Rockets Red Glare is Bright

The Houston Rockets might find themselves dedicating more time to scouting lottery prospects than packing the Toyota Center for playoff games, but not all is lost. While their fortunes may seem to have gone sour to some, the team has a plan and is actually in one of the more enviable positions in the league.

The Rockets are in a position of extreme flexibility in the seasons ahead. All of their players on their roster – save for Tracy McGrady, whose $23-million contract comes off the books after the upcoming season – are signed to incredibly reasonable contracts and only one, Trevor Ariza, is guaranteed past the 2010-11 season. If Tracy McGrady stinks this year that’s fine, the Rockets can let him walk. Yao doesn’t fully recover next season; he does not have to be your problem after 2011.

Rockets GM Daryl Morey has assembled an all-star cast of role players capable of winning a championship with the right pair of stars leading them. That is the beauty of the Rockets situation. They have all of the pieces in place except for the star players and there will be plenty of those available on the free agent market after this season.

The ideology behind the construction of the Rockets roster is the opposite of that of the Cleveland Cavaliers. In previous year, the Cavs have overspent to put pieces around LeBron James to keep him happy and try to win a title and those have for the most part failed (Damon Jones, Donyell Marshall, Larry Hughes, etc.). The Rockets have all of the supporting pieces in place and will soon have the cap flexibility to sign all-star type players to lead them.

The Rockets supporting cast already showed in last season’s playoffs that they had the heart and grit to challenge a very talented Lakers team sans Yao and with Ron Artest jacking up errant jumpers at his earliest convenience. This current Rockets squad will not be a group of pushovers by any means even without their franchise center. They upgraded for the current season and future by swapping out Artest with Ariza for essentially the same money. Ariza is younger, quicker, and has a much higher ceiling than the perplexing Artest. The Rockets also added Australian big man David Andersen. Andersen should be a very good addition as his offensive game will space the floor (40.4 % 3PT) and be a nice complement to the Rockets current collection of bangers.

The Heat would be miserable without Dwyane Wade, as would the Cavs without King James, but the Rockets without Yao still have a chance to make the playoffs. Rather than put all of his eggs in one basket like many teams do, Morey has collected a group of talented players who give the team the flexibility to play whatever style suits them best. There is no reason to believe that an uptempo team led by Luis Scola, Shane Battier, Aaron Brooks and Ariza can’t win 40 games this season and come back even stronger the following year. The Rockets might not be coming into this season with the same expectations as they did for last season, but they will still compete and their future looks incredibly bright.