With the NBA regular season starting in just three weeks, the Houston Rockets suddenly find themselves without a starting point guard. Fred VanVleet tore his ACL in late September, suddenly sending the Rockets’ point guard position into chaos.
While they will likely try out former third overall pick, Reed Sheppard, as well as Amen Thompson and Aaron Holiday in that role, they will probably need to make a trade. One to add more playmaking and scoring to their roster.
That’s where the Boston Celtics potentially come into play. The Celtics have a need for frontcourt help, with them having the worst center rotation in the NBA. Meanwhile, the Rockets have plenty of big men, perhaps too many.
Therefore, they should look to move on from one or two of those players to try and shore up what is clearly their weakest position, point guard. As a result, one potential trade target could involve Celtics guard Anfernee Simons.
The Houston Rockets must target Celtics guard Anfernee Simons
Simons is one of the NBA’s best high-volume 3-point shooters, drilling an impressive 38.1% from three on 8.1 attempts over the last four seasons. He’d immediately give the Rockets something they desperately need, which is shooting, something they lost with VanVleet’s injury.
Better still, he is on an expiring contract worth $27.62 million, meaning that the Rockets could cobble together a matching salary without having to trade their core pieces. One machination of a potential Celtics and Rockets trade could see them ship out Steven Adams and Dorian Finney-Smith plus multiple seconds for Simons.
The obvious caveat is that the Rockets can’t trade both players until December 15th. There are also questions about whether the Celtics would want to take on long-term salary after spending the summer shedding big contracts.
Trading Anfernee Simons makes sense for the Celtics
That’s a fair point, though both players could help the Celtics beef up their front court in the short term and would have re-trade value. After all, Finney-Smith fetched the Brooklyn Nets four second-rounders when he was traded to the Los Angeles Lakers.
With him on an affordable contract, he could have similar value if he plays well for the C’s. Still, a lot would depend on how things go through the first couple months of the regular season. The Rockets could struggle at point guard, and the Celtics could struggle at center.
That would seemingly increase the likelihood of a trade, with Adams and Finney-Smith helping Boston compete without Jayson Tatum and Simons helping the Rockets contend without Simons.
All in all, the Rockets will need to scour the trade market to find a VanVleet replacement if they can’t replace him internally. If they can’t, then Simons makes plenty of sense as a short-term replacement for VanVleet.
