The Houston Rockets are one of the many teams who have entered the Dwight Howard sweepstakes, and it looks like they will go all-in to land the All-Star center.
According to Marc Stein and Chad Ford of ESPN.com, the Rockets are currently trying to position themselves to make a run at Howard and bring him to Houston for next season and, hopefully, beyond.
The team has already used their amnesty clause on Luis Scola in order to create more cap space to potentially absorb the contracts of Glen Davis, Jason Richardson, Hedo Turkoglu and Chris Duhon. Also, according to the same report, the Rockets will look to hand over some of their first-round picks from this year as well as in the future.
Bottom line: the Rockets are willing to gut their entire team and its future all in the hopes that the Magic will trade Howard to them, giving them an opportunity to convince D12 to stay into the future.
This couldn't be a worse idea.
First off, Howard has already stated he would only sign an extension with the Brooklyn Nets (per Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! Sports), making it a major uncertainty that he would even be interested in staying with Houston for the long term.
More specifically, a report from David Aldridge of NBA.com states that sources confirmed there is "not a chance" Howard signs on to stay in Houston past this season.
That means Houston now runs the risk of trading all their important pieces, both future and present, in order to acquire a player who will most likely only last one season with them.
On top of that, even if they were to acquire Howard, the Rockets are not built to win a championship now. Winning will be a major sticking point for Howard re-signing with any team.
Unless they make another major acquisition to bring in a star player to go along with Howard sometime down the road, the Rockets will be left with a very similar team to that of the one Howard was unhappy with in Orlando since they will have to absorb many players from the Magic who have bad contracts.
And we all know that team in Orlando was not exactly the recipe for success. The Rockets would basically become the Orlando Magic, just with a different name and playing in a tougher conference.
So it isn't as if the Rockets are just one player away. They are several players away from being an elite team in the NBA. It might be well worth it for the Rockets to mortgage their future if it guaranteed a championship for next season, but the reality of the situation is that D12 doesn't make this team a contender in the least bit.
Trading for Howard at this point is an incredibly risky proposition. Houston will have to deal numerous young players and/or future draft picks in order to bring D12 to their squad, uncertain that it will even pay off.
Unless they can get an agreement established before any deal is made, Houston should avoid trading for the Magic big man. If they go ahead and do it anyway and Howard leaves after next season, the Rockets will be right back to square one: rebuilding.
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