Who's to blame for Rockets' embarrassing first-round exit, and what comes next after a disastrous season?

Houston has plenty of decisions to make, including whether to bring back Kevin Durant

Sam Quinn

May 2, 2026

12:16 am ET

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19 min read

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The Houston Rockets expected to compete for the 2026 championship. That's the only justifiable reason to trade meaningful assets for a 37-year-old Kevin Durant.

Those expectations were at least partially dashed by Fred VanVleet's torn ACL, but the opportunity it created would be a reasonable silver lining. With VanVleet out, the Rockets could test the readiness of their young core to step into bigger roles. Maybe they could compete on their own without the presence of their veteran point guard. Nope.

The Rockets started the season out strong, winning 25 of their first 40 games and outscoring opponents by over nine points per 100 possessions with Steven Adams in the lineup. Then Adams suffered a Grade 3 ankle sprain, ending his season. The Rockets ranked fourth in Cleaning the Glass' Offensive Rating on the day Adams got hurt and third in defense. They ranked 14th and ninth afterward. So much for contending without VanVleet.

Fine, the exasperated Rockets likely rationalized, maybe a championship wasn't in the cards, but they still had Durant and the young core. They could at least compete in the playoffs, maybe win a round, get some useful intel on their younger players and go out with a bit of dignity. The postseason bracket helped out in that regard. Their first-round opponent was a Los Angeles Lakers team missing Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves.

Even that proved a bridge too far. Durant got hurt before the series, but he played in Game 2 and it didn't matter. The Lakers took a 3-0 series lead. The Rockets at least put up a fight and won the next two, but the Lakers ultimately defeated them 98-78 in Friday's Game 6 to take the series.

The bar kept dropping over the course of eight months, yet the Rockets still couldn't clear it. Now, a team with quite a bit invested in the 2025-26 season leaves it having accomplished almost nothing. They put over 2,800 minutes on Durant's aging body. Maybe he's still a star next year, but common sense suggests he's never going to be better than he just was. Who knows what VanVleet and Adams, both 32, will look like after their own injuries. But if this year taught the Rockets anything, it's how utterly reliant they still are on a point guard who never gets to the rim and a center whose primary functions are to screen and rebound to produce even a functional NBA offense.

Yet we can't really take any notable lessons away from the seasons the young players had, either. The evidence suggests that the Amen Thompson point guard experiment was a failure, but what are we supposed to take from a shaky ball-handler trying to lead an offense that ranked 27th in 3-point attempt rate? How much of Alperen Sengun's finishing woes are the result of the paint consistently being packed? Of course, Reed Sheppard made a mistake in the biggest moment of his career in Game 3, coughing up the turnover that functionally ended the series. Ime Udoka, Houston's third-year coach, didn't trust him enough over the course of the season to let him make mistakes like that in lower-leverage moments.

On just about every front, this season was a failure for the Rockets. The questions now are who is to blame, and how can they right this ship?

Culprit No. 1: General manager Rafael Stone

The Rockets have drawn plaudits -- including from me! -- for their roster-building under Stone. They are incredibly creative. They stockpile assets effectively. They manage contracts as well as any team in the NBA. The basic concept of their team, at least as of last July, was sound. They'd built a defensive and rebounding behemoth that only needed a single star scorer for balance. They got that scorer, Durant. Time to head off to the races.

But the veterans were supposed to supplement a long-term core, not shoulder the ambitions of the entire franchise. The injuries they endured shone a light on that core. The Rockets tanked viciously for three years. Thanks to the Nets, they picked in the top four of four consecutive drafts. None of the players they selected has grown into an All-Star, and of the four, Thompson is the only one who's at all close. In hindsight, at least, the Rockets probably deserve a bit more scrutiny for drafting Jalen Green over Evan Mobley. Sheppard over Stephon Castle is also looking questionable, though Thompson's presence likely would've made Castle's shooting issues untenable on this roster.

Sengun, 23, has become an All-Star, but he's stagnated. The finishing issues are still there. The hot 3-point shooting from early this season dissipated. He regressed meaningfully on defense this season. Development isn't linear. This could just be a bump on his road to stardom. He's also played for five years now. If this is who he