The Steven Adams NBA Comeback Tour With The Houston Rockets Has Commenced
The moment is near. Steven Adams is on the verge of making his NBA return after 21 long and boring months without his basketballing presence. Outside of a brief preseason stint last year he’s mostly been chilling away from the spotlight, doing his own thing, diligently working through his recovery processes and probably mending a few fences and milking a few cows on his farm where he can. The NBA has been a much duller place without him. 22 January 2022 was the day he busted his knee by diving for a loose ball at the very end of a narrow defeat for the Memphis Grizzlies against the Phoenix Suns. Initially he was only supposed to be out for a month but you know how the Grizz medical staff botched that one. We already tracked it for ya.
But we can count our blessings now because all signs are go for the 2024-25 season. After a long and steady post-surgery rehab, Steve-o is in the final stages of his return-to-play protocol (to use the American vernacular). Most that rehab has been done on his own, either in America or back in Aotearoa, away from flashing cameras and needling microphones, and getting traded from Memphis to the Houston Rockets in amongst it all probably helped with that privacy too. The Memphis media aren’t bothered any more. The Houston media don’t know him yet.
That’s made the search for information about the whole thing into a borderline-mythical quest. Whenever he’d get asked about his knee during his very occasional public appearances, the story was always the same: yeah, progressing nicely, just gotta take it one day at a time. It wasn’t until Media Day that we finally got a more comprehensive update...
Steven Adams: “Readiness to play? It’s unrestricted, which is good, I just have to be smart with gameplay and stuff. Because its a two year process. But it doesn’t mean you can’t play, it just means you have to be careful going into it.”
In other words, maybe don’t expect him to play every back to back game this year. Certainly don’t expect him to play 30+ minutes each night like he used to in Oklahoma City... though that was never on the cards with the Rockets. They’ve brought him in to be a veteran leader off the bench. Someone to boost their second-unit, capable of starting when required, who’ll be a positive presence off the court, and help their superb 22yo Turkish centre Alperen Şengün get to the next level. But we’ll come back to that idea soon.
About a week or two before Media Day, there had been a few news pieces about the Rockets opening their flash new training facility. One of those included the following except...
“The Rockets have been using the facility since July. Every player worked out and scrimmaged there either last week or this week. That includes center Steven Adams, who missed all of last season following knee surgery. According to a person familiar with the workouts, Adams was not only cleared to be a full participant but was outstanding in last week’s games.”
Not just back, but back near his best. That’s what we wanna hear. The next milestone after that was going to be how he settled into preseason mode... and we can tick that off too. Adams got 14 minutes off the bench in a Houston’s preseason opener against the Utah Jazz. Four rebounds and one assist. Missed his only shot attempt, a floater from just below the free throw line which hit the rim twice but didn’t drop.
Being preseason, coach Ime Udoka used sixteen different players and they all got at least five mins. This was with a handful of others being rested too (Dillon Brooks, Tari Eason, Jeff Green, Jock Landale, and Thon Maker). There was some rust in how Adams played, no doubt about it. That was always going to be the case having spent a year and a half being unable to trust his knee. But when the first thing he did in a Houston Rockets jersey was to set an immovable screen to create an open three-pointer for Jalen Green it was clear that the cosmic forces were coming right again.
Grizzlies-Rockets Parallel
The Rockets traded for Steven Adams mid-way through last season despite knowing that he wasn’t going to be fit and available until the following campaign. Thankfully, the newsbreakers did make sure to point out that Houston did expect a full recovery – getting out in front of Memphis fans who might have seen this as their team unloading some broken goods. But this was always a move that was made to prioritise Now and not Then.
That tells you that they trusted the professionalism of Steven Adams through this rehab process... and it also tells you that they weren’t expecting last season to be the one. Four of their six most prominent players in 2023-24, in terms of minutes played, were aged 21 or younger: Jalen Green, Jabari Smith, Alperen Şengün, and Amen Thompson. All were either rookies or second-year dudes. This remains a very young team. It’s also an exciting team. In fact, it’s a team that has a lot in common with the Memphis Grizzlies when Steven Adams first arrived over there.
