With approximately $60 million in payroll flexibility, the Houston Rockets are positioned to have the most salary cap space of any NBA team in the upcoming 2023 offseason.
But that doesn’t mean general manager Rafael Stone will spend it recklessly. Even though Houston should be a relatively attractive destination given its large market size and an improving core of young talent paired with a widely respected head coach in Ime Udoka, the reality is that the Rockets finished 22-60 last season.
No matter who the Rockets sign or trade for, it’s unlikely that they will be a title contender in the 2023-24 season. Thus, the objective with any spending this offseason is to balance short-term upgrades and a return to relevancy with not putting them in a bad spot, financially, for two or three years down the line — i.e. the period in which they might actually be ready to contend for a championship.
Jonathan Feigen of the Houston Chronicle has more:
As with trade negotiations in which Stone has set a price and looked for a team to meet it, he is likely to determine what he considers a free agent to be worth in the context of the Rockets’ rebuild and offer that, rather than a contract to scare a team away from matching an offer sheet.
“At least in the free agent market, we’re trying to find value,” Stone said. “We’re trying to find guys we think are undervalued. The way you build your roster is having people that outperform their contract and trying to find people who are better than other teams think they are. That’s our goal. There’s not just one way of doing that.”
As Feigen hints at later in the article, this may even impact Houston’s long-rumored pursuit of former Rockets star James Harden.
Though Harden reportedly has interest in a return, the reality is that if the Rockets were to give him the NBA’s maximum salary in both dollars and years, that would see Harden being paid over $50 million in the 2026-27 season, which is when he will be 37 years old.
Should he age poorly or struggle with injuries, that type of bloated contract could limit Houston’s options to upgrade its roster by the third and fourth seasons — which happens to be the exact window that the Rockets are hopeful of becoming a legitimate contender.
So, while it still makes sense for the Rockets to pursue Harden for basketball reasons, Houston may draw a hard line when it comes to finances. Time will tell as to whether Harden’s rumored desire for a homecoming makes him willing to accept a hometown discount.
The Rockets checked off the first item on their offseason to-do list with coach Ime Udoka's hire. Next up is team-building, with $60 million in cap space as their rebuild hits the next phase. https://t.co/8tNFjGAx5t
— Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron) April 30, 2023
Similarly, the same logic might steer the Rockets away from many restricted free agents. For example, a recent report indicated that Houston could be interested in Brooklyn’s Cam Johnson. But with teams having the right to match any contract signed by a restricted player, external suitors often have to bid above market value to make that player’s original team think twice about whether to match.
With Houston still in the relatively early stages of its rebuild, the consequences of contractual overpays — namely, how those may limit roster options in future transaction windows — are more significant than they would be for a team in contention mode.
Thus, expect the Rockets to walk a fine line in the 2023 offseason. Yes, they want to upgrade their short-term roster, particularly with Houston’s own first-round draft picks owed to Oklahoma City (with light protections) during the 2023-24 through 2025-26 window.
But Stone does need to keep the long game in mind, since it’s not as if any addition would turn these Rockets into a 2023-24 contender. Expect the Rockets to be opportunistic, within (financial) reason.
