Next to the Golden State Warriors, no team has done a better job of team-building than the Houston Rockets.
And they didn’t have to go through the dreaded “Process” of years and years of insulting, offensive tanking to get there.
Rockets general manager Daryl Morey has tweaked his approach over the years, after seemingly ignoring the people part of basketball in terms of team chemistry with a combustible bunch of players who couldn’t stand each other.
Still, though, as his Rockets are on the verge of clinching the top seed in the Western Conference, one wonders if the Rockets’ way of acquiring talent should be a model for the Bulls as they embark on a rebuild in the coming years.
Are they paying attention?
As they hope to improve on lottery positioning in the last three weeks of the season, the Rockets went another way—although it almost blew up in their faces a couple years ago.
Of the 10 players averaging 20 minutes or more, only Clint Capela was a Rockets draft pick. The Warriors drafted three of their four All-Stars while clearing the decks to sign Kevin Durant in free agency. For the Rockets, their main pieces were acquired via trade or free agency, a risky proposition on its face.
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Morey made trade after trade after trade, where players looked more like disposable assets than actual humans. His vision was clear, especially after the Rockets were never bad enough to bottom out but not good enough to make a run at anyone in the Western Conference in the early part of the decade as the Rockets finished above .500 but couldn’t qualify for the playoffs three years in a row.
Stockpile as many good players as possible in the event a great player becomes available in the trade market.
Enter James Harden.
The likely MVP was a rising star in Oklahoma City, overshadowed by teammates who were established before he arrived, preventing him from taking a starring role—or even a starting shooting guard spot.
Playing behind Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, Harden was a reserve who almost single-handedly eliminated the San Antonio Spurs in the 2012 Western Conference Finals, taking over fourth quarters and playing with a verve rarely seen for someone in his position.
He was already pegged as a star in the making, so Morey didn’t do the heavy lifting in the scouting department. But he put himself in the best possible position to acquire him when Harden and the Thunder couldn’t come to terms on a contract extension before the 2012-13 season.
Harden craved a bigger role, in addition to a max deal.
The Rockets had enough in the way of assets to offer both to the Thunder.
They had a good but not great player in Kevin Martin to offer the Thunder, along with future first round draft picks, including one that turned out to be center Steven Adams.
Sure, it made things trickier moving forward without the firsts, but acquiring a future superstar is what’s most important in today’s game. And preparing yourself to acquire one is what the Bulls should be doing, if they don’t feel they have a developing show-stopper on the roster now.
Harden has had his growing pains—on the defensive end, finding cohesiveness with one-time teammate Dwight Howard and having some puzzling closeout performances in playoff series—but the margin for error with franchises who have stars of Harden’s caliber is wider than those who don’t.
Draft picks aren’t traded en masse anymore, especially with incoming players being cost-controlled for four years in a league where revenue has exploded so much that salaries have become even more exorbitant than in recent eras.
The Bulls love having draft picks for that reason and are as cost-conscious as any team in the league. Trading Jimmy Butler in part due to a “supermax” contract he would be in line for was part of the reasoning, so one wonders if they would be willing to take on that type of “big money, long money” player with no guarantee of playoff success on the back end.
And it’s a risky route considering the front office would have to display a keen knowledge of current players as opposed to scouting collegians. It’s why players like Denzel Valentine, Bobby Portis and David Nwaba are important in a way, if the Bulls choose to go that route.
The Rockets traded Pat Beverley, Montrezl Harrell and Lou Williams—along with three other players—to acquire Chris Paul from the Clippers as the missing piece to their deadly puzzle.
While it didn’t seem like any one player carried the impact of Paul, the Rockets had the assets the Clippers found useful along with a coach and style that was appealing to Paul.
You can never have too many good players in today’s game, and it didn’t seem like the Rockets were just waiting on a franchise point guard like Paul to come available; they always prepared themselves for the next big move even when they didn’t know where it was coming from.
It wasn’t always smooth and Morey let go of some talented players who either hadn’t yet figured it out (Kyle Lowry) or didn’t fit chemistry-wise like Dwight Howard, although it’s important to note he was a top free-agent on the market, choosing the Rockets over the Los Angeles Lakers.
He fired Kevin McHale in a move that had a mixed reaction but the hiring of Mike D’Antoni could be one that turns the Rockets into champions this June.
Depending on the draft is easy. It takes away attention from the actual product on the floor and turns the spotlight to college basketball as fans become pseudo-scouts in hopes of identifying the next big piece.
That’s where the Philadelphia 76ers’ sham has fans believing they can stomach five or so years of noncompetitive nonsense with the thought of a Joel Embiid or Ben Simmons being the pot of gold at the end of the rainstorm.
Kicking the can of accountability down the road always sounds good until the misery adds up—and watching the last several weeks of Bulls basketball hasn’t been easy for fans and even the players.
It strips away at culture, clouds evaluation and even makes optimism tougher to find in review.
There is no one right way to build a contender, and no evidence the Bulls are depending solely on the draft to get back to relevance.
But you can’t ignore what the Rockets are doing, either or the moxie it took to get where they are.
