Why the Kevin Durant trade to the Houston Rockets is the BEST NBA offseason move

Why the Kevin Durant trade to the Houston Rockets is the BEST NBA offseason move

I’ll give you the first pick. Guess I’m I’m good with this. Yeah, the guest gets Okay. All right. Sounds good. Um I feel like this is a clear-cut one. Kevin Durant to the Houston Rockets is the number one pick for me. So, I had Kevin Durant going to the Rockets at number three on my board. Okay, good. Glad we have a difference already. Nice. It is probably the most momentous move that happened, I think. Yeah. Uh the way that I thought about this was I thought about it from like each specific team’s perspective and tried to like think of like excess value that was derived from deals in some ways. Um KD at number three was a big deal for me. Why do you have Kevin Durant for and I’ll just list off the entire deal here. Kevin Durant for Jaylen Green, Dylan Brooks number 10 and number 59 in the 2025 NBA draft. two seconds in the 2026 NBA draft and two seconds out into the 2030s. Yeah. So, the reason I have Kevin Durant here, number one, um the deal, and for what it’s worth, Phoenix with with where it was leverage-wise, did an okay job with the trade. Like, it’s not like they were they got absolutely fleeced. They still got the 10th overall pick. We’ll see how good Kaman Malawatch is. Um, you know, Jaylen Green is clearly a player that they can maybe try and change trajectorywise. Uh, I thought he had a decent season last year generally. Um, but to me, this comes down to the Houston Rockets added Kevin Durant. Like that’s that’s the simple part of this. Uh, I have some numbers here in terms of like the clutch differences. This Rockets team really struggled uh in the clutch last year. They really struggled in the fourth quarter last year. 18th in clutch offense, 16th in clutch net rating, uh 23rd in fourth quarter offense, 19th in fourth quarter net rating, 22nd in terms of half court offense. Wow. Kevin is a guy who fits in immediately to what they need, right? And I get the age concerns, I get the injury concerns, all of those are valid questions, but for the cost and what this Rockets team is around KD, uh, it’s a near-perfect fit and what he provides offensively as a guy who can basically go and get them a bucket whenever they need to. I think that is a substantial upgrade to what Jaylen Green was for this team during the playoffs. Um, and not to mention like, yes, Dylan Brooks is a good 3 and D wing player for them, but KD is no, you know, chum defensively, like he’s a very good defender when he wants to be as well. So, yeah, KD number one for me. Well, they have, you know, I think there are a few different ways to look at this from like an asset perspective, right? To me, they solved an issue by trading from a position of strength. is the biggest. You know, I always try and think of it in terms of, okay, you’re going out to get a superstar. How can you best acquire that superstar while maintaining your ability to contend, right? And the Rockets have Amen Thompson, who I had as the best defensive player in the league this year. If you have a couple of other guys like Evan Mobley, I’ll completely understand that. But I would have had a man Thompson as the number one defensive player in the NBA this season. Yeah, they have Tar Een who’s a really really high level defender who I think can come in in eight minutes in that regard. They have enough bodies and they go out and they get Dorian Finny Smith, another three and D wing. And I would imagine that they had like a pretty good sense that they had a real shot at Dorian when they did the Kevin Durant deal on draft night just because that’s the way those things work. They have a number of bodies that they can throw at players on the wing defensively to replace the Dylan Brooks value, right? Yeah. Yeah. But getting off of the Jaylen Green money and really, you know, signing Jaylen Green to that extension basically in order to deal him. Mhm. Was something that could have gone very wrong, I think. Uh, and you know, you see the Nets right now, like I think that they’re somewhat worried about tying themselves to Cam Thomas too long because they’re concerned about, you know, okay, if we sign him to like a four-year deal worth, you know, $80 million or whatever, we might get kind of tied to that at the end of the day. But if we are not doing that, if we are, you know, smart and we go shorter term, that deal is probably going to be movable. I think that that’s what a lot of teams are kind of taking away from the Jaylen Green of this all is that okay if it’s a shorter term deal it’s going to be a little bit more easily moved. I I think that that deal could have gone so sideways that extension and just because Phoenix ended up deciding to move Kevin Durant which was something that I think Houston’s front office probably could have you know foreseen at the end of the day like the whole thing that they’ve done over the course of the last year is kind of short the Phoenix front office right between making that deal with Brooklyn that kind of uh made the male Bridges deal possible because it gave Brooklyn its two picks back in order to go and get a bunch of future picks uh from the Phoenix Suns, right? So that they’re trying to short Phoenix. So I think that all of this played into a real strategy that for the Houston Rockets resulted in them upgrading Jaylen Green with Kevin Durant. And that’s a crazy crazy thing to be able to do. And I think this is completely reasonable to have this at number one. Like I I think this is something that makes total sense to have at number one. They are now like a genuine title contender in my opinion. And what I’m most excited to see is kind of their lineup flexibility. This is something I talk about all the time. Absolutely. Obviously. Yeah. Like being able to figure out different ways to match up with your opponent is so critical. And Houston has the ability now to go big