There’s something uniquely demoralizing about an offseason injury. With Fred VanVleet tearing his ACL at a recent workout, the Houston Rockets will not even get to see the stellar roster they so carefully crafted this offseason play together. VanVleet will presumably be able to return for the 2026-27 season, for which he has a player option in his contract, but between his own injury and Kevin Durant’s age, it’s possible that he’ll be rejoining a fairly different team. The version of the Rockets we expected to contend this season has practically been destroyed before ever taking the floor.
But that doesn’t mean that a slightly different version of the Rockets can’t compete. The one benefit to an injury like this happening in September instead of November is that it gives the Rockets an entire training camp to adjust. They can spend the coming weeks figuring out how to compensate for VanVleet’s absence. It won’t be easy, but this doesn’t have to be a death knell to Houston’s championship hopes. So let’s look at the ripple effects of VanVleet’s injury, and in the process, try to get a sense of how Houston can and will respond to his absence.
This is a major opportunity for Reed Sheppard
In theory, the Rockets should be fairly well insulated against VanVleet’s loss. In 2024, they used a No. 3 overall pick on a guard, Reed Sheppard, who could plausibly soak up a lot of VanVleet’s minutes. The question here is what Houston can plausibly expect out of Sheppard.
His rookie season was relatively disappointing. He garnered only spot rotation minutes and didn’t shoot especially well, but there’s a chicken and egg component to those struggles. Did he play sparingly because he didn’t shoot well, or did he not shoot well because he played sparingly? He’s a rhythm shooter, not a microwave, on-ball scorer. Getting into the flow of a game and having actions built around springing him for jumpers is going to be pretty important.
More likely, Ime Udoka’s hesitance to play him starts with his defensive vulnerabilities. He’s a small guard, but unlike the ultra-physical VanVleet, he doesn’t have nearly the on-ball chops yet to compensate for his physical deficiencies. What he does have, however, is a knack for defensive playmaking. His steal numbers at Kentucky were off the charts and he even blocked a fair number of shots as a Wildcat as well. The Rockets will have to reconfigure their defense without VanVleet (and Dillon Brooks for that matter), but they have so many strong defenders that they could allow Sheppard to freelance for turnovers and blocks a bit more than a normal team would.
Sheppard isn’t a traditional point guard. He’s not going to take VanVleet’s ball-handling responsibilities, and he still might not start. But there’s just no world now in which he struggles to see the court. Houston doesn’t just need him to play and succeed in real minutes. They need to see what they have in someone they just invested a very high draft pick in. This is his chance to prove he can be a part of Houston’s core. Fortunately, the circumstances he’s walking into are still pretty favorable.
Get your Amen Thompson Most Improved Player bets in
Here’s where VanVleet’s ball-handling duties are falling. While Houston runs quite a bit of offense through Alperen Sengun and Kevin Durant isolates plenty, VanVleet’s absence effectively makes Amen Thompson Houston’s point guard. Is he ready for so much offensive responsibility in addition to what he’ll be asked to do on defense with VanVleet and Brooks gone?
It’s hard to say. He’s always had proper playmaking instincts. He gets to the rim and the line, and Houston’s offense is built in a way that can handle his shooting limitations, especially if he’s on-ball more. He lacks VanVleet’s steady veteran hand, but that’s an easier weakness to overcome when you can just toss the ball over to Kevin Durant when the defense is showing you something you can’t immediately dissect. He has the tools. This is coming sooner than he likely would have expected, but it was going to happen eventually. It was inevitable. Someone who shoots this poorly was always going to have to transition into becoming a primary ball-handler eventually if he was going to hit his superstar ceiling. As with Sheppard, it’s sink or swim time.
But Sheppard is still largely unproven even as a viable NBA player. Thompson isn’t. He was one of last year’s breakout players, and now, he’s positioned to take an even more meaningful step this season. If the Rockets are one of the best teams in the Western Conference, they’re going to have multiple All-Stars. Durant and Sengun are both obvious candidates, but from Jan. 1 on last season, Thompson averaged roughly 16 points, nine rebounds and five assists per game. If absorbing VanVleet’s duties pushes up to, say, 20 points and six or seven assists, along with his league-best perimeter defense, that’s going to be a pretty unimpeachable case.
And that’s fairly relevant from an awards standpoint, because the Most Improved Player award has essentially become the “first time All-Star” award over the past decade or so. There are 14 active Most Improved Player winners. Of those 14, 10 won the award in their first All-Star season. The exceptions are Goran Dragić, who had the rare distinction of making All-NBA after missing the All-Star Game, CJ McCollum, who was just crowded out of a dominant Western Conference guard crop, Pascal Siakam, who made his first All-Star Game a year later, and Dyson Daniels, who bucked the trend despite the presence of several first-time All-Stars. History tells us that players that make that specific leap are likely choices. In the last four years alone, we’ve had two analogues in Ja Morant and Tyrese Maxey as ball-handlers on rookie deals taking meaningful statistical jumps.
Thompson is hovering around the favorite slot at most books, with Caesars Sportsbook offering +1000 odds, for instance. Shop around for the best line, but if you’re planning to make a Most Improved Player portfolio, you should have a Thompson ticket in the mix.
Does this make Fred VanVleet a trade candidate?
The Rockets are perhaps the deepest team in the NBA. It’s also very, very difficult for any contender to deal with $25 million in what is effectively dead salary. On some level, the Rockets have to be wondering about turning VanVleet’s cap number into a player who can actually help them on the court.
Doing so would be complicated on a number of levels. For starters, VanVleet has an implicit no-trade clause by virtue of signing a one-year deal with a player option. Now, depending on how the season goes, it might make more sense for him to move anyway. If Sheppard and Thompson step up in his absence, he might prefer to go somewhere else and start rather than return to a bench role for the 2026-27 season. But Houston can’t just dump him freely.
Beyond the technical logistics, there are the locker room dynamics at play here. Houston signed VanVleet and Dillon Brooks in the summer of 2023 to help establish a culture. They did so. Brooks was a necessary casualty of the Durant deal, but moving VanVleet as well risks upsetting a delicate locker room balance. How impactful he could be in that role while injured is hard to say, and getting a healthy Steven Adams back last season potentially goes a long way here as well. There are few veterans more respected than Adams, so it’s not as though the Rockets would be tearing down their culture completely. But still, losing VanVleet would be a loss in that respect as well.
Ultimately, this is something the Rockets will probably play by ear. VanVleet isn’t trade eligible until Dec. 15 anyway. They’ll see how the beginning of the season goes. If Sheppard and Thompson are so good that VanVleet wouldn’t be returning to a starting job, yes, the Rockets should probably sniff around the trade market. Conversely, if they think they’re a ball-handler away from winning the title in 2026, it’s similarly worth exploring alternatives. But Houston is pretty uniquely positioned by virtue of its youth and mountain of draft assets. The Rockets don’t have to go all-in on the 2026 title. If they feel getting VanVleet back next year and beyond is important to their five-year plan, they won’t force a deal. He’s certainly a trade candidate now, but he’s far from a certainty to be moved.