A team friendly contract along with positional versatility makes Tari Eason primed for a breakout year. See how his impact on the court can be instrumental to Houston’s success.
With all of the unexpected and drastic changes we saw teams go through this offseason, the Houston Rockets didn’t make many moves at all. The entire core group is coming back, including most of the bench. There’s also multiple players returning from injury, making them feel like an addition without having to make any roster changes.
Most importantly of all, they managed to avoid major drama with restricted free agent, Tari Eason. While players like Bennedict Mathurin and Peyton Watson had ongoing negotiations, and Jalen Duren still remains unsigned —— the Rockets retained their guy more than two months ago now.
As previously discussed on Roundtable, his 81.5 million dollar contract also has great potential to be a steal at this point. That averages out to 16.3 million dollars in each of the next five years, which is just over the current Mid-Level Exception.
In fact, with his pay increasing every year, he’s actually set to make less than the MLE this season at $14.05 million. That’s lower than guys like Jock Landale and Grant Williams, for reference. I have a lot of confidence that he can outperform those guys.
Unfortunately, the one very obvious concern with Eason is his health and durability. In order to outperform other players, you have to stay on the court. Thankfully he played the most games since his rookie season and the most minutes per game he’s ever played in the NBA, per Basketball-Reference. He’s at least trending in the right direction.
If he can stay healthy, I wouldn’t be surprised if he gets even more than 25.8 minutes per game since he’s virtually the only backup forward on the roster. Jae’Sean Tate and Isaiah Crawford can fill in for sure, but I don’t see them getting big minutes on a consistent basis.
That puts a lot on the shoulders of Tari Eason. His number should be getting called anytime Kevin Durant or Jabari Smith Jr. are out of the game, on top of potentially starting some games alongside those guys. For all we know, he could be in the starting lineup for a majority of the games.
There’s still no clear starting five as far as I can tell, though I would be pretty surprised to see Eason there. The lack of forwards that we just went over will make that pretty difficult, plus I love his energy off the bench.
Unfortunately, his inconsistent shooting and health concerns and are the reasons why he got a smaller contract that many expected. If he comes in and consistently kills in his minutes, it will be a huge boost for Houston.
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