Houston Rockets: Team needs to bring Kenneth Faried back after season

The Houston Rockets have found a perfect match in the buyout market by adding Kenneth Faried. Here’s why he should be brought back after the season.

The Houston Rockets were able to impressively beat the Golden State Warriors last night in a outstanding 118-112 win over the defending champs. This is exactly how I’ve wanted the team to play the entire season — plenty of ball movement, a plethora of rebounding, good defense and three-ball falling as it should.

All of the aforementioned were checked off last night and the Houston Rockets were able to get a quality win.

But what was one thing that was missing?

James Harden.

Harden sat out last night’s game because of a neck injury and it remains to be seen if he will back against to take the Atlanta Hawks at Toyota Center tomorrow night.

But one thing’s for sure, this team knows how to be resilient without him and Chris Paul looked like his vintage self, being the ultimate facilitator that we’ve expected to him to be. It has been a rough go for Paul since his hamstring injury earlier this season but he looks like he’s getting right back on track.

Plus, if the bright lights of a prime time match up on national television won’t motivate you, I don’t know what will.

But any way, the Houston Rockets seriously need to re-sign Kenneth Faried after the season’s over. With the way he’s playing, he’s going to have a ton of offers but hopefully the Houston Rockets can come up with a fair deal for him.

He has been a decent placeholder for Clint Capela while he had been out but with both of them playing together; they, along with P.J. Tucker have created a near impenetrable wall of defense among those guys.

Faried is playing hard-nosed defense, he’s shooting/making threes and he’s provided a significant boost to the Houston Rockets‘ badly-needed rebounding column.

Since Capela returned to the lineup over the past two games, Faried has been averaging 16.5

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points, 8.0 rebounds and 1.5 assists while shooting 60 percent from three and 52.1 percent from the field.

Faried got the start last night and he was menacing in the 33 minutes of action that he had for the Houston Rockets.

He truly has been terrific to watch and I had wondered how things would mesh when Capela returned to lineup.

It’s safe to say it’s working and couldn’t be prouder of what I saw last night.

Here’s some more food for thought — Faried, Capela and Tucker combined for 35 rebounds which was 72.9 percent of the team’s total of 48 rebounds. You remember that little rebounding problem this team had in the past? I honestly think it’s solved with Faried in the mix.

Faried will earn $917,272 for the remainder of the season with the Houston Rockets but the salary cap will only be hit $683,661 because of the agreement of the buyout with the Brooklyn Nets.

The Houston Rockets will have about $120 million committed to contracts next season — which is roughly where they’re at now — so it remains to be seen if they’d be looking at increasing their spending to keep him. They’re slightly under the $123 million tax line so a team-friendly deal would have to be agreed upon if the team’s mantra is to stay under the line for 2019-20.

This is a tough problem to solve once it gets to that point but for right now, we should enjoy the great tools that Faried is bringing to the table to help this team win games.

I certainly hope to see him in Rockets Red next season.

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Faried, 29, is averaging 16.0 points, 9.9 rebounds and 1.1 assists with a shooting line of .609/.455/.603 through 14 games — 12 starts — for the Rockets this season.

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