Could Houston Be The Big Wild Card In The Jimmy Butler Sweepstakes?

In recent days, the race to acquire Jimmy Butler has seemed to focus on one team: the Miami Heat. The thing is that amid these rumors, there’s no indication that, you know, Butler is going to end up in Miami. He does not have a no-trade clause, the Heat might need a third or fourth team to pull off a deal, and Tom Thibodeau has already said the Timberwolves are willing to wait to make the best possible move for themselves.

All of this is to say that while Butler may want to play for Miami — which really is the perfect fit for both sides — Minnesota can throw a monkey wrench in that plan pretty easily by doing what they want to do, not what makes the most sense for everyone involved. That’s especially the case because other teams are trying to call up the Wolves and make a deal, and if you believe Mark Berman of Fox 26, one such squad is the Houston Rockets.

The immediate reaction upon hearing that Houston wants to get involved should probably be “that makes sense.” General manager Daryl Morey, who always tries to get the Rockets involved when a player hits the market in one way or another, is admittedly obsessed with trying to take down the Golden State Warriors. He was awfully close last year, and was perhaps one Chris Paul hamstring injury away from accomplishing that goal. A great way to get inspired to do something is to feel like it had slipped from your grasp, which makes the concept of Morey trying to bring in one more big gun for a firefight easy to digest.

Morey and the Rockets are perpetually in the business of star hunting. While he has never come out and said it that blatantly, he has a track record that looks an awful lot like that of someone who believes winning one championship is worth any risk — you can justify doing any move or series of moves if they ultimately help you lift the Larry O’Brien Trophy. It’s why giving a gargantuan contract to an older player with a checkered injury history like Paul isn’t necessarily a bad deal, because if your approach is “win now and ask questions later,” you’ll take the brilliance of which Paul is capable at age 33 and worry about paying him more than $44 million when he’s 36 if it results in a ring.

Adding Butler would be another step in this direction — he’s a legitimate star, and even if he ends up being nothing more than a rental, if that year as a rental results in beating Golden State en route to a title, in his mind it’s worth it. The NBA is a league of stars, and while the Warriors’ four (or, depending on the health of DeMarcus Cousins, five) horsemen of the apocalypse are terrifying, partnering Butler with Paul, James Harden, and Clint Capela isn’t shabby, either. Is it enough to beat them? I don’t know. No one knows. There would be, potentially, a series of seven basketball games to determine this, and it would be hot fire.

The problem, of course, is that Houston might not have the horses to pull this deal off. A trade for Butler, you would presume, would have to include Eric Gordon heading to Minnesota. Adding Nene (or even P.J. Tucker) makes the money line up, and the Rockets have all of their first-round picks available at their disposal. It’s exceedingly fair to question whether this is enough, because the Wolves reportedly wanted Ben Simmons in a deal with Philly, and with all due respect to Gordon and Nene/Tucker, none of them are a player or a prospect the caliber of the reigning Rookie of the Year.

(As a quick aside, I cannot help but wonder if Morey regrets giving up De’Anthony Melton in the Ryan Anderson contract dump right now. The Rockets’ don’t really have the young players that might appeal to Minnesota in the trade, and while he went in the second round of the 2018 NBA Draft, Melton has the potential to be really good. Alas.)

Perhaps the always-creative Morey can get, say, Sacramento involved, as the Kings are purportedly happy to help facilitate a move if it means getting into the first round of the 2019 NBA Draft. What happens if, say, they take on Nene’s deal (two years, about $7.5 million) and get a pick back? There’s no way that’s nearly enough for Minnesota, though, so maybe Houston gives up another pick or two and convinced the Kings to ship Willie Cauley-Stein, who really wants to get paid this summer, to the Wolves. That might not even be enough, so how about something really wild, like this:

In this deal, Houston ships its 2019 first to Sacramento and its 2020 first to Minnesota. It’s super, super easy to poke holes in it, especially if the Wolves don’t want to get rid of Okogie, who went 20th in the 2018 NBA Draft and is already making his presence felt in training camp. But on the whole, Sacramento gets a young player in Okogie and a pick, the Wolves get three veterans to help bolster their rotation to help them compete now while adding a pick, and the Rockets get their third superstar.

Again, this is all a bit of a stretch, especially if Thibodeau continues to not be fully on-board with moving Butler. I’d also have some concerns about a Rockets team that would throw out a starting five of Paul, Harden, Butler, James Ennis/Carmelo Anthony, and Capela with a bench of Brandon Knight, Gerald Green, Ennis/Anthony, Marquese Chriss, and a bunch of question marks. But every question or concern comes back to one thing: All that matters is that this leads to a championship, and if Morey and the rest of Houston’s front office believe getting heavily involved in the Butler sweepstakes helps them do that, you can bet they’re going to push their chips to the center of the table and go all-in.