The Terrific Fall of the Houston Rockets

The Houston Rockets had high expectations coming into the ‘25-‘26 NBA season, fresh off of 52 wins and a close first-round loss to a red-hot Warriors team. After bringing in Kevin Durant in the offseason, their expectations rose from the dark horse to championship contenders immediately. Despite the loss of starting point guard Fred VanVleet, the Rockets matched their win total from last year in a competitive Western Conference, earning the fifth seed and a playoff berth against the Los Angeles Lakers. The Lakers, despite being the higher seed, were not favored, mainly due to their two best players being unavailable due to injury. This begs the question, how did the Rockets fumble such a golden opportunity to cruise into the second round of the playoffs?

The first reason that the Rockets failed is clearly injuries. As previously stated, they were missing Fred VanVleet, but the leading scorer for the team, Kevin Durant, also missed most of the series, unavailable for every game except game 2 due to multiple lower body injuries. Steven Adams was also out for the series, weakening the rebounding strength of the team and decreasing the flexibility of the roster’s identity. However, this doesn’t mean much when put into the context of the situation. LeBron James, at 41 years of age, was forced into playing first-option playoff basketball despite being the third offensive option for the team throughout the year, with Austin Reaves and Luka Doncic both being out to start the series. Reaves would be available in time for games 5 & 6, looking decent considering the month of recovery he had to go through.

LeBron James attacking a mismatch in game 3 of the series, all but burying the Rockets by taking a commanding 3-0 lead.

The key takeaway from this series had nothing to do with the Lakers, except for strengthening LeBron’s legacy a bit more. Instead, the weaknesses of the Houston Rockets were put into plain, agonizing view for us over the course of six games. Firstly, the team has zero scoring strength outside of Kevin Durant. During their game 3 loss, the entire Rockets bench scored a combined 3 points. For reference, Bronny James, a ‘nepotism’ second-round pick who only played 9 minutes, scored 5 points, one of which was a lobbed dunk from his father. The sluggish, inefficient, and blatantly ineffective offensive system that Houston’s implemented failed even with Durant in the game, as KD was forced into 9 turnovers in his poor game 2 showing.

Overall, it’s clear that this Rockets team needs a new identity. While you could partially chalk the season up to injury, their ceiling is clearly much lower than what would be needed to win a championship, and their offensive woes will absolutely continue if they’re unable to retool with new pickups this offseason.