Royce White has twice refused an assignment to the D-League, citing a lack of support by the Rockets

Dear Royce,

In your very brief time with the Rockets, you’ve become quite a polarizing figure. You’ve managed to incite a lot of anger, expose a good deal of bias and ignorance both in the media and the working profession and alienate nearly an entire fan base.

Let me preface this by saying I am 28 years old. I have a wife and children. I have also suffered from anxiety and depression for the past 10 years. I’ve been told there are medical reasons for this, and I understand the general American public’s perceptions about medical conditions being used as a “crutch.”

I like your cause, and I support it fully. You don’t know how many times I’ve heard, “Well just let *insert deity* take care of it” or “Everybody has problems, you just have to learn to cope with them and deal with them like the rest of us do.” Mental Illness does not have a simple fix nor is it easy to cope with. It is a battle every day for the rest of your life.

This is clearly your mission, your passion and your obsession, a fact you have made readily apparent to your 140,000 followers on Twitter. Your tweets shift from honesty and claims of needing understanding to re-tweets from well-wishers and those who blast you. To those people, you simply tell them to “#BeWell”.

Royce, there is no one out there who doesn’t want you to be well, especially the fans.

We saw glimpses of your basketball potential during the Summer League games and in the preseason. Some of us are still convinced that you could be a revolutionary player that could change the game, but few of us are still convinced you actually want to play basketball anymore.

In the grand scheme of things, your “mission” is more important than a game we play, but what fuels the backlash against you is more than your dreamy-headed tweets or anxiety. You have a built-in support system, something many others do not have access to, but you haven’t taken advantage of it. You’ve stuck to your guns and refused to concede any points. You’ve made it all about the crusade so much so that you mentioned the Sandy Hook Elementary tragedy in your recent press release, which has been seen by many as an insensitive attempt to draw attention to yourself.

Your attempts at transparency are causing you to be eaten alive in the court of public opinion. It is getting harder for your supporters to stay on your bandwagon. If you want us to see your transparency on Twitter as a way to understand your point of view, then you must also be willing to reciprocate by seeing our point of view as well.

When the average fan places his set of values onto your situation, he sees himself bending over backwards to do what it takes to play basketball in the NBA. It’s fine to be a guy who speaks his mind, as long as you do all the things required of any other professional. Look no further than Arian Foster as an example of a talented football player who still manages to keep it real on his Twitter account and his life. His pursuit of intellectual and creative endeavors enriches his personality and makes us like him more despite his idiosyncrasies.

The harsh truth is that we don’t always get exactly what we want out of life. Sometimes compromises have to be made. Sometimes you have to concede a point or two. Sometimes, you have to stop playing the victim and understand the other side as badly as you want your side to be understood.

You demand progress for yourself and others, and we applaud that. But you also demand to be put above the team, above the profession, above the needs of any others, and then it appears that you are the one that is lost above the clouds. You have a lot of people depending on you and there is a lot at stake. You playing basketball is not just about basketball as a game. It is about showing that a man can create a fairer set of rules for himself. In order to do that, you must first prove you will work just as hard as everyone else.

Your move, Royce.

This could be something beautiful for the game and for humanity.

You could be the catalyst.

Sincerely,

- A Rockets Fan

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Chandler Parsons quickly became a quality starter, making his contract one of the NBA's best bargains

When Chandler Parsons suits up for the Houston Rockets against the New Orleans Hornets/Pelicans on January 2, he’ll be doing so as a richer man than he was the game before.

Why, you ask?  Well, it’s one of several aspects of Parsons’s contract that are either misunderstood or simply unknown by most Rockets fans.

Hence, the following is an analysis of one of the more interesting player contracts in the NBA today.
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Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. A big Texans win in Detroit was hopefully accompanied by family, friends and good food. It’s a day of reflection and gratitude, and that goes for the Rockets as well.

So here are 5 things that happened over the last year that were despised at the time, but today we can give thanks for these blessings in disguise.
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Wow.

