Opinion: The Houston Rockets need Jimmy Butler to stay in title contention
The Houston Rockets haven’t had the start to the season we all thought they would. At the end of last season, the Rockets were one game away from making the finals until Chris Paul’s injury forced him to miss game 7 and ultimately the Golden State Warriors went on to win the Title.
Houston has started the season at 1-3, losses came from the Pelicans, Clippers and Jazz all games which people would’ve thought the Rockets could’ve won. Majority of the blame is put onto Carmelo Anthony, solely because he is Carmelo Anthony.
Now onto Minnesota, there was the huge fiasco going on with Jimmy Butler during the pre-season which Andrew Wiggins said ‘wasn’t that bad’, Wiggins also said that the drama was ‘overblown’. Regardless, talks are still going around the league about a potential trade involving the Houston Rockets. According to Adrian Wojnarowski:
The Timberwolves haven't had a great start to their season either currently having a 2-3 record, perhaps a trade will mix it up for both teams and get them some more wins.
Jimmy Butler is one of the premier shooting guards in the league today. It seems as each season goes along he gets better and better, and his statistics show that. 5 of the 7 previous seasons Butler has increased his PPG production from that of the year before and this additional scoring will most certainly help the Rockets come playoff time.
If the Rockets can make this trade go through I personally can see them being better than the Warriors. Losing Trevor Ariza and Luc Mbah a Moute in the offseason has drastically affected the Rockets defensive potential, but adding an All-Defensive player will improve their defence majorly.
The addition of such a good defender would give the Rockets someone who can defend either of the Guard positions or Small Forward on any team as well as adding additional scoring.
As far as the trade goes, we don’t have much information on which players will be involved yet.
Chris Paul is 33 years old and the leader of this Rockets squad and if they want any chance of beating the reigning NBA champions, Golden State Warriors, they need to complete this trade soon.