Houston Rockets: Kristaps Porzingis is exactly what team needs

The Houston Rockets go into tonight’s draft with not a lot of assets to sell. They have the 43rd and 45th pick in the draft and while back end talent can be found, it’s obviously much easier to sell when you’ve got one of the top 15 picks.

The Houston Rockets will be fighting an uphill battle when it comes to trading their way up in the draft, much less trying to get a budding young star who’s 7’3″, can shoot, can handle the ball, and can defend. The likelihood of this trade happening is not high, so don’t get your hopes up.

But if somehow, some way, Daryl Morey can pull it off, it would be exactly what the Rockets need. Before Porzingis was made availabile, I didn’t really think there was anything the Rockets could do to put themselves in the conversation with the Warriors.

Chris Paul coming in would give us a good defender but offensively, how does it make sense having him and James Harden on the floor? Harden was running the offense just fine so that addition seems strange to alter all the work that was done to set the offense to run through Harden last year.

Paul George is a talented player, but his behavior and lack of clutch play in the first round against the Cleveland Cavaliers is worrisome. Harden already has had issues with a previous star teammate, and if George complains about not taking the final shot in a game or not being “The Guy” we’ll have another Dwight Howard-like situation.

Blake Griffin is an outside chance to sign with us if we make room but his shooting range isn’t what we’d like it to be. If you could transfer Ryan Anderson‘s shooting prowess into Blake Griffin then he would be the most ideal fit of all.

But now that Porzingis offers are being listened to, it would be wise to explore every possible avenue of trade that could lead to his acquisition. He’s a 7’3″ 21 year old who can shoot from anywhere on the floor and compares well to Dirk Nowitzki.

He’s young and athletic so he can run the floor and keep up with the pace the Rockets like to play at.

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While he’s not the strongest guy in the league, he would add more size to the roster to help out with grabbing some balls off the glass which we certainly saw we could use more help down low after that series against the San Antonio Spurs.

He also averaged two blocks a game last season so he’s no slouch as a rim protector either. Combining him down low with Clint Capela who averaged 1.2 blocks per game would give us great rim protection and shut down the other team from scoring in the paint.

Porzingis is everything the Rockets could want this off-season and is someone who I don’t think would have ego issues playing second fiddle to Harden. Which is really important so we don’t go through another 2015-2016 season.

The odds the Rockets get Porzingis are not good just because the New York Knicks will want high draft choices over reasonably talented players like Patrick Beverley and Lou Williams. And the Knicks certainly don’t want the contract of Ryan Anderson, just to toss out all the names we’ve heard on the trading block for the Rockets. But if Morey pulls off a trade for Porzingis it will make me believe we could legitimately have a shot at title contention and a chance at beating the Warriors.

Because let’s face it, every team’s goal right now is figuring out how to beat a team that easily could have three straight championships if it weren’t for an ill-advised junk punch from Draymond Green getting him suspended and breaking the Warriors momentum in last year’s NBA Finals.

Next: Analyzing a trade for Paul George

The aforementioned free agent/trade targets of Chris Paul, Paul George and Blake Griffin are all nice. But Porzingis would make me believe that if not this year, then soon we would be ready to take over the Western Conference. Porzingis is the prize we should chase this off-season if Phil Jackson is truly as insane as he seems to be becoming. We should take advantage before he comes back to his sense and pulls Porzingis off the table.

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