James Harden, playing in his Houston Rockets debut after just two days of practice, exploded for 37 points, dished 12 assists, grabbed 6 rebounds and picked 4 steals in a 105-96 win over the Pistons on Halloween night. It was an eye-popping start for the Rockets’ $80 million man.

Two things really drew my attention.

First, Harden’s elite-level ability to attack the basket. He showed tremendous quickness and zero fear in going to the cup. As the highlights video shows, he did it time after time after time. Before his debut I was a bit embarrassed in saying that Harden reminded me of a young Dwyane Wade, usually adding “a poor man’s” or “similar to” as a qualifier, but in simply his ability and willingness to penetrate, he does remind you a bit of Wade (or a Manu Ginobili).

Secondly, his passing ability. As Rudy T would say, “Kapaya!” Harden was lethal in the pick-and-roll and multiple times would thread bounce passes through traffic to a cutting teammate. 12 assists in his first outing when he barely knows his teammates — the game is in his blood.

That was the most excited I’ve been watching a Rockets game since the 2009 playoffs, and I don’t think it’s even close. Granted, the half dozen Twix bars I downed may have contributed to the energy level, but that was reminiscent of watching an early years Steve Francis, a newly acquired Tracy McGrady or a rookie Yao Ming in his 20 point breakout game against the Lakers.

The game has absolutely changed. There’s a future again in Houston.

This is not about now — the Rockets may surprise and compete for the playoffs this year in a deep Western Conference or they may not — but rather how Harden changes everything moving forward. You now have a piece, a legitimate untouchable on your roster. A 23-year old guard, capable of putting up 37 points, unselfish in his style of play, loved by his teammates and now locked in for six years, is going to be a magnet.

You need a star to get a star — that’s the reality of today’s NBA. The Rockets, miraculously, found a shortcut and now have one. They now sport a backcourt with potentially ten+ years ahead of them that is arguably the league’s most marketable right now, playing in a diverse city with no state income taxes and warm weather. Did I mention there’s a maximum contract slot soon to be available? I strongly suspect the stigma that has plagued the Rockets the past few years is ancient history and young, up-and-coming players could now eye Houston as a top NBA location for the coming years.

Credit Daryl Morey, Sam Hinkie, Gersson Rosas and the Rockets’ front office. They stuck to their guns, even when their approach got heavier criticism after amnestying Luis Scola, selling off quality players for draft picks and falling short in their pursuit of Dwight Howard.

As we talked about in the podcast yesterday, the team’s offseason consisted of signing three key acquisitions, Harden, Jeremy Lin and Omer Asik, to contract amounts that their previous playoff teams were unwilling or unable to give because of their limited roles with those teams.

“$25 million to a guy for two weeks of Linsanity?”

“$25 million to a backup center?”

“$80 million to a sixth man? LOL!”

Asik was playing behind one of the league’s best defensive centers in Joakim Noah. Harden was behind two top ten players in Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook. With each addition, most notably Asik and Harden, the plan was an increased role and responsibility in Houston. It’s quite possible that at the end of the year, some if not all of those contracts, criticized by many at the time, will look like good values.

And in the case of Harden, I must confess — I’ve long believed that the Moreyball approach of finding underutilized value is the correct one when you have a superstar or two and you need to maximize quality around them in a league where salary management is king. The Rockets executed this very well in the original Kyle Lowry trade, where Lowry was stuck as a third string point guard on the Grizzlies, and the Luis Scola trade, where the Spurs couldn’t quite pay Luis to bring him in from overseas.

But a superstar? A 12-year old fan could spot them. It’s just a matter of wooing them, which is difficult for anyone.

Maybe I was wrong. Without a doubt, everyone in the league knew that Harden was a very good player and I wouldn’t even hint otherwise, but he was coming off the pine in OKC whereas Morey and company brought him here to take center stage and be the alpha dog. There’s a difference. Is it possible that the Rockets front office used their same approach to find underappreciated value to actually identify a true superstar?

Hey, one game against the paltry Pistons does not a superstar make, so time will tell, but the buzz right now? That’s unmistakable.

Things are changing in Houston.

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