or small depending on the situation. And they can go bigger than anybody obviously, right? With what they’ve found with the Steven Adams, Alper, and Shenun thing. But now instead of it being Jaylen Green, you’re going even super like even more super sized, right? Like you can go Amen Thompson, Kevin Durant, Steven Adams, and Alper and Shenun in that two-3 zone that they love to play defensively. And that’s just going to be absolutely crazy to deal with. like the way that all their limbs are going to be flying around, the way that you know they’re going to cover ground in that zone defensively just becomes even more high level in my opinion uh when they choose to. But now you can also go super small and skilled with Alperin at the four, Kevin D or Alperin at the five, Kevin Durant at the four, a man at the three, and then like whatever else you want to put out there, right? You can put out Jabari Smith if you want to. You can go super super small like Jabari Smith at the five, Kevin Durant at the four, and then like Amen Thompson, Fred Van Vleet, and if you want to go like Reed Shepard or something like that if Reed has it going, you can go Tar Een if you want to go like super switchable, right? They have a lot of different ways to be able to match up with opponents now. And I think that that’s ultimately why I think this is such a critical uh impressive move from the Houston front office. But I’m glad that you led. You did this smartly. You led with the fact that their end of game offense was just catastrophic uh throughout the course of the season. And that is ultimately what Kevin Durant really brings to the table here is somebody who can go create his own shot. Yeah. And to the point about the value thing that you mentioned earlier, um they still are leveraging against the Suns. Like they still have the Suns pick I believe in 2027, I want to say. Yeah, 2027 is the pick that they have. and then they have a swap rights in 2029. So they they’re still leveraging against Phoenix which is going to play out well for them regardless because of the way that Phoenix is just like heading towards a rebuild at some point in time. You know what I mean? Um the other aspect to this like lineup wise uh they can go ultra small but they now this we could maybe talk about this a little bit later too if we want to address Dorian Finny Smith but the Lakers ran small ball units with DFS. you know, the the Rockets can ostensibly do the same, but Kevin Durant is basically your five in certain situations there. And to me, you think of what Fred Van Vleet brings at the point of attack. Um, what Amen Thompson brings at the point of attack, what Tari E brings at the point of attack, having another guy in Kevin Durant who’s just so long. I think that’s one thing that gets underrated about what Kevin Durant can do defensively. He is just incredibly long. Uh, and like he can be able to get in the cookie jar, jump into passing lanes, uh, use his length on the help side. And to me, next to Shangun Adams or if they want to go smaller, that lineup versatility like Sam, that was the calling card for OKC last year to win the championship is how fluid they were. Whether they wanted to go double big, whether they wanted to go Chad at the five or or Hartenstein at the five, whether they wanted to go ultra small, they just had so many options. and Houston now has a version of that. Um, I guess I guess the the aspect like the this could all blow up in their faces if KD is not healthy, if KD is like, you know, takes a step back, which I would be surprised at um just because of how good he was last year and how good he’s how how incredible he was to start the season for Phoenix, too. I think he’s going to still be a very very good player. Um, and that’s a fine bet to make for a guy who’s like a top 15 player all time. Um, that’s that’s why it’s number one above everything else. It’s just this was the biggest talent ad from sheer upgrade wise. And you mentioned the Jaylen Green part. Uh, that that’s a big part of it. Like to their clutch offense woes. They relied on him heavily. They relied on Fred Vanble Vleet like grenade balls to end games. And that can be okay for a team that’s trying to be an interesting playoff team. But if you want to be a contender, you need a guy like Kevin Durant who can just go out and get you a bucket. He can do that, you know. Yeah. And they’re going to get some internal improvement. Amen is going to be better next season. Reed Shepard’s going to be better next season. Like they have some young guys that will get better. Jabari totally. Uh Tari E. Like these guys are going to get better, I think. Um the Durant thing does kind of, you know, eat into their depth a little bit obviously. uh played 35 games in 2021, 55 in 2022, 47 in 2023, 75 in 2024, and then last season played 62. I think you should probably expect Kevin Durant to miss 20 games at the end of the day, and they’re going to have to figure out how to survive offensively in those 20 games that he misses. Maybe he won’t. Maybe it’ll be I was just going to say like they have the infrastructure there to be okay with him missing 20 games. Like this is a team that was second in the West last year without Kevin Durant. Yes, of course you add Jaylen Green and Dylan Brooks and like that matters, you know, when you’re playing the Wizards or Hornets or who or whoever in the regular season, but this is a team that can survive a stretch of two weeks, 3 weeks without KD, we got to pull out this, you know, January stretch where we got to go, I don’t know, 10 and five or whatever it is. But yeah, I think they can do it to be honest with you.

Kevin Durant traded to the Houston Rockets | BEST OFFSEASON MOVES | Game Theory Podcast

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Sam Vecenie, a Senior NBA Writer at The Athletic, talks all about basketball. From the NBA, to the NBA Draft, to college hoops and even some high school, Vecenie has you covered in this show.