With Kevin Durant realizing his basketball mortality, the Houston Rockets need to do the same and plan for a future without him if they want to stay relevant.
The Houston Rockets are now more than five years into their rebuild, and they’ve made a pretty substantial turnaround. From years of tanking, to back-to-back 52 win seasons, they’ve managed to claw themselves out of the depths of the lottery.
While their first playoff run was spearheaded by gritty players like Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks, this past season was a different team altogether. Future Hall of Fame forward, Kevin Durant, often times felt like the Rockets best and only option last season.
One common theme from both years is that the team’s success was largely due to the veterans, rather than the lottery draft picks. The most successful teams since the James Harden era, but you can’t even credit it to all the tanking they did.
Sure, Alperen Şengün was an All-Star in both seasons, but he was still drafted outside of the lottery. Plus, we’ve already discussed how he’s not a perennial All-Star here on Roundtable. He’s not a superstar, and neither are any of the other lottery picks. That’s somewhat concerning, especially with what Kevin Durant recently said.
In a discussion on a show for Boardroom, the soon to be 38-year old sniper dove into his own NBA mortality when the topic of Russell Westbrook’s retirement was brought up. While it’s unsurprising that he has no explicit plans to hang up his sneakers any time soon, he did acknowledge the fact that he can’t play forever.
I’m not quite sure if Rafael Stone and the rest of the Rockets’ front office is on the same page. Ime Udoka felt comfortable playing Durant for the third most minutes in the NBA, and relying on him to create virtually everything on offense in those minutes. We saw exactly where that got the team in the playoffs when KD went down.
Is that what we can expect from this team when he eventually retires? Or if he starts missing more games as he continues to age? What if he requests another trade? That’d be nothing new, so what exactly is the plan moving forward?
With Houston missing out on a ton of big names this offseason, as covered on Roundtable, they’re more or less locked in with this roster for now. They’ve committed to running it back and betting on internal growth, but this feels like the last chance for some guys to prove their worth.
Can Amen Thompson or Alperen Şengün develop a jumpshot? Ideally both. Can Jabari Smith Jr. become an above average shooter? Does Reed Sheppard have star potential? The future might be bleak and the team should aim to make changes if none of that materializes this season.
