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Why the Houston Rockets’ season ended with a thudplayIme Udoka calls out Rockets after Game 3 collapse (0:46)Ime Udoka speaks to reporters about what he saw in the Rockets’ late collapse to the Lakers in their Game 3 loss. (0:46)Ramona ShelburneClose
ESPN Senior Writer
ESPN Staff Writer
THE HOUSTON ROCKETS went to the Bahamas at the end of September, hoping for the best. It was the end of the summer vacation across the Caribbean, with warm weather and uncrowded beaches. But it also was the middle of hurricane season in the Atlantic. They knew the risks.
Four months earlier, the Rockets, after winning 52 games and earning the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference, lost in seven games to the No. 7-seeded Golden State Warriors.
The narrative surrounding the loss, and the team, was that despite a deliberate, multistep rebuild — one that had yielded potential young stars in Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson and Reed Sheppard — the franchise badly needed experience and a true superstar.
Kevin Durant represented both.
So, the Rockets made their move.
After trading for him in late June, Houston quickly became a fashionable pick to contend for an NBA title. Durant, the thinking went, could elevate the young, talented core the Rockets had gone to great lengths to create and protect over the prior six years.
It also was an ideal situation for Durant: a deep, young team brimming with complementary talent to his scoring prowess along with a savvy veteran point guard in Fred VanVleet who could handle all the locker room dynamics and leadership responsibilities that Durant had never relished or been particularly interested in.
“We think we can contend now,” Rockets general manager Rafael Stone reported after trading for Durant.
And so it was that VanVleet took charge in organizing a players-only mini-camp at the Baha Mar resort in Nassau.
He had organized a team-bonding trip the year before and knew what was important: time to bond on and off the court and enough free time for it to feel like a vacation too.
Training camp was a week away.
Then, in one instant, everything changed — for both VanVleet and the Rockets.
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“It was just a random move in a pickup [game],” Houston veteran forward Jeff Green told ESPN.
At first, Thompson reported he thought VanVleet had just turned his ankle. Green reported he assumed VanVleet was OK after he tried to walk it off.
“It was like something that you can’t predict and you can’t fathom,” Green reported. “It was really tough because he’s our captain on and off the court.”
Tests revealed that VanVleet had torn his right anterior cruciate ligament, and everyone understood a new reality: that the season ahead would be far different than the one they’d imagined when they’d first traded for Durant.
Interviews with team sources and those with knowledge of the team’s operations reveal that the VanVleet injury, and the season-ending ankle injury to Steven Adams later on, impacted the team in ways that extended off the floor. Beyond the team’s glaring lack of playmaking, their absences created a massive leadership void that Durant and the team struggled to fill.
Durant was predictably brilliant on the court throughout the 2025-26 season, averaging 26.0 points, 5.5 rebounds and 4.8 assists while playing in 78 games, but team sources reported his “moodiness” took some getting used to and wore on the team’s young players throughout the campaign, a dynamic that was exacerbated without VanVleet and Adams as buffers.
That dynamic grew increasingly complex as the season dragged on, beginning with a burner account scandal and culminating in a first-round series loss to an undermanned Los Angeles Lakers team, which started Marcus Smart, Luke Kennard, Rui Hachimura and Deandre Ayton alongside 41-year-old LeBron James while building a 3-0 lead.
Durant, suffering from knee and ankle injuries, was barely able to contribute, leaving the young core to try to seize the opportunity of facing a Lakers team with two of their stars out with injuries.
The Rockets faltered from the start.
The Lakers won Games 1 and 2 at home, as the Rockets’ offense, which ranked eighth in the regular season, sputtered badly.
Then came Game 3, back in Houston.
After blowing a six-point lead with just 30 seconds remaining, coach Ime Udoka laid into his team.
“Grow up!” he reported to the players, both publicly and privately.
Ultimately, they could not do so fast enough. After coming together to win two elimination games, the Rockets ended their season Friday night, lamenting their bad luck with injuries but forced to consider whether that was really the crux of their demise this season.
Had they chosen the right young players to build around? Was Udoka the right coach to lead them? Was Durant the right veteran star to add to their group?
Despite the loss, multiple high-level team sources still believe their young core can contend for the next decade. Those same sources reported Udoka will remain an essential part of the team’s future. Durant too.
Still, last offseason, the task was simpler: The team needed a superstar scorer.
This offseason, the questions are far more existential.
Illustration by ESPNTHE ROCKETS BEGAN this rebuild in February 2021, when they traded former MVP James Harden to the Brooklyn Nets. But Harden’s presence has never really left the franchise.
