Rockets Nearing End of 1st Stage of Rebuild, Will Try to Sign Veteran Players, per GM

After three straight seasons with 55-plus losses, the Houston Rockets are ready to take the next step in the rebuild.

The team plans to add veteran talent to the roster in 2023, general manager Rafael Stone told ESPN's Andrew Lopez.

"I think we're kind of coming to the end of the first stage of [the rebuild]," Stone said. "When my group took over, we didn't have draft picks and we didn't have cap space. We had a team that was kind of singularly built. It was built to play a single style of play based around kind of a generational talent. And so we kind of felt like we had the right set that starting at the bottom floor."

The Rockets will finish among the NBA's bottom three teams this season, giving them high odds to select top 2023 picks like Victor Wembanyama or Scoot Henderson.

In addition to a top young prospect, Stone told ESPN he wants to add an experienced player who can provide the team with immediate help next season.

The Rockets will likely have the cap space to sign that kind of player.

After spending the last few seasons buying out enough contracts to accumulate over $80 million in dead salary, Houston is projected to have $61 million in cap space freed up this summer, according to The Athletic's Danny Leroux.

Right now, the Rockets' roster is young and cheap. Ten of the 11 players Houston has signed for next season are under 22 years old, and only four cost more than $4 million.

Stone noted that he wants members of the young core such as Tari Eason, Kenyon Martin Jr. and Alperen Şengün to continue improving next year "at a really great rate."

"That doesn't mean anybody needs to be an All-Star next year, but we need to see really good progression, which starts with really good work ethic," Stone said. "And to date, I have no complaints about how hard our guys work. That needs to continue. As they get older and their capacity for hard work grows, they need to then exceed that capacity. It's an exponential thing. That's the challenge for them."

To build on the young core, Stone said, it's time for the Rockets to add the kind of veteran player the team has not seen since trading away Russell Westbrook and James Harden during the 2020-21 campaign.

"We're definitely gonna bring in some veteran players this offseason," Stone said. "But that's largely because if you go draft a guy, they're not gonna be ready to play in the NBA with a one in a million exception. So we want to bring in people who help our guys and we know what we're getting. And, by definition, that's a veteran."

With room to maneuver under the salary cap and three first-round picks in the upcoming draft, Stone and the Houston Rockets are set to debut a new look in 2023-24.