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Houston Rockets trade Victor Oladipo to Miami Heat, according to Adrian Wojnarowski of ESPN. The Heat sack Kelly Olynyk, Avery Bradley and an exchange of choice in 2022, for The Athletic’s Shams Charania. The deal marks the end of Oladipo’s brief tenure in Houston. Oladipo had already spent the last three seasons and switched with the Indiana Pacers, but was surprisingly distributed to the Rockets as part of the blockbuster James Harden. At this point, Houston seemed interested in staying competitive after dealing with Harden. However, those dreams were dashed when Christian Wood injured his ankle and the Rockets lost 20 games in a row. Now Houston is shipping Oladipo months before he becomes an unrestricted free agent.
Oladipo was an All-NBA player in the 2017-18 season with the Pacers, but things have only gotten worse since then. He suffered a number of minor injuries early in the 2018-19 season before rupturing a quad tendon that knocked him out for over a year. He wasn’t the same when he returned to the Pacers, and when they saw the opportunity to return him for Caris LeVert, they grabbed him. In 20 games as a Rocket, Oladipo averaged 21.2 points on 40.7% shooting from the field and 32% from behind the arc. This ineffectiveness has scared off some suitors, but Oladipo was once a star. The advantage of acquiring it at the lowest level of its value in the hope of bringing it back to that level was quite appealing.
Oladipo couldn’t ask for a better landing spot than Miami. He has reportedly been interested in joining the Heat for quite some time, and few teams have a better record of helping players regain past glory. At Oladipo, the Heat get the defensive guard they lacked for most of the season due to Avery Bradley’s injuries. He’ll be able to defend the opposing best guards, a necessity at the Brooklyn conference, and lead offensive bench units, which tend to struggle when Jimmy Butler is resting. His shoot is a bit of a concern alongside Butler and Bam Adebayo, but the Heat are using a movement-based egalitarian system that they’ve likely already devised workarounds that will maximize the trio. Plus, with the shoot they’ve got elsewhere, the Heat aren’t exactly short of spacing. While Oladipo hasn’t quite been himself this season, the cost of the deal is well worth it for Miami. They gave up very little to acquire a player with star potential. This gives them a very good rating for the chord as a whole.
Miami receives:
Houston receives:
Commercial grade of heat: A
It was obvious to the Heat. Olynyk’s role in the rotation was likely to be downplayed after the Nemanja Bjelica trade, especially if LaMarcus Aldridge joins the Heat via a buyout. Bradley has barely played this season and, at a minimum, was behind Goran Dragic, Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson on the depths board. Even though they weren’t interested in Oladipo, the cost was so low that there was virtually no reason not to trade.
Of course, they were interested in Oladipo. They had been for some time. The only catch was that they apparently liked Kyle Lowry better. As the deadline approached, the potential opportunity cost of an Oladipo deal seemed like the chance to finally land Lowry. If the Heat hadn’t traded to Lowry, common sense suggested that another team would have, then they would have used his bird rights to re-sign him in the offseason.
Well, Lowry wasn’t traded. In a way, it allows the Heat to have their cake and eat it too. They can audition Oladipo for the next few months and see if he’s in good shape for the long haul. If that is the case? Awesome. Re-sign it. If not? Never mind. Miami still has a ceiling space close to offseason. They can pivot towards Lowry quite easily.
The short-term implications are a bit messy, but still promising. The rosters with Oladipo, Butler and Adebayo could be slightly tight. They can alleviate those concerns by playing all three alongside Tyler Herro and Duncan Robinson, and with Bjelica also acquired, the Heat have more than enough shots overall to make up for it. Oladipo immediately becomes Miami’s best defensive guard, and their clash with Brooklyn suddenly looks a lot cleaner. Oladipo will likely keep Kyrie Irving. Butler will likely keep James Harden. Adebayo will likely keep Kevin Durant. Butler and Oladipo are malleable enough to handle different rosters involving these stars, but the basic premise is the same: The Heat now have three high-level defenders in their starting roster to throw the three-star Nets.
Overall, the Heat essentially turned Bradley, Olynyk, Moe Harkless and Meyers Leonard into Oladipo, Bjelica, Trevor Ariza and potentially Aldridge using only minor draft capital to grease the wheels. It is an indisputable success for Miami. Their position in relation to other contenders for the Eastern Conference is subjective. If Oladipo isn’t the old Oladipo, they probably still don’t have enough to beat Brooklyn. But they just added a 20 point goalscorer who can defend on an expiring contract for players who fell out of the rotation anyway. In almost all circumstances, it’s a home run deal.
Commercial grade of rockets: D
The Rockets traded for Victor Oladipo with that day in mind. If they were looking for a long-term cornerstone of the James Harden deal, they likely would have kept Caris LeVert. Instead, they added Oladipo hoping they could return it for more by the deadline. Well, the deadline has arrived and the Rockets have next to nothing going for him. This makes the Harden accord even worse in hindsight. Three players of this profession remain in Houston: Olynyk, Bradley and Dante Exum. Yikes.
The main motivation behind this agreement was the acquisition of interim capital. In all fairness, Houston has had a good part of it. But player value and draft value should not be mutually exclusive. Rockets could have taken control of Brooklyn’s first-round picks for the next seven seasons and acquired LeVert and Jarrett Allen. Instead, they took a hit on a player whose value was dwindling and was badly missing.
The saving grace of this deal is that it doesn’t hurt the Rockets. They didn’t take money in the long run. In fact, you could argue that losing Oladipo will help them lose games, which is essential for them this season, as Oklahoma City has the right to swap Miami’s late first-round pick for theirs if they don’t. not in the top four. The worse the Rockets play, the more likely they are to keep their pick.
But the Rockets were doing very well to lose on their own even before this deal. Ultimately, this deal simply removes an asset from the Harden deal. The best player Houston picked up for a franchise icon had to be ditched at the deadline for any leftovers the Rockets could find. If they could start over, they would surely take LeVert. If nothing else, it would have earned a little more than nothing. That’s all they got for Oladipo.
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