Houston Rockets: Chris Paul to Rockets in sign-and-trade

The Houston Rockets just made the first big splash of the 2017 off-season by pulling off a sign and trade for Chris Paul with the Los Angeles Clippers. Despite being courted by numerous suitors including our intradivision rival the San Antonio Spurs, Paul chose Houston as his destination.

Here’s the news of the Houston Rockets trade per Mark Berman:

NBA sources confirm #Rockets trade for Chris Paul. Clippers get Beverley, Dekker, Williams and 2018 first round pick.
— Mark Berman (@MarkBerman_) June 28, 2017

The Rockets traded starting shooting guard and NBA All-defensive first team stalwart Patrick Beverley, third place finisher of sixth man of the year award Lou Williams, and versatile young swing man entering his third season Sam Dekker, as well as a top three protected first round pick in 2018 in exchange for Paul’s services.

Because Paul opted into the final year of his contract with the Clippers rather than opting out of his contract for free agency, he is available to receive the max extension of five years, $205 million contract. Paul made it known to the Clippers that he was going to opt out of his contract and the Clippers made the smart move of at least getting something in return for Paul by doing the sign and trade.

The move is an interesting one coming from the Rockets considering last year they overhauled their entire offense to move James Harden to the point guard position. Now with the addition of Paul the assumption will be that Harden will go back to the shooting guard position. It will be interesting to see how head coach Mike D’Antoni readjusts the offense once more with the new personnel on the roster and how touches will get distributed between two players who are so ball-dominant in their styles of play.

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The Rockets are certainly not done making moves, but they now have even less assets to trade and it will be interesting to see how they approach a trade for Paul George or a run at Paul Millsap or Blake Griffin in free agency. Is this a move to help convince Griffin to join the Rockets in free agency? The math and numbers on the readjustment of contracts for that to work is mind-boggling and at best highly unlikely.

Then again who thought Chris Paul was going to come to the Rockets? We’ll have to see what the rest of Daryl Morey’s off-season plans are as he probably has a final vision for what he wants the roster to look like that can’t be seen by us basketball plebians, but the first domino falling was an interesting one.

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The team still needs improvement to compete with the ridiculously talented Golden State Warriors but this is a good first step towards that. Hopefully Paul and Harden can co-exist and we will see if the Dwight Howard debacle was an anomaly or does Harden have a legitimate problem sharing the ball and the spotlight. Either way, the off-season for the Rockets started with a bang and a surprising one at that. Stay tuned as Morey certainly has something else up his sleeve to improve the team.

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