through a painful financial decision (akin to the Mavericks’ breaking up their title team in parting ways with Tyson Chandler) but in a belief that his successor represented a dollar better spent. (Indeed, Capela outperformed Howard in important categories last season, while playing at a fraction of the cost). Watching Tristan Thompson nimbly scrambling around the perimeter this NBA Finals, chasing down and trapping shooters, my belief that Dwight’s time in the NBA has past is reaffirmed. While his rim protection has declined, its his lateral mobility which has really taken a nosedive, as Kevin McHale noted famously during the year.
The most amazing aspect of the team’s season was the sheer improbability of the result. They didn’t need everything to break right. They just needed a status quo repeat of the prior odds, or the norm, and they’d actually have a reasonable chance at Durant this summer as a plausible destination. Instead, they are reportedly out of consideration (though I have my own doubts any league sources could possibly know Durant’s intentions, when he himself most likely hasn’t made up his mind). We’d be discussing how to fit Durant into the cap sheet with Ty Lawson’s cap figure, while re-signing Howard. Maybe it was 2015 that was the extreme aberration? Maybe the stars just aligned and last year was the expected reality? Some cynics might argue that the course of events which unfolded was the natural culmination of a rushed rebuild and attainment of least desirable best options (i.e. Harden and Howard were both available superstars because they were both inherently flawed). There is some credence to this belief, as I touched on briefly this year. And of course, only ownership is to blame for the impatient route taken.
But setting that aside, I’m reminded watching the Finals of how little we know. I thought definitively that the Warriors were fools for passing on Kevin Love for Klay Thompson, and thought the Cavs would be fools to not trade Wiggins for Love. And embarrassingly, despite this knowledge, I still think the Rockets should explore acquiring Love this summer. (As an aside, as an avowed Warriors hater, and thus, having adopted the Cavs, I can’t help but imagine the possibilities with Andrew Wiggins on the wing, sandwiching guards with trapping help from Tristan Thompson). On a more local level, how different would things look had the team just snatched up Paul Millsap instead of Dwight Howard as I mused some weeks ago on Twitter. Signing Howard was absolutely the right choice. It represented the team’s highest possible ceiling. But Millsap could’ve possibly been acquired through trade and then re-signed using the money used on Howard, a route I argued fervently against, reasoning that it would limit the team’s upside. Now, envisioning a frontline with Capela and Millsap, with the latter’s ability to shoot, pass, and defend, and with his influence in the lockerroom, it’s clear the team would have been better off at this present moment. What if they had kept Chandler Parsons and Jeremy Lin too and just hired an actual coach that could integrate Lin with Harden?
Now, you are left with just Harden, with the clock ticking not only on his prime, but towards his own free agency. Capela is another rock solid building block, but after that, you don’t have much more than a skeleton of a roster. I’ve quipped that I almost expect Harrison Barnes to be manning the forward slot next year, given the team’s luck, and given the market. Why would Horford come here if Duran’t won’t? And does Mike Conley really move the needle at all at his expected salary? Maybe he does, I don’t know. 2017 is an even more impressive free agent class, but its depressing to consider that yet another year would be lost looking ahead to a future crop. Rather than putting all of their eggs in the Class A crop yet again, I hope the Rockets move quickly towards cheaper, smart options in the Class B pool. And while I have always been one to advocate the preservation of future flexibility, I’d be very wary of punting on next season to strike out yet again the following July. As I’ve been saying since the season was lost, the goal right now is just to become good, it is not to become great. To that end, Houston cannot eschew incremental improvements.
