Yang Yi: One week after Van Jordan was reimbursed for his serious injury, has the Rockets come up with a solution?

After losing Harden in the 2020-21 season, the Rockets finally entered the playoffs as the second in the West last year, with their first round opponents being the Warriors. As early as before the February trading deadline, the public was discussing where the Rockets would go. They are good, but are they better, are they already good enough to enter the discussion of the Champions League? Do they need to introduce some truly heavyweight players to achieve a qualitative leap?

The opinions of the team, experts and fans are rare: the Rockets can wait until the playoff results come out before making a decision. The Rockets' average age was 24.9 years old last season, the 10th youngest in the league. Among them, the seventh Rockets, who are highly anticipated by everyone, have an average age of only 21.4 years old, and their average service life is less than 3 seasons, so they can really afford it. Therefore, the Rockets have no results for the 2025 playoffs and just want to make the most beneficial screening for the future from actual combat.

As a result, the Rockets lost to the Warriors in the first round, and the person who was screened out was Jaylen Green. During the regular season, Green averaged 21 points per game, the team's scoring leader, but he only scored one good goal in the first round of 7 games, G2 scored 38 points, and the remaining 6 games had a maximum of 12 points, including 4 games, scoring less than double-digit points. This shows that he didn't know how to deal with old baby if he had a 40-year-old girlfriend.

Green's huge decline made the Rockets' decision easier. They no longer need to make the Lakers patiently wait for Kobe's warm story: Kobe's playoff performance in the first two seasons of his career was like shit, and his playoff performance in the second year also had a Green-style gap with the regular season. But Kobe was only 19 years old at the time and was the sixth player in the team. He was already the successor of the All-Star and Jordan. Green is 23 years old. He has played in the league for 4 years and has never even missed the All-Star side. Judging from the hit rate, he can only be the successor of Van Jordan at most. In addition, he cannot get the trust of the head coach in the playoffs. Everyone's face has actually been torn apart on the spot.

So when the Rockets had a chance to trade Green for Durant, they took action without hesitation. And according to Durant himself, "The Rockets are the fastest to take action, and they seized the opportunity."

may even be the earliest. Before the trading deadline of last season, the Suns were already in an almost desperate situation. It was very difficult for them to maintain a 50% winning rate. The Big Three model has become a laughing stock in the league. At that time, the team's plan A was to persuade Bill to give up his trading veto. After encountering the latter's ruthless and even a little laughing rejection, the Suns' plan B was to put Durant on the shelves. The Rockets' situation at that time was also quite subtle. Before the trading deadline, they had been at the second place in the West for almost a month, and they only started to fluctuate slightly in early February. The discussion on how to view this season was really put on the table. At that point at that time, trading Durant was actually one of the main strengthening directions for the Rockets. However, there was no particularly mature trading plan at that time. The difficulty of mid-season trading was that both sides still had a wait-and-see mood, and it was difficult to reach an agreement on many complex assessments. For the Rockets, the problem at that time should be who was going to come out - after the playoffs, this problem was solved easily.

Facts have proved that the wait-and-waiting party will win forever. After four months of delay, the Rockets pulled an epic 7 team 13-man deal in the offseason. They got Durant as they wished, and took a home Capela. Their main bargaining chips were Green, Dillon, the 2025 No. 10 draw and 5 second round picks. Considering their past playoff performance, such a deal is not a big deal for the Rockets, and it even feels a bit just right.

And this kind of deal that does not damage the foundation is actually one of the reasons why Durant is willing to go to Houston and renew his contract. Rockets general manager Rafael Stone said Durant was "one of the most efficient scorers in basketball history", while Suns general manager Brian Gregory said he was "one of the greatest players in basketball history". Both parties in the deal praised Durant for not being hypocritical, and Durant deserves such praise. However, there are still significant semantically differences between "the best in history" and "the best in the present". How big is the difference

depends on the time node. Among the important nodes of the Rockets in the 2025-26 season, September 29 is a starting point. This day is their training camp media opening day. I don’t know if it is a coincidence or a special arrangement. This day coincides with Durant’s 37th birthday. Durant, a 37-year-old veteran superstar, ranked 9th in the top 100 new ESPN star selection, far from the peak ranking, but he is still the Rockets with the highest ranking, and he is far ahead of the second-place Shen Jing.

Last season, Durant was still able to average 36.5 minutes per game to contribute 26.6 points, 6 rebounds, 4.2 assists and 1.2 blocks, with a shooting percentage of 52.7%, 43%, and 83.9% in three events. Last season, only two people were able to score 25+ points with more than 50% shooting percentage and 40% three-point shooting percentage, and the other was Jokic. In addition, Durant's dribbling jump shot hit rate reached 51% last season. Only Durant himself in the 2022-23 season has been higher than this shooting rate since the 2013-14 season.

Although the Rockets were second in the Western Conference last season, they were only 4 wins away from second and eighth. In terms of overall strength, the Rockets showed an absolute sense of strong defense and weak offense. From the analysis of various mainstream offensive methods, the Rockets are not very good at making a move. First of all, everyone has seen a lack of shooting. Except for Dillon, no Rockets can shoot the league's average 36% shooting percentage outside the three-point line. Van Vleet and Jaylen Green made 15.8 shots outside the three-point line in each game, and they can only hit 5.6 of them. In the end, the Rockets' shooting efficiency is only at the bottom of the league.source:vn 7m cn bóng đá