Have the Rockets done enough to keep up with West elite?

How much is enough?

The Houston Rockets, who entered the offseason with an understanding of where they stood compared to their peers, have had a relatively quiet summer. The returns of Kevin Durant and Fred VanVleet will bolster the team’s internal standings, but free agency acquisitions of Marcus Smart and Bogdan Bogdanović are marginal moves that improve their depth. If this team should be seen through a true contention lens, questions still remain.

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Is Houston, as currently constructed, good enough to keep up with the likes of San Antonio and Oklahoma City? Is it even on par with the Denvers and Minnesotas of the world? What about the Lakers, who eliminated the Rockets in the playoffs?

From the outside looking in, it felt like there was a golden opportunity for Houston to enter the race for either Giannis Antetokounmpo or Jaylen Brown. The Rockets have enough assets and draft capital to make themselves serious bidders for a superstar to give them a real shot at turning the tables in the Western Conference. Instead, it appears as if they’re banking (again) on growth from their young core while shoring up deficiencies elsewhere.

Rockets boost roster with depth, experience

If there was one glaring takeaway from Houston’s second consecutive first-round flameout, it was that the team overall just wasn’t good enough. Injuries to key pieces like VanVleet and Durant exposed the lack of depth on the roster, forcing players into different situations they weren’t prepared for.

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Houston finished the playoffs ranked dead last in 3-point percentage (30.2%) and didn’t fare much better during the regular season (28th in attempts, 25th in makes). If nothing else, bringing in Smart and Bogdanović — while shuttling Dorian Finney-Smith — attempts to solve a math problem. The Rockets desperately need to increase their 3-point rate, especially if they insist on hammering at the possession game.

“We wanted to get more skilled,” Rockets general manager Raphael Stone said during summer league in Las Vegas. “I wanted guys who could dribble, pass, shoot and defend. I think both [Smart and Bogdanović] can help us in those areas.”

This feels like a shift (or a realization) that their former approach to roster building needed tweaking. In previous iterations of Rockets basketball, there was almost an insistence on simply reaching for “best player available” as opposed to actually building a team with intention and attention to fit and scheme.

Adding Smart, entering his 13th season with nearly 25,000 minutes under his legs, is somewhat of a risky play, especially considering his unfortunate luck with injuries. (The veteran guard was able to appear in 62 games this past season, more than the last two seasons combined.) At a little over $6 million a year, though, it’s a gamble worth taking assuming he’s able to conjure some of his playoff-rising play.

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And make no mistake, this is an addition based off of what Smart can do in the postseason. With the Lakers last playoffs, Smart tallied 61 points, 25 assists, 11 steals and 8-of-16 from deep over Games 1-3 in the first round against the Rockets.

Houston knows what it’s getting with Smart. A low usage, capable secondary/tertiary creator prone to some ill-advised attempts. A defensive savant with an eye for causing turnovers, one who immediately raises the ceiling of a team’s efficiency and a decent floor spacer. He played some of the best ball of his career under Ime Udoka in Boston. We’ll see if lightning strikes twice.

At the very least, the arrivals of Smart and Bogdanović will provide more experience to the team’s young core. Having gone through two playoff campaigns with similar results, it’s clear that Houston’s youth still has a ways to go in terms of learning the ropes, dealing with playoff pressure and maneuvering when Plan A is unavailable. The veteran additions — two guards who can space the floor and handle the ball in pinches, as well as players with years of know-how — are desperately needed.

Houston’s hopes still rest on young core

Houston’s two-timeline approach hasn’t exactly panned out as well as it had hoped, but the whole point of the Rockets’ rebuild over the last few years has been to accumulate enough talent to sustain a franchise for a lengthy period of time. And even without making a major move this summer, there are still a number of talented players on team-friendly contracts that can be moved in the event that another superstar suddenly becomes available.

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It’ll be interesting to see just how much influence and/or impact third-year guard Reed Sheppard has moving forward, with VanVleet returning, the addition of Smart and, to a very small degree, rookie Bruce Thornton’s impressive Vegas production.

As for the rest of the team’s youth, the areas for improvement are clear. Alperen Şengün, who finished in the 18th percentile in points per shot attempt, needs to continue to parlay his usage and playmaking ability into efficient shot creation (perhaps becoming more content with taking 3s). Amen Thompson, who shot just 24% from the corners, needs work as a floor-spacer, assuming he’s not going to exclusively be on the ball. The supporting cast (Jabari Smith Jr., Tari Eason) could benefit from becoming more of a playmaking hub from the elbows and showing added confidence in transition opportunities.

The laundry list is long, but necessary. Durant and VanVleet can only carry this team so far.

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The older VanVleet gets, the less he’ll likely want to take on in terms of regular-season workload — coming off an ACL injury also plays a factor in this — but between Şengün, Thompson, Durant, Smart and Sheppard, there should be enough ball-handling and creation to go around.

Stone said VanVleet is on track to be a full go for training camp, which is the most important piece of information for Houston right now. VanVleet remains the Rockets’ stabilizer and without him their lack of an efficient Plan B cost them against Los Angeles. Neither Thompson nor Sheppard are at the playmaking level yet to carry an offense, and the Rockets’ decision-making dinged them on numerous occasions during the regular season and playoffs.

But Stone has made it clear that improvement from Houston’s young core is arguably the determining factor of the organization’s success, fully cognizant of the potential of a two-timeline system, as precarious as it sounds. If Durant can be considered as a ceiling-raiser, Thompson, Şengün and Co. are most vital to raising the Rockets’ baseline.

“None of us will know until we get to camp and the season, but our team is dependent upon them,” Stone said. “They’re the backbone of our team and their growth will determine how good or not we are.”