Houston Rockets: Dwight Howard Addresses Trade Rumors

What will happen to our Houston Rockets?

The NBA’s annual trade deadline of Feb. 18 is less than a shake of a lamb’s tail away and, as always, our team is certainly in the conversation.

And rightfully so.

You’ve seen it, I’ve seen it — this team has been playing mediocre at best and there is far more potential out of this team than what we have seen through the past 52 games.

It’s quite unsettling to see a team that just catapulted themselves to the Western Conference Finals in this past season’s playoffs to where they’re at right now.

If the playoffs started today, the Rockets would be the 7th-seed facing the San Antonio Spurs in the first-round but that’s not a guarantee.

Although they’ve held onto that spot for most of the season, teams like the Utah Jazz and the Portland Trail Blazers are closing in fast as they want to make some noise in the postseason as well.

We’re just kind of chug-a-lugging along as if there are no cares in the world when this team should be smashing their competition, not just trying to get by.

Last night’s match up against the Phoenix Suns was the perfect example.

The Rockets had a terrible start of the beginning of the game, only connecting on three field goals through the first quarter and trailing the Suns 15-5 early-in.

They got it together and won the game 111-105, but I should’ve seen better effort against a team that’s headed for the draft lottery for sure.

But anyway, that’s that and I honestly think the Rockets need to make another move to try to improve this team so that they can finally hit their stride.

Dwight Howard has been involved in numerous trade rumors and it’s certainly true that the Rockets are talking to multiple teams about a trade.

But nothing has come to fruition yet because it has been reported that Howard’s price tag would be hefty if they decided to move him.

For a guy that gives it his all any time he steps out on the court, the trade rumors can be quite troubling to hear from his perspective.

Howard gave plenty of it and here’s what Frank Isola of the New York Daily News relayed about his thoughts:

"“There’s always going into be rumors and speculation,” Howard said. “I don’t want to pay attention to it. I didn’t say it. What can I do? There’s nothing I can say. Teams are going to say what they have to say. It doesn’t matter what I say. I’m here now. I’m a Rocket. That’s the only thing that matters. People are always going to have rumors and say certain things. It doesn’t matter. It’s just a distraction. Nobody thinks about that stuff. I know my mind is on trying to get better every day. I feel like I was in a good stretch and got hurt. I’m going to try to get back. That’s my mindset. We don’t sit around and talk about what’s going to happen next year because that means you’re really not in it. You don’t want to have those thoughts.”"

There’s no doubt the Howard is trying and there is legitimacy to his quote but Father Time has interesting way of catching up to us all and he’s doing everything he can to ward him off missing 11 games so far this season.

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That’s an improvement — he missed 41 games last season.

But we can’t ignore the fact that he just turned 30 and has been in this league for 11 years.

He has been playing the game of basketball even longer — it’s just a vicious cycle.

We also can’t ignore the fact that he’s on the back-end of a four-year, $88 million deal with the last year of it being next season.

Howard has a $23.2 million player option for 2016-17 to which it has been reported that he’ll likely opt-out and test the market.

It’s a risky move for him but he must be confident that he could get more money with the league’s salary cap expected to raise next season.

He may get it from the Rockets with a re-sign or with another team with wads of cash to blow.