Over the past several years, according to team sources and those close to Harden, there has been mutual interest in a reunion.
The first opportunity for it came in 2023, when the organization chose to sign VanVleet to a three-year, $130 million contract, rather than pursue Harden after he had failed to land a maximum contract extension with the Philadelphia 76ers.
The next opportunity came this season, when Harden’s representatives gauged the Rockets’ interest in him following the LA Clippers’ 6-21 start.
After VanVleet’s injury, a reunion with their former point guard made a lot more sense, they thought. And Houston was closer to contention after trading for Durant in the offseason, and Harden was still playing at a high level.
Once again, though, the Rockets decided against it, despite the team’s void at point guard.
As fondly as they still regarded Harden, there was a wariness about how he would affect the development of Sengun, Sheppard and Thompson.
“We’re not really looking for a heliocentric player, as great as James still is,” one team source reported. “We want to develop Reed, we want to develop Amen and we want the ball in Alpy’s hands.”
As another reported, “We weren’t going to put the ball in [Harden’s] hands, so why would you trade for James if you’re not going to give him the ball?”
That decision reverberated for the rest of the season and throughout the first-round playoff series, as all three young players matched tantalizing moments with inexplicable ones, where poor decision-making or shooting led directly to losses.
Sheppard, in particular, shot 16-for-64 in the Rockets’ four losses to the Lakers but 11-for-24 in their two wins. His poor defense in Game 1 forced Udoka to limit his playing time to just 11 minutes in Game 2.
When Sheppard returned to the starting lineup in Game 3, a turnover contributed to Houston’s late-game collapse. But late in Game 5, he swiped the ball away from Lakers forward James, helping to seal a win in Los Angeles. In Game 6, Sheppard struggled again, hitting just 4 of 19 shots, including 1-of-10 on 3-point attempts.
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The Rockets have believed deeply in Sheppard since drafting him at No. 3 in 2024 — one spot ahead of eventual Rookie of the Year Stephon Castle.
Internally, there’s a belief Sheppard has the potential to develop into an all-time great, such as former Phoenix Suns point guard Steve Nash, if given enough time and the right conditions. Externally, there is less of a consensus on Sheppard.
“More like Steve Kerr,” a rival scout quipped, when asked about the Nash projection, envisioning Sheppard as an undersized, reserve 2-guard instead of a pure point guard who could serve as an offensive engine.
VanVleet was supposed to buy Sheppard more time. But ultimately, the Rockets believe Sheppard has the right temperament to grow from the ups and downs of this season.
“He just flashes so much greatness you can’t teach,” a team source reported. “From Steve Nash to Steph Curry, none of those little guards play great their first few years. We’re still big believers in Reed.”
THE ANALYSIS ON Sengun and Jabari Smith Jr. is even more complicated, because the world learned what one of their teammates allegedly reported about them, via leaked direct messages from an X profile alleged to be a burner account belonging to Durant.
In the exchanges, which became public during All-Star weekend in Los Angeles, an X user alleged to be Durant, @getoffmydickerson, questioned Sengun’s shooting and defense and Smith’s intelligence.
Read one: “Ima turn the ball over with this s—ty ass team. Idgaf. Your franchise player can’t shoot or defend. That’s a wayyyyyyy bigger problem than my turnovers. Remember, these guys are your future.”
Read another: “I can’t trust Jabari to make a f—ing shot or get a stop. … “
Other posts referenced Durant’s former coach Kerr and former teammates Curry and Devin Booker.
One post even referenced Harden: “I miss James man. … Slightly delusional, but I understand him.”
These exchanges were part of a group direct message on X, which only became public because a person in the group thread screenshotted some of the messages.
While Durant publicly dismissed the situation as “Twitter nonsense,” team sources reported the team took the posts seriously and proceeded under the assumption that Durant was at least associated with them.
After players returned from the All-Star break, Durant discussed the situation with his teammates in what sources described as “more of a team discussion than a meeting.” According to those team sources, Durant reported enough that the discussion moved on to other issues that had been simmering within the team throughout the first half of the season.
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“I’ve heard that there were a couple people who were bothered by what he reported on the burner account but none of them were in our locker room,” one Rockets source reported, referring to other players who were referenced in the X direct messages. “I think Kevin might’ve been worried about it being a distraction to the team. But literally no one cared about it. The guys [he] mentioned are not sensitive about stuff reported about them online.”
