Compared with last season, the biggest feature of the current Rockets lineup is "youthfulness", in addition to Gordon and Wall, the oldest of the Rockets' other players is only 28-year-old point guard Dennis Schroeder. In addition, Schroeder has become a free agent, whether he will choose to renew his contract with the Rockets this summer depends on the situation, although Silas has been stressing that he wants to keep Schroeder, but Schroeder, who is obsessed with chasing big contracts and championships, will he look up to the Rockets?
In fact, the Rockets have begun to train the second point guard at the end of the season, Schroeder is no longer playing, in addition to Porter Jr., the main point guard, the Rockets spend more time to let the 20-year-old rookie point guard Daishin Knicks as the second point guard, which is likely to be a plan B for Schroeder not to renew his contract. How will the Rockets' roster change this summer? Now the Rockets' regular season has just ended half a month, and the players and coaching staff are resting.
Next, the Rockets will focus on the inspection of rookies, and the 4 rookies selected by the Rockets last season have performed well, and even the Rockets' draft work has been rated "A-class". Therefore, in the next month, the Rockets management and scouts led by Raphael Stone will conduct a detailed investigation and evaluation of the draft.
In addition to the draft, the Rockets also have a lot of players in the lineup that can be traded. NBA expert Ben Dubos also specially published an analysis of the Rockets' salary space and lineup this summer, let's take a look at how Dubos analyzed the Rockets.
The expert said that although the Rockets' overall salary may not be lower than the "salary cap" this summer, the Rockets have enough contracts that expire or are about to expire, such as John Wall, a 31-year-old top-paid point guard, Gordon, a 32-year-old shooter, and Christian Wood, a 1-year-old main center with a 1-year contract left.
Dubos said that if the Rockets are willing to trade, then the Rockets will be "easily" involved in player trades, including some first signed and then traded, because the Rockets' expired contracts can be used to match these deals, and the Wall, Gordon and Wood contracts are the Rockets' chips.
In addition to the lineup situation, Dubos also analyzed the Rockets' salary space in this summer's offseason, saying that the Rockets have a middle-class exception to use. This exception could be applied to some teams above the salary cap, which will allow the Rockets to offer a starting salary of about $10 million, and the Rockets can use this middle-class exception to chase him if they have the favorite free agent.
But then again, the Rockets probably won't use this middle-class exception too early, because the Rockets can't lock up the pay space now — unless the player they value is a player that the Rockets really want, the Rockets won't easily use this middle-class exception. To sum up, the Rockets have a lot of expired contracts to use for signings, and Wall, Wood and Gordon look like they can be easily traded, after all, there are not many teams in the league that need to expire their contracts.
The Rockets still have at least $10 million in salary space to bring in free agents, but the Rockets will have to look at the situation before deciding whether to use this valuable middle-class exception. Radical reinforcements or conservative for another year are the Rockets' two-handed choice.