Rockets Rumors & News

Bleacher Report "After winning the NBA title last season, the Los Angeles Lakers are in a bit of trouble as this year's playoffs draws closer. And if they don't turn things around soon, their appearance in the 2020-21 postseason could be brief. The Lakers fell to the Portland Trail Blazers on..." May 09

Hoops Rumors "Center Cameron Oliver has agreed to a 10-day contract with the Rockets that will cover the remainder of the regular season, according to Olgun Uluc of ESPN. Oliver, 24, recently completed his second season with the Cairns Taipans in Australia’s National..." May 09

The Athletic "John Wall’s season-ending hamstring injury provided a strange finale to a trying season for the Houston Rockets. When Wall was acquired for Russell Westbrook in the offseason, he arrived with a number of questions in tow. How would he look after two years away? Could he still produce..." May 08

Hoops Rumors "The NBA’s rookie scale, which determines how much first-round picks earn during their first four NBA seasons, also dictates how much the qualifying offers will be worth for those players when they reach restricted free agency after year four. However, the value of those..." May 07

ESPN "IT WAS NOV. 5, 2017, game nine for the newly formed superteam in Oklahoma City. After a bumpy 4-4 start, the Thunder were in Portland to take on a division rival. Trail Blazers coach Terry Stotts had taken his spot in the narrow hallway of the Moda Center pregame to talk with..." May 07

The Score "It's tough for the average fan to keep up with all 30 NBA teams at any point in the season, especially in these final days when some teams are clearly out of the race and playing for nothing. But while you're ignoring some of those afterthought clubs, you might miss the start of a..." May 07

Basketball News "Over the years, the Portsmouth Invitational Tournament has given thousands of NBA hopefuls an opportunity to showcase their game in front of executives from all 30 teams. The event has featured NBA legends such as John Stockton, Scottie Pippen, Tim Hardaway, Dennis Rodman, Rick Barry and..." May 07

Fadeaway World "The Los Angeles Lakers are a team that may be looking at some changes this summer. They have a lot of players who will be free agents during the summer, and point guard Dennis Schroder is one of them. If he leaves, then the Los Angeles Lakers would need to find a good replacement, one that..." May 06

Bleacher Report "Young talent is the hottest commodity in the NBA. It's cheap, it has upside (which means hope for the fanbase), it's easier to control for long periods of time, and it comes with built-in retention advantages—like larger raises on new deals and matching rights in..." May 06

The Score "Only 1% of defensive three-second violations have been called correctly in the final two minutes of close games since the start of the 2015-16 NBA season, Owen Phillips writes for The F5 newsletter. Using publicly available data from the league's last-two-minute reports,..." May 06

ESPN "How does the NBA play-in tournament work and which teams will participate during the 2020-21 season? The league first tested the play-in round during the 2020 NBA restart in Orlando, Florida, with the Portland Trail Blazers topping the Memphis..." May 06

Yardbarker "While some high-profile players and team owners have griped about the NBA’s newly introduced play-in tournament, the format is working “spectacularly well” and has virtually no downside, contends John Hollinger of The Athletic. As Hollinger..." May 05

USA Today "The Rockets are signing Khyri Thomas, a second-round pick from the NBA’s 2018 draft, as first reported by The Athletic’s Kelly Iko. It will be a 10-day contract, the Houston Chronicle’s Jonathan Feigen reports. Thomas was drafted No. 38 overall in 2018 by..." May 05

Hoops Rumors "Of the 492 NBA players tested for COVID-19 since April 28, four players have registered new confirmed positive tests, the league and the players’ union announced today in a press release. The NBA and NBPA don’t publicly disclose which specific players test positive..." May 05

The Athletic "As the NBA playoffs near and the offseason looms ahead, several head coaching situations are perilous. Others, meanwhile, are less precarious but wrought with the kind of complicated internal dynamics that make them worth monitoring. This has been an unordinary season due to the..." May 05

Sporting News "Brace yourselves, basketball fans. The 2021 NBA playoffs are almost here. There is an added level of intrigue this year with the league implementing a new version of the play-in tournament, which was first seen inside the Florida "bubble" amid the COVID-19..." May 05

Sportsnaut "The 2020-21 NBA regular season is slated to come to a culmination here in less than two weeks. It’s been a drama-filled past several months with the defending champion Los Angeles Lakers looking nothing like a title contender. Meanwhile, the Boston Celtics are on the hot seat down..." May 04

