Houston Rockets: The latest the team is offering up for Kent Bazemore

The Houston Rockets are a little over a month away for training camp and Daryl Morey is still working hard to add one more piece to make this team whole. The Kent Bazemore to Houston chatter is becoming real and here’s the latest of what’s going on there.

The Houston Rockets are determined to prove naysayers wrong in regard to how this off season was muffed by missing out on one of the most highly-coveted free agents in quite some time in LeBron James. But did you honestly feel that he was going to be the big fish in H-Town?

Absolutely not. He would’ve had to share the spotlight with James Harden as well as Chris Paul which that doesn’t necessarily spell out a good thing for team camaraderie. I’m likely one of the few dissenting voices that didn’t have a strong desire to have LeBron here because I’d feel like this team was “cheating” its way to a title.

I’d rather see this team do it right the way — by having a healthy mix of veterans, prospects and notable free agents that have cap-friendly contracts to make this team more competitive than ever.

One can make the argument for the Golden State Warriors signing Kevin Durant to a team-friendly, short-term yet lucrative deal. Typically players like Durant are locked up for some time but because he’s winning, he seems to be happy with taking these large chunks of money in the interim and not over time.

His contact was recently reworked this off season, extending a year on his contract to where he’ll make $61.5 million over the next two seasons. He had previously been on a two-year, $51.25 million pact.

It almost seems unfair that they have him in their stable because it makes it difficult for defenses to key-in as he is pivotal weapon when so many focus on trying to stop Stephen Curry and Klay Thompson. There’s just too many guys on that team that make one pay and that’s you have to play damn-near perfect in order to beat them.

But the Houston Rockets plan to play hardball with the concept of getting even better and in our case, it will be MoreyBall to try to take the bark out of the bite from the defending champs of the Association.

But here’s the deal…

The player that would push the team over the top would be Atlanta Hawks’ Kent Bazemore. He

More from House of Houston

has dramatically improved his three-point shooting, can score at will — albeit streaky — and is a damn solid defender that would pay dividends for this team many times over.

You can throw in ESPN’s Zach Lowe as the latest ingredient in the pot of the delicious stew of rumors indicating the franchise is dead-set on trying to land Bazemore.

He jumped on Chris Herring’s pod titled FiveThirtyEight and has reiterated that the latest offer is Ryan Anderson and a 2019 first-round pick for Bazemore. I would honestly love for this deal to happen but I disagree with Lowe, it’s going to take more than that.

As I wrote recently, it’s going to take Zhou Qi to packaged in a deal in order to land Bazemore and that’s what’s going to push it to the finish line.

Ryno has $41.7 million left on his contract (two years left on four-year, $80 million deal) while Bazemore has just around $33.7 million remaining (two years left on a four-year, $70 million deal) with a player option for the 2019-20 season.

The Houston Rockets will be able to infuse some cap savings with Bazemore’s deal but will have to pay the piper with that first-round pick which vital to any trade conversation to get started.

Now this a deal that I hope happens because I think the Houston Rockets will be uber-difficult to beat with his addition. I’d start him at the three along with P.J. Tucker and have Carmelo Anthony come off the bench. I talked about that too in another piece I wrote over this past weekend.

So we’ll have to see and let’s keep our hopes up!

Next. Four projected lineup combinations that the Rockets must use. dark

Bazemore, 29, averaged 12.9 points, 3.8 rebounds, 3.5 assists with a shooting line of .420/.394/.796 through 65 games in 2017-18.

Home/Houston Rockets