NBA Rumors: Houston Rockets general manager Rafael Stone gives insight into how aggressive the Houston Rockets will be ahead of the trade deadline.
After back-to-back-to-back underwhelming seasons, the Houston Rockets entered this past offseason with the intention of taking a big step forward this season. The additions of Fred VanVleet, Jeff Green, and Dillon Brooks echoed that. And through the first quarter of the season, the Rockets have been one of the most improved teams in the league.
If they wanted, the Rockets could theoretically double down at the NBA Trade Deadline by making another win-now move. However, it's far from guaranteed that's the approach the team will have over the next few weeks.
In fact, speaking with a reporter recently, Rockets general manager Rafael Stone hinted that the team may not be all that aggressive heading into the trade deadline.
"I think it’s too early to predict how active we will or will not be at the trade deadline or in the days in between. But we are not feeling any need to do something per se. We like where this group is and mostly we want there to be internal improvement.""Rockets general manager Rafael Stone
It's too early to tell if the Houston Rockets will be a playoff team
Twenty-five games into the season, it's still too early to tell what the Rockets are in the Western Conference. They're currently ranked 9th in the West standings but are only 3.5 games back of the second seed. With 50-plus games to go in the regular season, the early returns for the Rockets are pretty good.
Even though they're far from a guarantee to make the postseason in the West, this is a team that has certainly improved from last season. The Rockets only won 22 games last year and have already won 13 this year. Houston is on pace to win close to 40 games this season. Even though a trade deadline move could result in the final boost to get this team over the playoffs hump, it would do the team no favors to make a rash move that could end up hurting or limiting their ceiling in the future.
Either way, knowing how the Rockets just operated during the offseason, this is a team that will survey the market, and if there's a move to be made, they'll likely explore it.
At the same rate, it wouldn't be all that surprising if the Rockets looked to improve internally and waited until next summer to make another big move.