Houston Rockets: Making sense of Victor Oladipo as a Rocket

3. The main reason for the trade was draft picks

If the Rockets really wanted to get a future cornerstone and franchise player for James Harden then they would not have done the deal with the Nets in the first place because they could have received a player with much more upside than Victor Oladipo or Caris LeVert.

While Houston did not receive a player that can carry the team for years to come, this trade package fixed the Rockets’ greatest need: draft capital.

Coming into the 2020-21 season, the Rockets’ future looked bleak as they shipped two first-round picks and two pick swaps to Oklahoma City as part of the deal that brought Russell Westbrook to Houston.

The reason Rafael Stone made this trade was because of the four future unprotected first-round picks and the four draft swaps that Houston received, one of the biggest draft hauls in NBA history which is awfully impressive for a rookie general manager.

Overall, while the Rockets’ title hopes for the next few seasons are little to none, Houston now joins the Thunder and Pelicans as teams that control the draft for the next five years.

So the rebuild in Houston could be much quicker than it would have been if they kept on to Harden and then let him walk away as a free agent in 2022.