NBA Trade Grades: Chris Paul is headed to the Houston Rockets
By Ian Levy
The first big domino of NBA free agency has fallen. Chris Paul has agreed to opt-in with the Los Angeles Clippers so that he can be traded to the Houston Rockets.
For a few weeks, all the free agency buzz around Chris Paul was about him potentially heading to the San Antonio Spurs. Over the past few days, the Rockets arose as a serious contender and now they have reportedly won one of the biggest prizes in free agency.
Adrian Wojnarowski reported that Paul let the Clippers know he was planning to sign with the Rockets. The two teams and Paul were able to hammer our a deal where Paul would opt-in to his contract with the Clippers, allowing him to be traded to Houston and ensuring the Clippers don’t lose arguably the best player in franchise history without getting anything in return.
Here is what the trade looks like as reported.
Los Angeles Clippers
For the Clippers, any return here is a good one. Paul could have opted-out and signed with Houston outright. So while, Dekker, Beverley, Williams and what’s likely to be a late first-round pick seem like woeful compensation for one of the best point guards in the league, it’s much better than nothing.
The group of players the Clippers received should keep them competitive next season, assuming they can hold on to Blake Griffin. Williams is a capable starter or sixth man who can hit from the outside and create his own shot off the dribble. He’s also on a reasonable contract and a free agent at the end of the season which means he could be flipped again at the trade deadline.
Beverley is one of the best perimeter defenders in the league and can contribute on offense with his cutting and spot-up shooting. If the Clippers were able to bring back Griffin, Beverley would make a nice complement allowing Griffin to shoulder more of the offensive creation responsibilities. He also has the benefit of coming on an extremely reasonable contract which is not fully guaranteed beyond this season.
Dekker and Harrell are probably the two real long-term assets here for Los Angeles. Dekker missed most of his rookie season with an injury but looked great in stretches for Houston last season. He’s an athletic forward capable of defending multiple positions. He made just 32.1 percent of his 3-pointers but could become more of a perimeter threat and is very good as an off-ball cutter and in transition. Dekker is also just 22-years-old and has played just 1425 NBA minutes, so he’s far from a finished project. Harrell is undersized but showed potential as a rim-running rebounder and could develop into a nice piece.
Grade: B-
Losing a player of Chris Paul’s caliber hurts no matter what and definitely pushes the Clippers down a notch next season. Blake Griffin is the only thing standing between them and a massive rebuild. Still, the return they got has some useful pieces for them, whether they’re reloading now or trying to tear it down.
Houston Rockets
This deal is incredibly interesting for the Rockets. For several seasons they’ve been looking for a second star to pair with Harden. Paul would seem to end that search but the Rockets’ best season in the Harden era came last year, when they couldn’t land a second star and instead focused on surrounding him with perfect role players.
In a perfect world, Paul’s shooting works as a spot-up threat allowing Harden and the Rockets to unfurl all the spread pick-and-roll craziness they used against the league last season. Paul’s ability to run offense as well also gives Harden a chance to rest and reduce his workload, something that seemed to take a toll on him during last year’s playoffs.
Next: NBA Free Agency 2017 Tracker -- Latest rumors, trades and deals
However, Houston tried an experiment similar to this with Ty Lawson two years ago and it failed miserably. Obviously, Paul is better than Lawson by several orders of magnitude but the stylistic fit is similar. It’s possible that overlapping Paul and Harden simply chips away at the overall value of each player.
Grade: B+
Ultimately, Houston felt like they needed to swing for the fences if they were going to get past the Warriors in Harden’s prime. Paul solves some problems for them and presents others as well. Still, if Houston was going to make a move there probably wasn’t anything else out there that was both realistic and improved them more than this deal.