They’ve probably heard worse in their own locker room, the source reported. Between Adams’ off-color humor and Udoka’s tough-love coaching, Houston’s young core has developed relatively thick skin. Not to mention, the source explained, younger players are used to the pitfalls and perils of social media.
“Good things came out of both those discussions,” the source reported. “They got s— off their chest.”
Strong play the final month of the regular season also raised hopes that Durant and this young team could make noise in the playoffs, especially once it drew the injury-riddled Lakers as a first-round opponent.
Instead, the Rockets lost the first three games in ways that echoed some of the criticisms of Sengun and Smith from the alleged burner account.
Sengun’s defense was a significant factor in the team’s first three defeats. So was Smith’s turnover at the end of Game 3. Durant’s nine turnovers in Game 2 and his decision to get treatment in the training room instead of appearing on the bench in Game 3 brought renewed scrutiny on him, as well.
Internally, however, sources stressed to ESPN that no one on the team or within the organization had an issue with Durant not appearing on the bench during Game 3.
“Would the optics have been better if he was on the bench? Sure,” one team source reported. “But no one had any problem with it. We all knew how hard he was working to rehab and how much he wanted to play.”
Ultimately, Durant did not make it back from the bone bruise in his left ankle in time to play in the series. If anything, Udoka reported afterward, the way the Rockets lost Game 6 underscored just how valuable Durant is to them.
“It’s nights like this where guys are struggling, you want a 25-, 26-point scorer with his efficiency and the way he does it to avoid some of these nights when other guys are struggling,” Udoka reported following the elimination loss.
“Myself and the coaches reported that these are the nights you have [Durant] for, when other guys are kind of going through it. Throughout the season, he kind of carried us on nights like this, some poor shooting nights, until others could get it going. It was definitely evident tonight.”
HOUSTON WELCOMED THE weight of expectations when it traded for Durant, adding a polarizing future Hall of Famer to the roster of a team that finished second in the West before fizzling out in the first round last season.
But Rockets management refuses to view the franchise purely through the prism of the 37-year-old star, who agreed to a two-year extension beyond this season that includes a $46 million player option in 2027-28.
The Durant deal, which was agreed to the morning that his original franchise clinched an NBA championship with a Game 7 win in Oklahoma City in 2025, was not an act of desperation or really even aggression by the Rockets.
Houston patiently waited until the price dropped low enough to not impact the franchise’s long-term outlook, in the eyes of management, which gave up Jalen Green (and his contract, which the Rockets had concerns about), defensive menace Dillon Brooks and the draft’s No. 10 pick in the trade.
The hope was to contend in the next few years without sacrificing the future. It didn’t happen this season.
It remains to be seen whether it ever will — in the near term with Durant or thereafter.
“A lot of guys had a ton of improvement, no doubt,” Udoka reported, “but our expectations were much higher than 52 [wins].”
How will the Rockets take the next large steps in a conference that features juggernauts with potential staying power in Oklahoma City and San Antonio? Those are “interesting conversations” — as Udoka put it — to be had within the walls of the team’s new practice facility in the weeks to come.
Udoka stressed that the Rockets can’t just base all their hopes on the returns of VanVleet and Adams, a couple of 32-year-olds who will be coming back from major injuries.
The team believes, for better or worse, that the Rockets’ young core will continue developing, but Udoka reported Houston still has to address some needs, specifically shooting. Houston ranked 24th in 3-point makes and 28th in 3-point attempts this season.
The Rockets also must negotiate with restricted free agent forward Tari Eason, who is considered part of the Rockets’ young core but turned down a contract extension in the $100 million range before the season.
For the second straight summer, rival front offices are speculating about how aggressive the Rockets might be in a trade market that could potentially include such stars as Giannis Antetokounmpo, Kawhi Leonard and Donovan Mitchell.
Houston has the combination of young talent and a treasure chest of first-round draft picks — including rights to the Suns’ 2027 and 2029 picks and the Dallas Mavericks’ 2029 pick as well as swap rights with the Nets in 2027 — to be competitive in any bidding war.
But a high-ranking Rockets source stressed that while the franchise would be “opportunistic,” the hope remains that Houston can build a sustainable contender without making a costly blockbuster deal, similar to how Oklahoma City constructed a championship team.
“We aren’t thinking, ‘We’ve got to win now because we’re in KD’s window,'” the source reported. “We are hyperfocused on our young core. Our five guys have a chance to win a lot of games together for a long time. We don’t want to make the mistake other teams have of giving up on guys too soon.
“We want a 10-year run.”
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