Houston’s bench production crumbles without Tari Eason’s two-way energy. As restricted free agency looms, the Rockets must decide if they can afford to lose their most vital stabilizer.
Take Tari Eason out of the equation, and Houston’s bench goes from middle-of-the-pack to bottom-tier in a hurry.
That’s really where this whole decision starts.
On paper, Eason’s averages don’t jump off the page- 10.5 points, 6.3 rebounds, solid but not spectacular efficiency. But the way those numbers show up is what separates him from the rest of this group. He doesn’t need plays called for him or require handholding.
At one point this season, Eason was flirting with 50-percent from three, showing flashes of a much higher offensive ceiling than his averages suggest. That version doesn’t need to show up every night to matter.
Over the course of the regular season, Houston’s bench sat right around the middle of the league in production. It wasn’t a strength, but it wasn’t a liability either. The issue is that most of that stability came from one guy. Once you start pulling Eason’s contributions, the drop-off is immediate. What looks like a functional second unit turns into something a lot thinner, a lot less reliable, and a lot easier to play against.
Tari Eason accounted for roughly a third of Houston’s bench scoring this season. Take that away, and the second unit goes from average to one of the thinnest in the league. Over the six-game series against the Lakers, Tari Eason scored 83 points, which just so happens to be the exact same total as the rest of Houston’s bench combined. In that same stretch, the rest of the bench shot barely above 24-percent from the floor.
And we just watched what that looks like.
That’s where restricted free agency comes in. Eason can take meetings, listen to offers, and let the market set his value. But Houston still controls the outcome. If another team puts a deal on the table, the Rockets can match it and keep him. So no, it’s not entirely his decision if he walks- it only happens if Houston decides the price isn’t worth it.
So now it comes down to whether they’re actually willing to pay for that.
Because replacing him isn’t as simple as plugging in another bench piece. If Eason walks, Houston has three options, and none of them are ideal. They can try to replace him in free agency, which means competing for the same type of high-energy, two-way wing that every team wants. They can trade for that role, which costs assets just to get back to where they already were. Or they can look internally, which, based on how this roster performed, isn’t a real solution right now.
Eason isn’t a luxury for this team. He’s part of what makes their rotation work. And after a series where the non-starter minutes kept slipping away, that matters more than ever.
If Houston is serious about fixing what just showed up vs Los Angeles next season, this shouldn’t be a hard call.