Kevin Durant won't save the Rockets
But it's a good deal anyway
Years into a patient rebuild and youth movement, the Rockets just pivoted to win-now by making a deal with Mat Ishbia’s Suns for the expensive and old Kevin Durant.
Durant has long been the NBA’s foremost sniper. Other players might be physically tougher, better on defense, or more charismatic leaders. But this guy can get you a bucket, and everyone reveres that.
Maybe too much. Since leaving Stephen Curry and the Warriors, Durant has toured the league making a top salary from one impulsive billionaire after another. He’s the hood ornament for whichever team is most desperate to look impressive–first Mikhail Prokhorov, then Mat Ishbia, now the Rockets’ troubled billionaire Tilman Fertitta.
Over this period, when someone trades for Durant, I write a story saying that team won’t win a championship, because the Nets and Suns were both blatantly lurching from one strategy to another, and that’s seldom the way to be the best of 30 teams.
Not to mention, a giant problem with old players is that they miss games. Everyone makes fun of Kawhi Leonard for being unreliable. But over the last six seasons, Kawhi has played 266 regular-season games, Durant has managed only eight more. Each sits, on average, about half the regular season.
This Rockets trade for Durant, however, I like a little better than most. Not because I think the Rockets are geniuses, nor because I believe Durant will be their savior.
Instead I like the Rockets’ gamble because this year’s playoffs went abysmally. The Thunder won 16 games and are built to last. The Wolves won nine and could get better. The Nuggets won seven and have the best player in basketball. The Warriors won five. The Rockets, who ended the season as the second seed in the West, drew a fairly easy opponent and won three measly games.
Once you accept that the Rockets aren’t on rails to a title, it makes more sense to take risks.
And the Rockets have other problems too. The Thunder will make max players out of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, Jalen Williams, and Chet Holmgren. There’s every reason to believe that the future of the Rockets revolves around Amen Thompson, Alperen Şengün, and … maybe this one or maybe that one. The Rockets can afford to pay only two or three of them star money. (That situation got even worse when the NBA turned super rugged, and strong Steven Adams stopped being expendable and ate up a little more cap room.)
The Rockets had too many good young players and not enough minutes and touches to get the best out of Jabari Smith Jr., Tari Eason, Cam Whitmore, and whatever other youngsters may arrive. Before trading for Durant, the Rockets had the tenth pick in Wednesday’s draft. But on what planet would Egor Demin or Noa Essengue get to play blossom when last year’s revered third overall pick, Reed Sheppard, played 654 minutes all season?
What made it weird was that all those players used the ball less than Jalen Green. Green can do a lot with the ball, but unfortunately he can’t do much without the ball.
Durant, then, offers the Rockets two things: quite probably more scoring from fewer touches than Jalen Green. And, unlike Green, the promise that he won’t be around sucking up salary when Amen Thompson and his emerging star teammates need big-time contracts.
The Rockets are no Thunder. But they know it and are doing something about it.
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Joe Tsai was the owner when Durant signed with the Nets.