Those Grizzlies also had a great young core of fellas they’d drafted and nurtured, guys who were primed for an imminent breakthrough. The season before Adams turned up, they went 38-34. With Adams in place they went 56-26 to earn the second seed in the West, progressing to the Conference Semis. The Houston Rockets just went 41-41, improving massively on a 22-60 record the year prior. That wasn’t enough to get them into the playoffs (though if playoffs were the target then they’d have traded for a centre who would’ve actually helped them in the short-term), but playoffs will definitely be the intention in 2024-25. This is when the Adams acquisition begins to bear fruit, hopefully giving a boost to the natural progressions of the youthful talent around him and launching the Houston Rockets into orbit.
Ideally that flows into perennial championship contention... although that future is unlikely to include Adams. He’s more like an ally whose fate temporarily intersects with the team’s, helping them to the next level before going on his merry way (unless they give him an extension, in which case the whole situation changes). The thing is, ideals and reality are often a long way apart in the NBA and Steve-o could spin a yarn or two about that from those Memphis Grizzlies days. Instead of continuing upwards and upwards, that team stumbled into limitations with the coaching, limitations in their roster decisions, they copped plenty of bad luck with injuries to the point where you had to question whether it was actually bad luck or bad management, and above everything else they struggled with the maturity of those young superstars (*cough* Ja Morant *cough*). They might well get to the top of the mountain yet. But it definitely didn’t happen on straightforward path.
The Rockets are aiming to jump into the playoffs and they should do exactly that. All signs are positive. They’re shaping as a fascinating underdog in the west, capable of shocking more than a few fans and pundits. Might almost call them the best-kept secret in the league. But that next jump afterwards is the one that tripped up the Memphis Grizzlies. There are reasons to think the Rockets can avoid the same self-inflicted dramas but ultimately there’s only one way to find out. It’s going to be a funky wee parallel to track. Especially because it’s not only Steven Adams with the cautionary tales: his old Grizzlies teammate Dillon Brooks is on this team too.
Steven Adams’ Role in Houston
During media availability at a training session recently, Adams was asked about whether there’s been a change in his personal view of himself as a player now that he’s going to be coming off the bench. For some reason that’s been framed as a stupid question to have asked but actually for most NBA players it makes heaps of sense.
Egos are pretty prevalent in this competition. Hierarchies exist... and they’re not always going to be logical. Steven Adams has started 84% of his NBA games and almost all of those bench appearances came in his rookie season. There are many players out there who’d perceive a drop to the bench aged only 31 as a rank personal insult. For example, Steven Adams once played with a diminishing Carmelo Anthony in Oklahoma City, who was asked after a playoff elimination whether he’d be willing to come off the bench in the next season and this was his reply:
“I'm not sacrificing no bench role. So that's out of the question. I think everybody knows I've sacrificed damn near everything and was willing to sacrifice nearly everything for this situation to work out.”
He sacrificed damn near everything... except his own ego. Meanwhile, when Steven Adams was asked about whether he still sees himself as a starter there was no ego, no malice, no frustration, just pure honesty and reality...
“Well, no. I’m not starting. Mate, I’m a basketball player. There’s no, like, starter-fuckin’-bench... it’s just whoever [coach] thinks is best, that’s who plays.”
Assuming he returns as the player he was before the knee injury, Adams remains good enough to be a starter for a good portion of NBA teams. But he won’t have that honour at the Houston Rockets because Alperen Şengün is awesome. He scored 21.1 points per game last year shooting 53.7 from the field with 9.3 rebounds and 5.0 assists. He’s only getting better too. There’s a good chance he’s pushing close to All Star selection once the league gets to know him better.
Şengün has some injury history, so that’ll create some opportunities for Adams to start every now and then. There’s also scope for them to share the court since Şengün has been working hard on his three-point shot and has said he’s happy to play power forward when asked. Considering how active he is as a scorer, Şengün probably wouldn’t mind getting to defend out on the wing for a few spells rather than muscling up against seven-footers in the paint. That’s something we could very easily see. Plus there are probably going to be some staggered line-ups between the first and second units.
The Steven Adams formula is well established at this point. Adams may not be a shooter but he brings immense floor spacing through his screen game. You only need a small window to get a shot up and when you lock a screen down as well as Funaki does then that’s easy money. A scoring ball-handler like Jalen Green will be drooling over that potential – and their two-man game is going to be potent regardless of whoever else is on the court. It could be an absolute feast against opposition bench players. We’re probably looking at 15-20 minutes per night for Adams – not the worst thing given his ongoing knee management – but there will be games where that balance shifts in his favour depending on matchups.
