The Houston Rockets made an all-in move this offseason when they acquired Kevin Durant from the Phoenix Suns. After getting the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference last season, adding Durant to the squad raises them to a title contender next season.
Getting Durant certainly helps the Rockets’ chances of winning their first title since 1995. What could help them even more is if they add another star to play beside Durant to help their chances of winning it all.
Proposed Trade Sends Devin Booker to the Rockets to Reunite With Kevin Durant
Not too long after the Houston Rockets and Phoenix Suns agreed to a trade, Bleacher Report’s Zach Buckley proposed another deal between the two sides in which the following would happen.
Rockets receive: Devin Booker
Suns receive: Fred VanVleet, Reed Sheppard, Tari Eason, Steven Adams, and a 2027 first-round pick (their own)
Buckley explained why Booker would appeal to the Rockets.
“Booker still looks like a hand-in-glove fit for Houston. He can share the floor with Durant and is a better timeline fit for the young core. And the Rockets are so stacked with assets, they could conceivably get Booker without decimating their collection,” Buckley wrote.
He continued, “It’d be a pricey pickup, sure, but they’d still push forward with both Amen Thompson and Alperen Şengün.”
At first glance, what a naysayer will point out is that because the pairing of Durant Booker didn’t work for the Suns, why would it work for the Rockets? The answer is that the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. As good as Durant and Booker are individually, the rest of the Suns’ squad was so terrible and flawed that, of course, they weren’t going anywhere.
The Rockets would be a different situation for Booker. Thompson and Şengün are better than anyone else Phoenix had to put by Durant and Booker. Sure, they would have to fill out the rest of the roster, but four All-Star caliber players are better than two — sorry, Bradley Beal.
Also, a surrounding core of Clint Capela, Dorian Finney-Smith, and Jabari Smith Jr. is actually much better than what the Suns gave those two. In this modern age, a championship contender needs its main star pieces, but it also requires a championship-caliber rotation.
This hypothetical quartet on the Rockets, combined with their aforementioned role players, would make them a formidable foe in the West. It might not be enough to topple Oklahoma City, but it is better competition than they had this past year.