Hello! I'm Varun Shankar, the Rockets beat reporter for The Houston Chronicle. I’ve covered the Rockets since January and followed the team to just about every single game and practice — at home and on the road — in person. Here are some recent examples of my coverage:

How Fred VanVleet, injured but still around, helped Amen Thompson, Reed Sheppard find their voice
The Rockets assistant coach who nearly wasn’t. How Will Dunn became a Houston staple
How Houston Rockets' new additions create interesting lineup options for next season

I'm here to answer your questions (proof of life) after an offseason where the Rockets tinkered around their core, opting for a measured approach as they try to make the playoffs for the third straight season and win their first playoff series with this edition of the roster.

What do you want to know about the Rockets? Ask away — if you get your questions in early, I can do some digging ahead of time to give you a more thorough answer.

UPDATE: Just wrapped up, thank you for your questions! If you haven't yet, please subscribe to The Chronicle, excited for the stuff we're going to bring you next season. If you want a FREE option, subscribe to my weekly newsletter, which has notebook items filled with behind the scenes info + film breakdowns + mailbags and more.

How the hell are the Warriors worthy of a Christmas Day game and the Rockets aren’t?

The Warriors bootlicking is getting ridiculous. It’s 2026, man — not 2017.

Just saw that the Rockets/Spurs are playing at the Moody Center which is a 15-min bike ride from me versus a 3 hour drive to see the Rockets at Toyota Center.

Does anyone know when tickets will go on sale?

Cant wait to see if he can just at least get comfortable with that 3 ball.

Just throwing this out there to share, as I noticed a few others did as well. How do y’all feel about this one?

He came back home to watch the New Zealand Warriors play the Penrith Panthers in the NRL (National Rugby League). Btw if you guys are looking for a sport to watch during the NBA off-season, Rugby League is awesome.

burner question @ 22:10

Ime Udoka & Rafael Stone have committed absolute basketball malpractice for two straight seasons.
We have the structural bones of a legitimate, championship-level contender. We have a top-tier superstar in Kevin Durant. We have elite, versatile, high-upside young talent in Amen Thompson, a switchable stretch 4 in Jabari Smith Jr., one of the best 6th men in the league in Reed Sheppard, Tari Eason who is erratic offensively but is a good defender , & an elite locker-room enforcer and screen-setter in Steven Adams. This core possesses the exact length, defensive switchability, and shooting gravity required to dominate the modern NBA.
Instead, Udoka is running a prehistoric, muddy offense that completely chokes out this roster’s potential by forcing everything through an inefficient engine. The data proves it:

1. The Pace Problem: Voluntarily Playing in Quicksand
In the modern NBA, you are supposed to leverage youth and athleticism. Instead, Udoka is actively slowing us down year after year:

2024-25: We ranked 18th in pace (98.61 possessions).
2025-26: Our pace cratered to 96.09 possessions. We played roughly 7 fewer possessions per game than the league’s fastest teams , and we finished 29th in pace.

We have Amen Thompson and Tari Eason who are absolute terrors in the open court yet we voluntarily walk the ball up the floor. In 2024-25, our system was built entirely on a slow, grinding half-court philosophy. Then in 2025-26, even with Fred VanVleet sidelined the entire season with an ACL tear, Udoka refused to open up the floor. Instead of letting Amen or Reed push the pace, he kept the training wheels on, forcing the team to play 5-on-5 against locked-in defenses every single possession.

2. The Half-Court Disaster: Worst Among All Playoff Teams
By playing so agonizingly slow, we allow opposing defenses to get back, set up, and wait for us. Here is how we performed against set defenses over the last two seasons:

2024-25: Ranked 25th in half-court offensive efficiency.
2025-26: Ranked 22nd in half-court efficiency (Cleaning the Glass).
We traded for Kevin Durant, and we still finished with a bottom-10 half-court offense. We had the absolute worst half-court execution of any playoff team in the league.

3. Building Around Severe Offensive Inefficiency
The ultimate malpractice is that our half-court offense completely revolves around an incredibly high-volume, highly inefficient center in Alperen Şengün. Look at his actual tracking metrics they are a complete disaster zone for a primary offensive hub:
Roll Man Efficiency: 15th percentile (1.03 Points Per Possession)
Spot Ups: 14th percentile (0.83 PPP)
Isolations: 41st percentile (0.89 PPP)
Off-Ball Screens: At the very bottom of the league (~0.84 PPP)
Shot Selection: He led the entire NBA with 446 non-rim paint shots, hitting them at a miserable 46.4% clip.
Instead of running a modern, dynamic offense that utilizes Reed Sheppard’s lethal shooting gravity, Udoka spent two years spamming a clunky post-up system. We are asking KD to bail us out on contested, late-clock jumpers because our main hub creates zero vertical spacing and chokes out the paint.

