NBA Rumors: Houston Rockets wanted three first-round picks for Omer Asik
By Josh Hill
The Houston Rockets are again getting themselves in the trade rumor scene thanks to a renewed push to trade center Omer Asik and guard Jeremy Lin. After giving both of them ridiculous contracts everyone knew they wouldn’t want to pay in the end, the Rockets are unsurprisingly stepping up their efforts to move the pair somewhere else.
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But while the Rockets want to desperately move on from their financial mistakes, they’re apparently as dumb about making trades as they are about offering contracts. The Jeremy Lin situation has only been a mess on the court while the Asik situation has been a public debacle for the Rockets.
According to Zach Lowe, the Rockets pretty much overplayed their Asik hand from the start as before they blew up a deal with the Celtics over high demands, they tried to get three first round draft picks from the Charlotte Hornets — or at least the equivalent of that — in exchange for the Turkish center.
"Houston overplayed the Asik market in December, when it tried to gin up an auction-style bidding war that annoyed the rest of the league. The Rockets even asked Charlotte for the equivalent of three first-round picks in exchange for him, per sources close to the talks."
Asik has been on the block for a while now but the Rockets can seem to understand that offering a player with a huge contract to teams won’t reciprocate in a high trade offer.
Still, they’re holding out for high offers on Asik and it appears that they’ll be waiting for a very long time if they think someone is going to pay a high price for a bad contract.