Philadelphia 76ers<\/a>, George was initially complimentary of the deal.<\/p>\n\u201cThey see a window,\u201d George said of the Rockets. \u201cShoutout to them. You have a young star in Alperen (Sengun, a 2025 All-Star), and that\u2019s who they believe in. A rising star in Amen Thompson. Let\u2019s put something around them to try and win.\u201d<\/p>\n
But George went on to say that Houston sending out two rotation players (Jalen Green and Dillon Brooks) for one (Durant) could benefit the Rockets due to the playing time it opens up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they made room for Cam Whitmore, who I thought should have been playing a long time ago,\u201d George said. \u201cHe might be one of their better players. I didn’t know why he wasn’t playing enough last year.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThey have another point guard there, Reed Sheppard, who I think is being slept on,\u201d George added. \u201cSo, I think they carved out room for their young guys that they believe in.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whitmore and Sheppard were taken by Houston in the first round of the 2023 and 2024 drafts, respectively.<\/p>\n
As things currently stand, both would seem to have at least a plausible route to rotation minutes in 2025-26. Beyond the starting lineup of Fred VanVleet, Thompson, Durant, Jabari Smith Jr., and Sengun, the only two established reserves for the Rockets are Tari Eason and Steven Adams.<\/p>\n
Head coach Ime Udoka prefers to have a regular-season rotation of at least nine players, and as things currently stand, Sheppard and Whitmore could be next in line for those eighth and ninth roles. At a bare minimum, they would seem to have the most upside.<\/p>\n
Then again, the NBA\u2019s 2025 free agency window won\u2019t open until next week (June 30), so it\u2019s possible that Houston will soon add more competition for those spots. But at least as of now, Sheppard and Whitmore would seem to have strong cases to play.<\/p>\n
More: No trade request: Cam Whitmore reportedly hopeful of securing rotation spot in Houston<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI think they carved out room for the young guys that they believe in,\u201d Paul George says of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":123550,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[679,3503,1495,1307,1987,883,7,2227,2179,4836,2226,1195,2133,2225,2104,866,2856,916,292,194,4066,2070,1272,6175,2497,832,861,106,1936,938,70,85,6,62,67,61,81,2612,6221,678,207,18,2613,1081,211,876,639,6176,66,83,3502,962,2224,873,1988,2071,2105,6174],"class_list":{"0":"post-123549","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-76ers","9":"tag-adams","10":"tag-alperen","11":"tag-alperen-sengun","12":"tag-amen","13":"tag-amen-thompson","14":"tag-basketball","15":"tag-brooks","16":"tag-cam","17":"tag-cam-whitmore","18":"tag-dillon","19":"tag-dillon-brooks","20":"tag-durant","21":"tag-eason","22":"tag-fred","23":"tag-fred-vanvleet","24":"tag-george","25":"tag-green","26":"tag-houston","27":"tag-houston-rockets","28":"tag-houstonrockets","29":"tag-ime","30":"tag-ime-udoka","31":"tag-jabari","32":"tag-jabari-smith-jr","33":"tag-jalen","34":"tag-jalen-green","35":"tag-jr","36":"tag-kevin","37":"tag-kevin-durant","38":"tag-national","39":"tag-national-sports","40":"tag-nba","41":"tag-neutral","42":"tag-news","43":"tag-overall","44":"tag-overall-neutral","45":"tag-paul","46":"tag-paul-george-basketball-player","47":"tag-philadelphia","48":"tag-philadelphia-76ers","49":"tag-player","50":"tag-reed","51":"tag-reed-sheppard","52":"tag-rockets","53":"tag-sengun","54":"tag-sheppard","55":"tag-smith","56":"tag-sports","57":"tag-sports-news","58":"tag-steven","59":"tag-steven-adams","60":"tag-tari","61":"tag-tari-eason","62":"tag-thompson","63":"tag-udoka","64":"tag-vanvleet","65":"tag-whitmore"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":"Validation failed: Text character limit of 500 exceeded"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123549","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=123549"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/123549\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/123550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=123549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=123549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=123549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}