After weeks and months of speculation, the Kevin Durant trade has finally gone down. KD is headed to the Houston Rockets, who will be sending Jalen Green, Dillon Brooks, the No. 10 pick in the 2025 NBA Draft plus five second-rounders to the Phoenix Suns in return.
Houston left its first-round loss to the Golden State Warriors in this year's playoffs optimistic about its future, but also determined to add more scoring juice to a roster for which half-court offense became a slog a bit too often. They've checked that box in a big way now; Durant is a bit more specialized a scorer now as he approaches his 37th birthday, but he's still one of the league's elite shotmakers, a man who can get you a bucket when everything else breaks down.
And while a young player in Green and a top-10 pick in a strong draft certainly isn't nothing, a look at the Rockets' new starting lineup makes clear that the cupboard is far from bare in Houston.
Player | Position |
|---|---|
Fred VanVleet | PG |
Amen Thompson | SG |
Kevin Durant | SF |
Jabari Smith Jr. | PF |
Alperen Sengun | C |
Really, you can chuck the positional designations here out the window. Durant will fill Green's role functionally, while taking over Brooks' role positionally. And Houston did it all without having to give up Smith Jr. or valuable young depth pieces like Tari Eason.
Kevin Durant will help solve the Rockets' biggest issue
Houston's offensive rating dropped down to 111.5 points per 100 possessions in their loss to the Warriors, eighth out of 16 teams and more than three full points off their regular-season pace. Granted, it's harder for everyone to score in May and June, but anyone who watched those seven games against Golden State knows how much of a grind this team's possessions became — especially when VanVleet's streaky shooting went cold.
Durant can immediately step in and help, not just through his own ability to put the ball in the basket but via the oxygen he'll open up on the entire court. Even at this stage of his career, teams treat him like a four-alarm fire; that gravity will be a marked difference from Green, who teams were content to let chuck away from outside. And even with Brooks gone, this team isn't hurting for length and defensive versatility: Smith Jr. is ready for a bigger role, and there's still Tari Eason on the wing and Steven Adams on the interior to supplement the all-world potential of Amen Thompson.
Is Kevin Durant enough to make the Rockets stand out in the rugged West?
The Rockets are a better team today than they were yesterday; they make more sense on paper, and they still have plenty of avenues for growth. That said, where exactly they stand in the Western Conference right now is tough to suss out. Which has less to do with Houston and more to do with the West itself: The Oklahoma City Thunder aren't going anywhere, the Denver Nuggets still have Nikola Jokic, the Los Angeles Lakers will have a full season of LeBron James and Luka Doncic and teams like the Warriors and Minnesota Timberwolves aren't slouches in their own right. Oh, and Victor Wembanyama lurks in San Antonio.
That's ... a whole lot of competition, to be sure. The Rockets finished as the No. 2 seed this year, but the margin for error is so small out west that it doesn't mean as much as you might think; slip even a little bit, and suddenly you find yourself in the play-in conversation. Houston clearly thinks that its young core is good enough right now to compete, and Durant is a big step toward that goal. The fact that they did so without fully mortgaging their future is just the cherry on top.