With top targets sliding and trade activity surging, Houston faces a pivotal choice: aggressive maneuvering to secure their desired player, or trusting their board to stay pat.
On the first night of the NBA Draft, we got to see where the future stars of the league will begin their careers. AJ Dybantsa will be playing for the Washington Wizards, Darryn Peterson with the Utah Jazz, and Cam Boozer will join the Memphis Grizzlies.
Teams around the league also saw some of their potential picks come off the table ahead of the second round tonight. One player I was hoping would still be available for the Houston Rockets is Joshua Jefferson from Iowa State.
As covered on Roundtable, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that he’s been selected before the second round. The Timberwolves ultimately took him with their 28th pick, but that will be rerouted to Brooklyn in the Julius Randle trade.
The other player mentioned in that same article, however, was not drafted last night. Henri Veesaar is one of the handful of players who dropped out of the first round.
While I still think the Rockets will have to get lucky for him to be available with their 39th pick, there still is a plausible way to move up in the draft. We saw a ton of teams do it last night.
In fact, we saw nearly one third of the draft selections get traded. By my count, nine out of the thirty picks won’t be playing for the team that took them. The team whose hat they were wearing on stage.
Even further than that, only one of those trades were for lottery picks, and that was at the end of the lottery. The 13th pick went to the Milwaukee Bucks in the Giannis blockbuster.
I mention this because it can be good news for Houston. Teams weren’t being stingy with their picks, as they were clearly flying around with relative ease.
If the Rockets have their heart set on a specific player, whether that’s Henri Veesaar or anyone else, then it shouldn’t be too difficult for them to trade up and guarantee they get their player.
While picks 33, 34, and 35 have already been traded as part of first round trades yesterday, there’s still five available spots to move up. Or picks 33-35 could simply be moved again.
It’s always possible that Rafael Stone and the front office always had players in mind for both picks 39 and 53, and expect them to be available regardless. They could also have contingency plans in place and trust their backup decisions.
All in all, I’m not sure how much Round 1 of the 2026 NBA Draft changed things for the Houston Rockets. Potentially it opened their eyes to being able to move up, or maybe they’ll stand pat. Unfortunately only time will tell.