Bleacher Report "Entering a season knowing your favorite NBA team is rebuilding is one thing. Fully expecting a playoff run only to end up with a spot in the lottery is quite another. No franchises have been as disappointing this year as the Chicago Bulls, Golden State Warriors,..." May 04

The Athletic "It’s amazing how opinions on the play-in tournament change once a team realizes it might be them in the seventh or eighth seed. Both Mark Cuban (earlier this season) and LeBron James (two days ago) expressed disgust with the NBA’s play-in tournament at..." May 04

The Athletic "When “The Marvel Game” was announced, the general reaction around NBA fandom, at least as much as Twitter is representative was “Who is this for?” We’ve been calling for more basketball in basketball broadcasts for years, and this is going the other way. But the..." May 04

USA Today "This NBA coach has a winning percentage this season of .677, third-best in the conference. In the games he has coached this season, his team has the third-best fourth-quarter net rating and his team has won 85% of its games decided by five or fewer points. And his team, after..." May 03

Fadeaway World "Kevin Garnett and Charles Barkley are known for being NBA legends but they’re also two of the most polarizing players the league has seen in the past 20-30 years. Either you hate them or love them but you can’t deny they are entertaining to watch and hear.  What..." May 02

Yahoo! Sports "First Quarter: NFL approach to NBA calendar  Just thinking aloud here … The NFL has started to copy the NBA in some ways, most notably the players beginning to realize their power. It can’t be apples to apples, not with the power structure..." May 01

Heavy "James Harden left the Rockets on messy terms earlier this season, a breakup that helped to at least temporarily obscure how much Harden did for Houston and its NBA team in more than eight years. Still, Harden’s impact on the Rockets became crystal clear almost..." April 30

Fadeaway World "The Los Angeles Clippers are a team that may have to make some additions to the roster if they don't win the NBA championship this season. Even if they do win it all, it could be good to accumulate more star power on the roster to heighten their chances of winning once..." April 30

Bleacher Report "Five days shy of his 21st birthday, Kevin Porter Jr. smashed a record previously held by LeBron James. In 41 minutes against the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday, KPJ went for 50 points on 16-of-26 shooting (including 9-of-15 on threes) and dished out 11..." April 30

Bleacher Report "Between flattened lottery odds and an expanded postseason field by way of the play-in tournament, the NBA has made moves to limit its number of bottom-feeders. Those efforts appear to be working. Just six teams have a winning percentage south of .400, and only the James..." April 30

Bleacher Report "It's not possible for everyone to get what they want from an NBA season. If it were, we'd close every year with 30 champions, 30 MVPs and 30 Rookies of the Year—one to wholly satisfy every fanbase. This particular year, shortened and unusual as it's been,..." April 29

The Athletic "Welcome to the pre-free-agency period. This isn’t an official sort of thing in the NBA, but that doesn’t mean it’s not real. Amid all the focus on playoff positioning, the races for individual awards and such, there’s a subplot to the final stretch that is..." April 29

CBS Sports "The end of the 2020-21 NBA regular season is rapidly approaching, which means that award season will soon be upon us. We've already looked at the contenders for Coach of the Year, so this time around we'll look at the top candidates for Sixth Man of the Year. The Sixth Man of..." April 29

Yahoo! Sports "The NBA fined Houston Rockets guard Kevin Porter Jr. $50,000 for violating the league’s health and safety protocols after he was out with teammate Sterling Brown in Miami earlier this month, the NBA announced on Wednesday. Porter was out with Brown when he was allegedly..." April 28

TMZ "NBA player Sterling Brown was COMPLETELY covered in blood when cops found him after he was attacked at a Miami strip club ... new police video obtained by TMZ Sports shows. In the footage from the scene, which was captured on an officer's body cam in the early..." April 28

Bleacher Report "The Larry O'Brien Trophy isn't the only thing up for grabs when the NBA playoffs tip off. For some players, the postseason is a chance to bolster or redefine their value ahead of free agency. Not everybody needs this high-stakes sample size to solidify their next..." April 28

Time Magazine "In late March, Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA, entered a corner conference room overlooking New York City for his first face-to-face interview with a journalist since the pandemic began. After taking over as commissioner in 2014, Silver has presided over an unprecedented..." April 28

