The Houston Rockets are in the middle of a revival, with their young core blossoming to the point of leading the team to the top of the Western Conference standings. For a while, the Rockets sat at second place in the conference, although some struggles in recent weeks, coinciding with Fred VanVleet’s injury, have knocked them down a peg or two. Nonetheless, they remain in line to have homecourt advantage in the first round of the playoffs at the very least.
Leading up to the trade deadline, the Rockets were among the teams many thought were bracing for a major move. They have all the young assets in the world as well as some precious draft capital that has them squarely within conversations in a potential trade for the game’s next available superstar.
Now, there is a line of thinking that building a contending team takes time. The Rockets must be very pleased with the fruits of their patience, as despite not being a major player in the trade market yet, they are on the upswing. Alas, contending windows rarely open. Should the Rockets have pried theirs wide open by pushing their chips to the middle of the table and having a go at the Larry O’Brien trophy in 2025 by being more aggressive?
In this exercise, we debate whether or not the Rockets made a huge mistake by standing pat prior to the trade deadline.
To trade or not to, the Rockets conundrum
When starting from scratch like the Rockets did in 2021, the hope is that they manage to build a contending roster by managing to draft well. And this is exactly what the Rockets have done. They have assembled a very impressive core of young players, with the likes of Alperen Sengun, Jalen Green, Amen Thompson, Jabari Smith Jr., Tari Eason, and Cam Whitmore, among others, looking like long-term keepers for the team.
Sengun is the crown jewel of the rebuild, as he made his first All-Star team in 2025, while Green and Thompson have been rapidly improving — with the latter continuing to turn heads with his athleticism and defense.
The Rockets then complemented this young core with the additions of Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks — the ideal, two-way rugged players who bring a winning mentality to the team.
As presently constructed, the Rockets are definitely going to be a scary team to face in the playoffs. Once VanVleet and Smith return, the Rockets should have even more spacing and defense — two elements that will be important for them to maintain come postseason time. The team’s collective athleticism and ability to play swarming and suffocating defense would make any matchup wary of them.
But the game slows down quite a lot in the playoffs, and the ability to produce offense in the halfcourt becomes vital to a team’s chances of surviving the playoff gauntlet. With that said, it’s fair to wonder if the Rockets will have enough offensive juice to make it deep into the postseason.
The Rockets rank 28th in effective field-goal percentage, which speaks to their efficiency struggles. They are a team that does not shoot very well from beyond the arc, although that is not necessarily a death sentence — the 2023 Denver Nuggets were not a particularly high-volume three-point team as well, but that squad had Nikola Jokic, the best player on the planet at the moment.
They make up for this lack of efficiency with their relentlessness on the glass. The Rockets lead the league with an offensive rebounding percentage of 36.3, although this just goes to show how many chances on the offensive glass they get every single game due to how many of their shots miss.
In the postseason where every possession matters, teams will be more inclined to battle the Rockets on the boards, especially when they know that that is their bread and butter. Thus, achieving a higher offensive floor on a game to game basis is a must for the Rockets moving forward, hence making them a logical candidate to trade for a star like Kevin Durant or Devin Booker.
Durant would be such a perfect fit on the Rockets’ starting lineup, an elite scorer who can manufacture buckets easily from all three levels. A trade for him would cost them plenty, but this is Durant we’re talking about — a serial winner who reserves his best when competing against the best.
While not trading for a star of Durant’s caliber is not exactly a mistake per se, such a deal would have made the Rockets a much more legitimate threat to compete for the Larry O’Brien trophy this year. And in a wide-open title race, perhaps they could have been more aggressive.
The post Houston Rockets’ biggest mistake at 2025 NBA trade deadline appeared first on ClutchPoints.
