What the Houston Rockets Can do Over Offseason to Become a 55-Plus Win Team Next Season

Can We see the Big Picture Yet?

The Rockets are a team on the verge of contention, but adding the final pieces to any puzzle can be tricky. It’s a lot different than actual puzzles, because the specified pieces aren’t ever exact fits.

Millsap and Smith are the best two names on the free agent market at the power forward spot, but ideally Morey would like a player with Smith’s athleticism and Millsap’s brain—you know, the kind of talent that goes first overall in a draft.

The days of Houston landing those types of picks are over. From now on, it will take Morey being more crafty, and he’s shown he’s fine doing that.

Morey managed to snag Harden in what most still perceive to be a lopsided trade due to a cap-strapped OKC team that couldn’t afford its own draft picks.

The Kings had to be cheap, so they shed some $3 million in cap space and gave away a promising No. 5 overall pick in Robinson.

Other teams will have to make sacrifices, and Morey has shown he is looking long-term with this project.

That’s the reason he ended up amnestying Luis Scola last summer. Had the Rockets still had Scola starting at the 4-spot they would have got further this year, and maybe won two games, but with the Argentine playing in Phoenix, Houston was left with fringe rotation players starting at power forward.