NBA: Ranking every team based off draft success over the last 20 years

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NBA Houston Rockets Clint Capela (Photo by Takashi Aoyama/Getty Images) (Photo by Takashi Aoyama/Getty Images) /

18. Houston Rockets: 22 points

2002: Luis Scola: 0.5
2002: Yao Ming: 20 (8x all-star, 2x 2nd team, 3x 3rd team)
2011: Chandler Parsons: 0.5
2011: Marcus Morris: 0.5
2014: Clint Capela: 0.5

Would you be surprised to find out that the Rockets have more wins since the 1999-00 season than any team outside of the Spurs and Mavericks? More than the Lakers, Heat, and Celtics? I was.

Maybe it’s just because they are the only team in the top 6 for wins in that timeframe to not have a championship, but you can’t deny that the Rockets have been as consistently competitive as just about any team in the NBA over the last 20 years.

Houston is another team, like the Mavericks, who have been more interested in trading draft picks to acquire proven players than tanking to gamble on an 18-year-old. That’s especially been true since the team hired Daryl Morey in 2006.

Since 2000, the Rockets have only used their first-round selection 10 times and the results speak for themselves. They’ve instead used those first-round picks to trade for players like James Harden, Chris Paul, and Russell Westbrook. And while they haven’t yet won a title with this strategy, I don’t think it’s really debatable that those players have done more for the team than any draft picks would have done for them during that time.