Salman Ali Articles - Page 2

It would be so bizarre for the NBA’s Trade Deadline to pass and the Rockets almost exactly the same as a roster. Houston is what you would call your textbook seller team. ESPN’s BPI Playoff Odds currently has Houston finishing with a 28-54 record and a 0.1% chance of making the postseason. The players and […]

With less than three weeks remaining until the trade deadline, we’re getting into one of the newsier portions of the NBA calendar. If you wanted to go find it, there’s hard reporting on what every NBA team plans to do at the upcoming deadline by this point. Up until Monday morning, the Houston Rockets were […]

In the NBA, patience an be a virtue. The landscape of the league is ever-changing and if there isn’t all options on the table are unappealing, it’s not the worst thing in the world to just sit tight and wait for something to open up. No two sentences could better sum up the John Wall […]

With the February 10th NBA Trade Deadline just weeks away, we’ve officially entered fantasy deal season. It’s the glorious time of the year where fans, media, and spectators alike all come up with their best hypothetical trades as front office chatter starts to pick up. Every league executive has been entrenched in discussions for months, […]

The 2021 NBA Draft is shaping up to have of the most talented classes of the past 25 years. Evan Mobley is playing like a generational big man prospect, particularly on the defensive end of the floor. Cade Cunningham looks closer and closer to the heliocentric ball handler many thought he could be before the […]

The 2022 NBA trade deadline is on Feb. 10, so rumors are ramping up and there will surely be deals happening soon. The Houston Rockets, with several good complementary players on short-term contracts, figure to be a major player at the deadline this season. For the past several seasons, the Rockets have been a team […]

In the NBA, there are only a handful of players that are truly ‘untouchable’ in trade discussions. This distinction is only given to players who are good enough to be the best player on a championship team. Even then, the moment that player becomes disgruntled, that label goes out the window. By and large, general […]

Houston Rockets rookie Jalen Green made his highly anticipated return from injury on Thursday night against the Indiana Pacers. Green had missed nearly a month of play due to his hamstring strain and Houston wisely didn’t rush his rehab. He is a foundational prospect for the Rockets and the 15 games he missed felt significantly […]

After missing a month due to injury, Rockets rookie Jalen Green makes his return against the Indiana Pacers on Thursday. It’s incredible how much of the season has passed while Green was recovering. Houston has already finished 15 games of their season since Green went down with his hamstring injury on November 24th. The team […]

With about 50 games remaining in the season, the Houston Rockets are shaping up to be slightly better than what most people thought they were going to be at the start of the season. After winning just 17 games last season, Houston is on pace for 27 wins right now and they’re about to get […]

As the Houston Rockets beat the Detroit Pistons on Saturday night, the story was obviously Garrison Mathews. Mathews had just signed his first long-term NBA contract hours earlier and had a strong game to follow it up. What got swept underneath the rug, however, was Rockets rookie Josh Christopher starting in his first NBA game. […]

The Houston Rockets defeated the Detroit Pistons in a tough 11 a.m. contest Saturday night and the story of the game was Garrison Mathews. Mathews had just signed his first long-term NBA contract hours before and followed it up with 16 points, 5 rebounds, 3 steals, 2 assists, and 1 block on 6 of 12 […]

It was bound to happen at some point. It was just a matter of when and how. The Houston Rockets inked Garrison Matthews to a four-year deal. ESPN Sources: The Rockets are waiving forward Danuel House, allowing him to find a new team in the final year of his deal. Rockets are assigning his minutes […]

The Rockets had themselves a busy news day on Friday. The Trevelin Queen news was buried a bit, but more on him in a second. They started the evening by waiving hometown forward Danuel House. House was once seen as an early unanimous success story of the NBA’s two-way contract system. After struggling to get […]

Given this past week’s schedule for the Houston Rockets and their current batch of injuries, Thursday night was a predictable outcome, even with the Knicks in the midst of a rut. The Rockets actually managed to keep this entertaining for the middle portion of the game, but New York ran away with it in the […]

The Houston Rockets lost to the Cleveland Cavaliers on Wednesday night by a margin of 35 points. Coming off the heels of a comeback road win against the Atlanta Hawks, this was a brutal loss for the Rockets. They were missing four key contributors in Christian Wood, Eric Gordon, Kevin Porter Jr., and Jalen Green […]

Now that we’ve crossed over December 15th on the NBA calendar, trading season has officially begun. This date is relevant because most contracts signed this summer can now be traded. Generally, front offices try to avoid making deals before this date. This is because they’re limited in the number of contracts they can move and […]

Over their seven-game winning streak, the Houston Rockets seemed to adopt a quality that they haven’t yet shaken, which was seen in an incredible comeback victory over the Atlanta Hawks on Monday night. They’ve successfully been able to be competitive in all of their games since both Kevin Porter Jr. and Jalen Green went down. […]

There are legitimate reasons why the Houston Rockets should trade Christian Wood by the upcoming trade deadline. But based off prior experience of trying to broach this subject with Rockets fans, it was known this would be a polarizing stance. Even with that knowledge in mind, it’s hard to anticipate the volume of reactions this piece […]