Bleacher Report "As the NBA season winds down, the projected draft range for each team is becoming clearer. That allows us to get a better feel for which prospects teams can realistically target. Using the current standings and our most recent mock draft, we picked three names each franchise..." April 27

The Ringer "It was the first week of April when Rondae Hollis-Jefferson’s manager rushed into the player’s house and relayed the news he’d been waiting to get for more than four months. Hollis-Jefferson hadn’t been on an active NBA roster since the end of the 2020 season, but..." April 27

Bleacher Report "Superteams have been ubiquitous throughout the NBA's history. Bill Russell's Boston Celtics featured multiple Hall of Famers. Jerry West and Wilt Chamberlain teamed up in the 1970s. Magic Johnson's Los Angeles Lakers and Larry Bird's Celtics were loaded. Michael..." April 27

Basketball News "Prior to the NBA trade deadline on March 25, several teams tried to trade for Miami Heat guard Kendrick Nunn, league sources told BasketballNews.com. Multiple teams inquired about Nunn’s availability, and at least two of those teams have shifted their focus to pursuing the..." April 27

CBS Sports "After doing a trial run of a play-in tournament to determine the eighth seed in both conferences last season down in the Orlando bubble, the NBA may be looking to adopt the format permanently. Entering this season, the league and players approved the play-in tournament which would involve the..." April 27

Baltimore Sun "It’s almost award-voting season in the NBA, and the best race is the one that not enough people are talking about. The MVP race between Philadelphia’s Joel Embiid and Denver’s Nikola Jokic seems like a toss-up, and the realization that one of those two centers will..." April 27

NBA.com "For the second season in a row, there will be a Play-In Tournament between the end of the regular season and start of the playoffs. The difference this season is the No. 7 and No. 8 seed in each conference are up for grabs, not just the No. 8 seed. Which team..." April 27

Pro Basketball Talk "John Wall said he views himself as the Rockets’ franchise player. In a certain sense, sure. A five-time All-Star, Wall is the only current Houston player who has ever made an All-Star team. He’s the Rockets’ highest-paid player and starting point guard –..." April 27

ESPN "Tyrese Haliburton had to think quickly. The Sacramento Kings were set to meet in five minutes, but Haliburton had heard there was a surprise drop about to hit. He signed on to see where he landed in the virtual queue -- in the 3,000s. With more than 100,000 accounts in..." April 27

CBS Sports "Wall will be sidelined for the rest of the season due to a hamstring tweak, Shams Charania of The Athletic reports. Wall will miss the rest of the season despite the fact that the injury doesn't sound incredibly severe.  " April 26

ESPN "Ten NBA referees, including veteran officials typically assigned to the NBA Finals, are sidelined because of issues related to COVID-19 and, in one case, an injury, a league official told ESPN. That figure represents the highest of its kind to date in a season during which 24 referees..." April 26

Fadeaway World "Derrick Rose is a point guard that has had a long journey throughout his NBA career. Even though he is not the MVP that he was, he is still an extremely capable point guard, that can be a floor general on a team. Derrick Rose is one of the reasons the New York Knicks have had a revival this..." April 26

Bleacher Report "Once expected to have league-changing implications, the 2021 free-agency class doesn't appear as exciting anymore. Many of the former headliners, from Giannis Antetokounmpo and Jrue Holiday with the Bucks to LeBron James and Anthony Davis with the Lakers to Paul George with the..." April 26

Fadeaway World "Lonzo Ball is one of the most hyped rookies in NBA history. He went No.2 in the 2017 NBA Draft, behind Markelle Fultz, and was supposed to be the next franchise point guard for the Los Angeles Lakers. That didn’t happen, as he only lasted 2 seasons in Los Angeles and was traded as part of..." April 26

NBA.com "After the 2020-21 NBA season ends on May 16, the NBA Play-In Tournament begins on May 18 and will last through May 21, with the 2021 NBA Playoffs beginning on May 22. For more on how the Play-In Tournament works, we've got you covered here. As the regular season..." April 26

The Athletic "Is there a curse in being the top team in the Power Rankings? I’m open to the idea that there is. Let’s look at the recent string of weeks with the No. 1 spot in this Power Rankings space the previous three weeks. The Utah Jazz were the top-ranked team back in the..." April 26