Ever since his last year in OKC, but especially since he got to Memphis, Steven Adams has evolved into a spectacular passer for his position. He chips in with assists and not only from handoffs but also from genuinely creative passing, much of it emerging from his offensive rebounding. Because, yeah, he’s also the best offensive rebounder in the world. He’s got immense box out presence which means that his team grabs boards even if he doesn’t – from the year he became a starter in OKC (season two of his career), the Thunder led the NBA in offensive rebounds for five seasons in a row and were also top five in total rebounds in each of those years. His New Orleans Pelicans became the NBA’s offensive rebounds leaders in the term that Adams spent there (and were third in total rebounds), while his first year in Memphis saw the Grizzlies become both offensive and total rebound champs. He’s literally done this at every team he’s been part of.
The beautiful thing there is that you can simply drop Steven Adams onto the court and you know what he’s going to give you. Screens. Rebounds. Box outs. Sneaky passing. Great leadership. That last point is more relevant now than it’s ever been in his career. His coach wants it. His teammates need it. And unlike in Memphis, where Adams reportedly told a players-only meeting that everyone needed to knuckle down and behave better on road trips and then Ja Morant got caught waving a gun around at a strip club later that same trip, the Rockets prospects seem like they’ll actually listen to him.
The Contract Aspect
Something else to consider is that Steven Adams is on an expiring contract. He’s earning $12.6million this year and that’s a hefty salary but it’s not so big that most teams in need of a bruising centre wouldn’t be able to fit him in with a trade. Doubtful that Adams would push for anything. The lure of being a starter somewhere else wouldn’t necessarily be the thing for him, it’d be more about overall smoothness of fit and winning basketball. These are the things he cares about.
Of course, with a reputation like his he doesn’t have to go searching because the trades will come to him. It’s up to the Rockets whether they want to accept anything, whether they plan on extending him, or if they’d even be willing to lose him for nothing in order to have as much of a swing this season as possible. It’s a pretty significant situation bubbling under the surface. It’s just that nothing can happen until everyone’s seen him log a few sustained months of typical Steven Adams production post-injury. Buyers gotta know what they’re bidding for.
Aussies, Aussies, Aussies
Steven Adams didn’t play the Rockets’ second preseason game... but Jack McVeigh did. Jack McVeigh, the reigning Finals MVP in the Australian NBL (where his general manager was Steven Adams’ basketball idol Mika Vukona), is with Houston on a two-way deal and has already transferred his penchant for clutch shooting to America... hitting a late jumper to force overtime against the OKC Thunder. McVeigh probably won’t get too many opportunities during the actual NBA, though this will surely have helped his cause.
He’s not the only Australian on this roster either. Jock Landale was already there as a back-up big. He’ll probably see his minutes shrink now that Tips is in town, except maybe on those back-to-backs when Adams potentially rests. But he’s around and he’s digging the company...
Jock Landale: “I mean, they’re two blokes that are starting centers, plain and simple, Steven and Alpi. That’s an interesting dynamic for sure. You look at where we’re at, I believe I’m one of the best backups in the NBA. And fortunately, we have three of us that are pretty damn good. I have no problem saying that they’re two steps ahead of me. If you look around the league, we are a problem at that position comparatively. I think the Rockets have put together a phenomenal center spot.”
Additionally, they just signed Thon Maker to a short-term deal to audition him during preseason. Maker was born in South Sudan but grew up in Australia and has represented them internationally (he was denied a transfer to play for South Sudan at the Paris Olympics).
That makes three Australians currently under contract alongside the NBA’s only New Zealander. A funky Anzac connection that’s made even funkier by the fact that Steven Adams has never shared the court with an Australian teammate in the National Basketball Association. During a full decade in the league, at a time when more Aussies are making it to the big time than ever before, Steve-o has only ever even had one Australian teammate and that was Will Magnay in the New Orleans Pelicans season. Magnay had a two-way contract and he played one game. It was a blowout win against the Los Angeles Lakers in March 2021 and Magnay subbed in for Adams with about three minutes remaining... ensuring that the two never overlapped. 706 games in the NBA and he’s never had to pass the ball to, or set a screen for, an Australian. It would seem that’s about to change... although maybe not because Maker might not be signed, McVeigh is only on a two-way, and Landale plays the same position as Adams so they’re unlikely to overlap. We shall see how it goes.
A Few Other Things...
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