Though his statistics were fairly similar, Cam Whitmore played fewer minutes per game (16.2) in his second season with the Houston Rockets than he did as a rookie (18.7).
As a sophomore, the Villanova product also had more games where he didn’t play at all due to a coach’s decision (i.e. unrelated to injury).
While Ime Udoka was the head coach in both years, the difference is that 2024-25 featured more of an emphasis on winning. In 2023-24, the Rockets were 41-41 and were coming off a last-place, 22-60 record in the previous season.
In 2024-25, the Rockets used that .500 mark as a springboard and finished at 52-30 and No. 2 in the Western Conference.
“We’re not a developmental team anymore,” general manager Rafael Stone said at Monday’s press conference to recap 2025 offseason moves.
That seemingly led to Houston’s decision to trade Whitmore to the Washington Wizards for two future second-round NBA draft selections.
“We want to provide Cam with the opportunity to do in his career what we still believe he very much can do,” Stone told reporters. “I think Cam is an insanely talented, really nice young man, and wanted to provide him an opportunity to go home and be in a situation where he could really play through mistakes in a way that we never could afford him… just in the iteration of the of the Rockets that he joined.”
In short, for Whitmore and the Rockets, it was simply bad timing. When the Rockets were rebuilding earlier this decade, prospects such as Jalen Green, Alperen Sengun, and Jabari Smith Jr. were able to play through mistakes since there wasn’t an emphasis on winning.
But Whitmore was drafted at the tail end of the rebuilding cycle, and his formative years as a player coincided with the arrival of Udoka and Houston’s collective leap as a team.
And unlike Reed Sheppard — whose development is clearly being prioritized to some extent after being drafted at No. 3 overall in the 2024 first round — Whitmore was just the No. 20 overall selection in 2023. Thus, the team didn’t have nearly as much invested, both in terms of financial capital and asset capital.
So, with the team focused on winning and Sheppard being the clear priority for any remaining developmental minutes, Whitmore became the odd man out. For the 21-year-old Maryland native, Washington could be a better fit for a multitude of reasons.
Over two NBA seasons, Whitmore has averaged 10.8 points (44.9% FG, 35.7% on 3-pointers) and 3.4 rebounds in 17.4 minutes.