The Houston Rockets may be 16-4 (and a surprising 7-3 without Dwight Howard) but they look around at the rest of the West and they can’t feel comfortable. Nobody can look around the West and feel comfortable.
The Rockets also have an $8.4 million trade exception from the Jeremy Lin trade. Meaning they can use all or part of that to bring in some salary in a trade without sending it out — they can absorb a contract a team wants to dump (but that exception cannot be combined with a player to take in a larger salary).
Rockets GM Daryl Morey is trying to use that exception in a deal by Dec. 19, reports Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo Sports.The Houston Rockets are aggressively pursuing deals to use their $8.4 million trade exception before Dec. 19, league sources told Yahoo Sports.
Rival executives say that Houston’s front office has been active in searching out deals in recent days and wants an acquisition completed within the 60-day reaggregation window before the Feb. 19 NBA trade deadline. This way, the Rockets could still have an option of moving the player again this season.
No names have been attached to the deal yet. The Rockets could use another quality point guard, depth on the wings behind James Harden and Trevor Ariza, and maybe some help at the four with Terrence Jones still out. There are plenty of holes to fill.
But Morey is still thinking about swinging for the fences (as he did with Chris Bosh over the summer) and adding another star. So if Morey can acquire a player by the 19th who potentially can be flipped in a deal at the deadline, he will leave that option open.
Basically, expect the Rockets to make some kind of deal in the next nine days. How big remains to be seen.