recent reporting <\/a>especially intriguing. Ben is a good egg. He doesn\u2019t peddle smut. It\u2019s likely that if he\u2019s reporting this, he heard it somewhere. Let\u2019s assume it\u2019s true:<\/p>\nWhat does it mean?<\/p>\n
The Rockets believe in Fred VanVleet<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a human tendency to hear something that makes intuitive sense and repeat it without questioning it. The latest jingoism out of the Rockets\u2019 fanbase is \u201cIf the team was relying on Fred VanVleet that much, they were never contenders anyway\u201d.<\/p>\n
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There\u2019s also a false star player\/role player dichotomy that a lot of fans subscribe to. VanVleet is, for example, \u201cbetter\u201d than Zach LaVine, if \u201cbetter\u201d is defined as helping a team win instead of racking up stats. The question here is, how impactful is VanVleet?<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s break open the CleaningTheGlass. VanVleet was running point for four of the Rockets\u2019 six positive lineups in 2024-25. He was part of their best lineup. When he was with Amen Thompson, Dillon Brooks, Jabari Smith Jr., and Alperen Sengun, the Rockets were +30.9 across 130 possessions.<\/p>\n
This was all amid something of a down year for VanVleet. He posted a 0.9 Box Plus\/Minus (BPM) after hitting 3.4 in 2023-24. It\u2019s been a trend throughout VanVleet\u2019s career: When he\u2019s on the floor, teams tend to play better.<\/p>\n
That 3.4 BPM is sniffing star-level production. That\u2019s not to say VanVleet is a star in a traditional sense:<\/p>\n
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But the Rockets are right to account for his presence.<\/p>\n
The Rockets needed VanVleet this year<\/p>\n
It\u2019s less about production and more about functionality. VanVleet isn\u2019t the Rockets\u2019 engine. He\u2019s closer to their windshield:<\/p>\n
Sure, you could drive without it, but at some point(s) throughout the year, it\u2019s going to be awfully uncomfortable.<\/p>\n
The Rockets\u2019 success last year was predicated on winning the possession game. They dominated the offensive glass and kept the turnovers as low as possible. VanVleet is the king of the assist-to-turnover ratio, and neither Thompson nor Reed Sheppard is ascending to the throne anytime soon.<\/p>\n
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It\u2019s hard to hold this front office accountable for planning on having their starting point guard. One could argue that they should have used Clint Capela\u2019s contract on another point guard, but then, Steven Adams also suffered a season-ending injury, and he\u2019s also essential to Houston\u2019s structural integrity.<\/p>\n
Dorian Finney-Smith? Hindsight bias. Tripling down on 3-and-D wings means cornering a market scarcity. Nobody anticipated that Finney-Smith would average 2.9 points on 24.5% three-point shooting in 2025-26 (dear, merciful, God!).<\/p>\n
Besides, the Rockets clearly wanted to reserve point guard reps for Thompson and Sheppard. They would have comfortably covered backup point guard duties this year.<\/p>\n
So no, it\u2019s not unreasonable that the Rockets would have opted against Durant if they\u2019d known about VanVleet. If you think that suggests too much reliance on VanVleet, you\u2019re misunderstanding VanVleet. The Rockets didn\u2019t think he was the star they were pairing Durant with. They knew he was fundamentally essential to what they do:<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s too late now.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If, and, but. Three of the most aggravating words in the English language. If the Houston Rockets had…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":605412,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[1307,883,7,984,1195,374,866,292,194,4066,2497,938,6,1081,211,962,1101,3212],"class_list":{"0":"post-605411","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-alperen-sengun","9":"tag-amen-thompson","10":"tag-basketball","11":"tag-clint-capela","12":"tag-dillon-brooks","13":"tag-dorian-finney-smith","14":"tag-fred-vanvleet","15":"tag-houston","16":"tag-houston-rockets","17":"tag-houstonrockets","18":"tag-jabari-smith-jr","19":"tag-kevin-durant","20":"tag-nba","21":"tag-reed-sheppard","22":"tag-rockets","23":"tag-steven-adams","24":"tag-the-rockets","25":"tag-zach-lavine"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116077501844849388","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605411","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=605411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605411\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/605412"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}