Report: Rockets eyeing Durant, Horford, Whiteside, Anderson in free agency
After a bitterly disappointing season, the Houston Rockets are in on everybody in free agency.
Not only are they going after Kevin Durant - with Durant's former teammate, James Harden purportedly leading the charge - they're keeping a close eye on pretty much every other top-line frontcourt player set to hit the open market.
On top of Durant, the Rockets are looking at free-agent centers Al Horford and Hassan Whiteside, and power forward Ryan Anderson, a source told ESPN's Calvin Watkins.
In case the existing mountain of evidence wasn't convincing enough, this seems like another pretty clear indication that Dwight Howard is not in the franchise's plans moving forward.
Howard, Horford, and Whiteside are the top three centers on the market, but Howard appears to have worn out his welcome in Houston, after a dour season in which he was the subject of bad locker-room buzz and constant trade rumors.
If the Rockets want to keep experimenting with the two-big lineups that bore some fruit last season, Horford can easily slide to the four, and would be an interesting fit alongside Clint Capela. Anderson represents a great floor-spacing option in the frontcourt, and could be a major beneficiary of Harden's playmaking, but he doesn't do anything to solve the team's defensive issues.
Whiteside is a pretty good Howard facsimile, only three years younger and with some 31,000 fewer NBA minutes on his odometer.
And if they can somehow find a way to land Durant, everything else is moot.