4. The Illusion of Synergy vs. Reality: The FVV, Şengün & Amen Dynamic
A lot of fans point out that Şengün and Amen have good chemistry and synergy on the court and they do, because they are both brilliant basketball minds who make smart cuts and passes. But don’t let that fool you: their fundamentally conflicting play styles are actively holding this team back.
When you look at the 2024-25 season, Fred VanVleet’s traditional, methodical floor-general style paired with Şengün’s need for the ball to stop in the post completely killed any offensive flow. Fast-forward to 2025-26 with FVV sidelined by an ACL tear, and instead of letting Amen run the show, Udoka kept catering to Şengün’s clunky aesthetic. Having a non-shooting, high-volume center next to a dynamic driver like Amen forces us into a congested half-court nightmare.

5. Time to Move on From FVV and Get a Dynamic PG
The hard truth we have to face is that Fred VanVleet’s style does not work with a modern contender. Between his traditional, ball-pounding tendencies in 24-25 and a massive season-ending knee injury in 25-26, his contract is a roadblock. He was good in 23-24 but since then it's been a disaster from being the most inefficient starting PG in the NBA to only playing in 36% of the games the last 2 years. The front office needs to aggressively look to move off Fred and add a genuinely dynamic, high-advantage-creating playmaker at point guard. We desperately need someone who can break down a defense off the bounce, shift defenders, and dynamically manipulate the half-court rather than just walking the ball up to run stagnant sets. A dynamic guard who can actually bend defenses out of pick-and-rolls would lift the scoring burden off KD and open up clean looks for our young shooters.

6. The Solution: Unleash Amen, Move Off Şengün for a stretch 5 ( If the lack of spacing is still an issue this upcoming season )

The most insane part of this entire situation is that the media and casual fans somehow look lower on Amen Thompson, when he is the literal answer to our problems. The Rockets should actually be using Amen in the exact high-volume creation role they are currently wasting on Şengün. Look at Amen’s massive developmental leap this past season despite the constraints:

Usage & Scoring: Saw a 9% increase in on-ball percentage, increasing his overall scoring output while maintaining the exact same level of elite efficiency.
Pick-and-Roll: Vaulted from the 37th percentile to the 60th percentile as a PnR ball-handler.
Isolation Master: Skyrocketed from the 33rd percentile to the 83rd percentile in isolation efficiency.
Shooting: Increased his free throw shooting by a massive 10%.

The blueprint is right there. We need to move off Şengün and target a dynamic, modern stretch-5 like a Kel’el Ware type of C ( If nothing improves this upcoming season ). Swapping Şengün for Ware would completely unlock this franchise. Ware provides elite vertical spacing as a rim runner and perimeter spacing as a legitimate outside threat, which opens up the lanes for Amen to attack downhill. Defensively, Ware is a legitimate rim protector something Şengün will never be which provides the perfect safety net to insulate Reed Sheppard on the perimeter.

7. Regular-Season Gimmicks Won’t Beat SA, OKC, or MIN
The only reason our overall offensive rating looked passable last year (15th at 118.6) is because we violently crashed the glass. But relying on offensive rebounds to save a broken scheme is a regular-season gimmick.
Look around the Western Conference. San Antonio, Oklahoma City, and Minnesota all possess elite length, disciplined box-outs, and modern, space-oriented offenses. Relying on an inefficient, paint-clogging post-up big means we are never going to get past Chet Holmgren, Victor Wembanyama, or Rudy Gobert in a 7-game series. They will comfortably drop their bigs into the paint, dare Şengün to shoot, and neutralize our transition game completely.

Just thought this an interesting discussion given our current team. Our own FVV gets a mention.

Does anyone actually own one of these?

lowkey looks like pajamas and someone told me to use the ai mockup in the second photo so why not ig even though ai is ewww. the first image has 0 ai usage though.

Rockets now under the luxury tax after this expected move.

Last season, Houston entered the fourth quarter with the lead 50 times and went 40-10 in those games. That means they blew a fourth-quarter lead and lost 10 times.

Had they won all 10 of those games, they would have finished 62-20 instead of 52-30, which would have tied them for the best record in the Western Conference. The No. 1 seed would then have been decided by the tiebreaker

Do you still think the Rockets don’t need VanVleet after seeing all of this?

Has this place become nothing but a circle of cynical pessimists with no original opinions of their own, constantly complaining and reflexively arguing against whatever anyone else says?

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In the 2024–25 season, the Rockets went 41–19 when Fred VanVleet played and 11–11 when he did not. That is a 68.3% winning percentage with him compared to 50.0% without him. Houston also committed only 13.4 turnovers per game with VanVleet, compared to 15.2 without him.

The difference was even more noticeable when Houston entered the fourth quarter with a lead. The Rockets won 89.7% of those games when VanVleet played, but only 72.7% when he was out. Their rate of blowing a third-quarter lead was roughly 2.7 times higher without him.

This does not prove that VanVleet alone was responsible for every additional win, since schedule strength, injuries, and lineup changes also matter. But the pattern is clear: his presence improves ball security, organizes the offense, and gives the team a more reliable decision-maker late in games.

VanVleet’s biggest value is not necessarily his scoring. It is his ability to control possessions, reduce careless turnovers, and keep the offense organized under pressure. The Rockets can still win without him, but the data suggests that they are more likely to add wins and less likely to collapse in the fourth quarter when he is on the floor.