With Kyrie Irving bypassing free agency and opting into the final year of his existing contract with the Nets, the Rockets probably won’t get the best-case scenario of Brooklyn blowing up its veteran roster in the 2022 offseason. But Houston appears to have gotten the next-best thing.
While Houston owns either first-round draft picks or pick-swap rights from the Nets for the next five years (as a result of the blockbuster James Harden trade from January 2021), 2023 is a “swap” year in which they can only own either their own pick or one from Brooklyn, not both.
With the Rockets coming off a season with the NBA’s worst record, having no salary cap room this offseason, and featuring an even younger team in 2022-23 after trading Christian Wood, it was and is hard to envision Houston making a significant climb in the standings next season. Thus, even if the Nets did lose Irving and perhaps even Kevin Durant, it always seemed highly likely that the Rockets wouldn’t get Brooklyn’s 2023 pick, anyway, since their own would probably be higher in the order.