When the Houston Rockets traded for Christian Wood in the 2020 offseason, it was some of the best dealmaking of the entire offseason for an NBA front office. Houston managed to turn Robert Covington into Wood and two protected first-round picks. It was a move that both improved the roster in the present and kept […]

The Houston Rockets, once owners of the NBA’s longest active winning streak at seven games, finally lost on Friday night against the Milwaukee Bucks. It was Houston’s first loss since November 22nd, which is incredible because they had just come off a 15-game losing streak. Of course, the winning streak was always going to end […]

Alperen Sengun had to go against one of the best players in the NBA on Friday evening. Following his showdown with Giannis Antetokounmpo, the Houston Rockets rookie is starting to receive some heavy praise. But more on that in a second. After winning seven straight games, the Rockets finally lost a game to the Milwaukee […]

It takes a number of things to make a good general manager in the NBA. Obviously you have to be able to identify talent, you have to be shrewd at deal making, and you have to have extensive knowledge of the CBA. Those are basically the fundamentals that the best GMs in the league possess. […]

Wednesday night in Toyota Center was probably one of the most anticipated nights of the season for the Houston Rockets. Former franchise star James Harden has obviously already returned to Houston to play the Rockets, but this felt more like a real return than before. In March of last year, it had been only two […]

On Wednesday, James Harden will make his second return to Houston in a Nets uniform since the Rockets traded him to Brooklyn ten months ago. It’s almost unbelievable how it hasn’t even been a full calendar year since the trade. So much has happened for both the Nets and the Rockets in that timespan and […]

The Rockets’ win over the Bulls was probably their most impressive victory of this six-game winning streak, but Sunday night against the Pelicans is probably the second most impressive. Houston was missing their starting backcourt in an already weak guard rotation and they had to improvise the entire game. From the playmaking aspect of things […]

Things are much better for the Houston Rockets at this point in the season than they were just a couple weeks ago. The team is winning, they’ve finally committed to a long-term starting lineup, and they’re no longer daily punching bags for talking heads. When the Rockets were on their 15-game losing streak, there was […]

The Houston Rockets have won five games in a row, the current longest winning streak in the NBA. Nobody covering this team could have predicted before the season that they would be typing that sentence. Nobody in general could have predicted this while Houston was in the midst of a 15-game losing streak. It’s truly […]

For a team as young and inexperienced as the Houston Rockets, a four-game winning streak is a pretty big deal. It’s an even bigger deal when it follows a 15-game losing streak. Houston has also managed to turn their biggest weakness (27th in Offensive RTG) into their biggest strength (9th in Offensive RTG over last […]

One observation from the Houston Rockets’ last win against the Oklahoma City Thunder was how underappreciated Rockets forward Jae’Sean Tate has become. Well, that certainly shouldn’t be the case after Wednesday night’s rematch. Not only did Tate score 32 points on 11-of-15 shooting from the field in the Rockets’ first road win of the season […]

Coming off a three-game winning streak, the mood in Toyota Center has been more jovial of late. Gone is this feeling of uneasiness and in is the feeling of stress-free basketball. Winning, even on a small scale, alleviates so much pressure for NBA teams, and the Houston Rockets are a good example of that right […]

The Houston Rockets are on a three game winning streak. Everyone reading this already knows that, but I had to type it out just to remind myself that it’s actually a thing. For most of this season, this team has been a fledgling mess trying to find an identify on both ends of the floor. […]

When details of the Houston Rockets’ strange agreement with veteran guard John Wall were first leaked, it puzzled the public. Nobody knew whether this meant Wall would be sent home or remain with the team. It wasn’t clear whether Houston would seek a buyout with Wall. And most importantly, the reasoning for Wall not playing […]

For the first time all season, the Houston Rockets are on a winning streak. It’s the bare minimum what you would qualify as a streak, but it’s still a streak. We don’t need to go overboard with praise for a team with three wins in late November, but Houston’s done some notable things as a […]

Houston Rockets guard John Wall has expressed interest in returning to play for the team, and it doesn’t look like a bad idea at all considering the team’s status. The Rockets and Wall had come to an agreement before the season that the veteran guard would not play in regular season games as the team […]

The Rockets were bound to snap their losing streak. No matter how bad the team is, it just wasn’t probable that they would finish the season with only one win. However, it was pretty unlikely that it would happen against one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference in the Chicago Bulls. Even unlikelier […]

Houston Rockets guard Kevin Porter Jr. has missed the past three games with a thigh injury that he re-aggravated last week against the Memphis Grizzlies. He initially thought playing through the injury was the right course of action, but decided it was best to take a full week off to let the injury heal completely. […]

The Houston Rockets are 17 games into the season and have not won a road game. More incredibly, they’ve won one basketball game total. This is going to go down as the second consecutive season the Rockets lose at least 15-straight games in a row. Even the worst teams in basketball win a game or […]

Everyone who works in sports is competitive. The jobs are limited and once you have them, there’s an enormous pressure to win, not just from external sources. These people are genuinely some of the most competitive people on the planet so they all want to win already. And just as winning brings great joy and […]