Last offseason\u2019s trade between the Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets, that saw Kevin Durant get dealt to Houston, in exchange for Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, five second-round draft picks and the 10th pick of the 2025 NBA Draft has been a franchise saver, of sorts, for the Rockets.<\/p>\n
Especially when considering the mountain of injuries Houston has seen. Fred VanVleet was out before the season even started.<\/p>\n
Steven Adams is out for the season.<\/p>\n
(And hasn\u2019t suited up in a month).<\/p>\n
Tari Eason has missed over 20 games (well, 22, to be exact).<\/p>\n
And Houston\u2019s prized free agent signing, Dorian Finney-Smith, has missed 33 games (and hasn\u2019t looked good, although we\u2019ve seen positive signs, of late ).<\/p>\n
Yet and still, the Rockets have their same record at this point in the season as last year. Despite being without three of last year\u2019s starters.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe deal was never gonna get done without Jalen and Dillon in the deal.\u201c<\/p>\n
Bartelstein claims the Suns wanted Brooks, to help set their culture.<\/p>\n
Houston\u2019s brass has denied being willing to part with Smith.<\/p>\n
But make no mistake. They surely would\u2019ve included him, if it came down to it.<\/p>\n
Not many players on last year\u2019s roster should\u2019ve been deemed untouchable, especially with Kevin Durant on the table as an acquireable piece.<\/p>\n
We should expect the Rockets to deny their willingness to move Smith.<\/p>\n
In the same way that it shouldn\u2019t be a surprise that the Suns are now hyping up their guy in Brooks.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s a bit less believable that Brooks was a sticking point for the Suns.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not like it could\u2019ve been predicted that he was going to average a career-best 21 points (albeit on 18 shots).<\/p>\n
It should also be noted that Phoenix couldn\u2019t have moved Durant for Green and Smith at the deadline, from a salary standpoint, as Smith was still on his rookie salary.<\/p>\n
But again, this shouldn\u2019t be surprising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Last offseason\u2019s trade between the Phoenix Suns and Houston Rockets, that saw Kevin Durant get dealt to Houston,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":613827,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211,5320,5319],"class_list":{"0":"post-613826","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-rockets","11":"tag-houstonrockets","12":"tag-nba","13":"tag-rockets","14":"tag-rockets-rumors","15":"tag-rockets-trade-rumors"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116103474132618132","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613826","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=613826"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/613826\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/613827"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=613826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=613826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=613826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}