Houston Rockets point guard Fred VanVleet’s season may be over before it even begins as reports out of Texas indicate that he’s currently dealing with a torn ACL.
VanVleet agreed to a 2 year, $50M contract extension in June, which features a player option for the 2026-27 season, so contractually he is set. However the injury deals a massive blow to a Rockets squad that had championship aspirations heading into the season.
The 31 year old has been a huge reason why the club has been able to turn things around from a lottery team to a roster that won 52 games and secured the #2 seed in the West last year. The gritty guard averaged 14.1pts/3.7reb/5.6ast/1.6stl per contest in 2024-25, helping Houston to return to the postseason for the first time since 2019-2020.
The Rockets were one of the favourites to emerge from the ultra-competitive Western Conference following the blockbuster 7 team trade that saw them acquire Kevin Durant in the offseason. With FVV now out of the picture, potentially for the year, it remains to be seen how the club will navigate their gaping hole at point guard.
Under normal circumstances, the team could apply for a disabled player exception. However, because of the new salary cap structure, the team is currently hard-capped at the first apron, with only $1.25M in space to navigate that threshold. As a result, it’s highly unlikely they’ll be able to add a 15th player via the exception in the near future.
While this may force the team to make a cost saving move in the lead up to opening night via trade, for the moment it appears as though Reed Sheppard, Aaron Holiday or even Amen Thompson could see an uptick in ball handling duties.
The Rockets have yet to publicly comment on the severity of the injury or provide any kind of rehabilitation timeline. A typical ACL tear (if it was a clean one) sports a 6-12 month return to play if surgery is required. If however VanVleet had a partial tear, and is able to avoid surgery, he could be back on the court in roughly 3 months time.
Whatever the outcome, this is far from the news that Rockets fans were hoping to hear before the season even begins.
Photo: Erik Drost. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic license.