The Houston Rockets are trading Victor Oladipo to the Miami Heat, a source told ESPN's Adrian Wojnarowski on Thursday. The Rockets will acquire Avery Bradley, Kelly Olynyk and 2022 first-round swap rights that include the Brooklyn Nets' pick.
How does Oladipo change Miami's ceiling? And how did the Rockets do in the deal?
Kevin Pelton hands out trade grades for both teams.
The deal
Heat get: Victor Oladipo
Rockets get: Avery Bradley, Kelly Olynyk and 2022 first-round swap rights
Get more trade grades from Pelton here
Miami Heat: A-
After a severe injury (a quadriceps tendon rupture that sidelined him more than a year) and a disjointed return, it's difficult to know what to make of Oladipo's game at this point. He's played just 48 games in the 14 months since his return, broken up by the NBA's stoppage of play for the COVID-19 pandemic a month later and a trade to Houston in January.
It's worth noting, too, that Oladipo's level of production in 2017-18, when he won Most Improved Player honors and was voted to the All-NBA Third Team, is unlike any in his career before or since. (The before part being somewhat less surprising given his age.) It was the only season where Oladipo, 28, has posted a true shooting percentage (TS%) better than league average, and since then he's largely been a volume scorer with a TS% about 10% worse than league average.
The optimistic perspective is that Oladipo has simply been asked to do too much, particularly on a Rockets team starved for shot creation following the departure of James Harden in the trade that brought Oladipo to Houston. With point guard John Wall in and out of the lineup over the past two months, Oladipo has frequently been asked to run the offense and sported a usage rate (30%) with the Rockets equivalent to his breakout campaign.
In large part, Oladipo's 3-point percentage has been crushed by the number of off-the-dribble attempts he's taken (3.9 per game). Oladipo makes those at just a 29% clip, according to NBA Advanced Stats, as compared to an above-average 39% of his 3.6 catch-and-shoot 3s per game. That shouldn't be the same issue with the Heat, who already have plenty of other shot creators in Jimmy Butler, Goran Dragic, Tyler Herro and Kendrick Nunn. Oladipo can play a more complementary role.
Ultimately, Miami gave up relatively little in this trade. Olynyk has started at power forward all season and the Heat have been much better with him on the court, but it's tough to trace that to his production. Olynyk has slumped from 3-point range (32%, down from 36.5% career) and is posting his lowest true shooting percentage (.549) since his rookie season.
Between the recent additions of Trevor Ariza and Nemanja Bjelica and the possibility of signing LaMarcus Aldridge after a buyout, Miami should easily be able to replace Olynyk's minutes. Meanwhile, Bradley has barely played this season due to injuries, seeing action in just 10 games. Because the Rockets have the option to swap the Nets' first-round pick in 2022 for the Heat's, that's the biggest cost here. Still, Miami can reasonably hope that's only a matter of a few spots in the 20s.
At this price, the Heat don't have to feel obligated to re-sign Oladipo if things don't work out the rest of the season. They can decline team options on Dragic and Andre Iguodala and renounce the rights to their free agents, including Oladipo, to create nearly $30 million in cap space -- enough to make a run at Kyle Lowry, who wasn't traded by the Toronto Raptors before the deadline. Alternatively, Miami could stay over the cap and bring back a similar group using Bird rights. As usual, the Heat have made sure to leave themselves plenty of options after an active week.
Houston Rockets: B
The bigger question for the Rockets is less whether it made sense to grab whatever value they could for Oladipo, an unrestricted free agent this summer, and more if they should have just kept Caris LeVert instead of swapping him for Oladipo as part of the Harden trade. (Houston also sent the Indiana Pacers a 2023 second-round pick as part of that trade after LeVert was diagnosed with renal cell carcinoma during his mandatory physical.)
This way, the Rockets ended up with more cap flexibility. Both Olynyk and Bradley, who has a $5.9 million team option for 2021-22, can function as expiring contracts for Houston. LeVert is under contract for a combined $36-plus million over the next two seasons. Still, that's a reasonable contract, and it seems probable the Rockets could have done just as well trying to trade LeVert at the deadline as Oladipo.
For now, Houston will have to hope for Miami to have a difficult 2021-22 season, which would allow them to swap up from the Nets' pick likely to fall at the end of the first round to one from the Heat with additional upside.