The Houston Rockets may not be the Oklahoma City or any other “top tier contenders” in the Western Conference, but that won’t push them away from potentially making noise in a loaded West.
After signing Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks to sizable contracts last offseason, Houston was expected to go big-game hunting in the offseason. That didn’t matriculate, drafting Reed Sheppard No. 3 overall while re-signing Jalen Green and Alperen Sengun to rookie scale extensions.
Though if they end up fishing for a star, don’t be surprised if Jimmy Butler, a native of Tomball, Texas, is in the mix, if the Heat shop him, according to NBA Insider Marc Stein.
“The Rockets are also increasingly mentioned by monitoring rivals as a team to watch should Miami ever reach a point that it chooses to explore its trade options with Jimmy Butler, who grew up some 30 miles away from Houston in Tomball, Texas,” Stein wrote Sunday in his substack.
Butler, who has a $52.4 million player option next summer, already confirmed that he wasn’t going to sign an extension with the Heat or any other team this season–so it wouldn’t make sense for the Heat to trade him, regardless of how good or poor their start is, if they are going to get 50 cents on the dollar in return. If Butler has a bad season or gets hurt, he’d likely opt into the player option, making him an unrestricted free agent in 2026.
Houston’s also limited with the players it could trade after re-signing Green and Sengun; assuming this sparks up in February, it would likely need to part with at least one of VanVleet or Brooks for salary cap purposes plus a combination of Jabari Smith Jr., Jock Landale, Tari Eason, Amen Thompson or even Sheppard, even though he’s probably off-limits.
There’s still uncertainty around the situation with Butler and the Heat, but they should be labeled clear odds-on-favorite to retain the 35-year-old until proven otherwise. Through the team’s first three games, he’s averaging 17.3 points, 5.3 rebounds, 6.7 assists and 2.3 steals on 44.1 percent shooting, including a 23-point, seven-rebound, four-steal performance Monday against the Detroit Pistons.
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