Houston Rockets guard Marcus Smart poses for a photo during Rockets Media Day in Houston, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
Houston Rockets guard Marcus Smart poses for a photo during Rockets Media Day in Houston, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
Houston Rockets guard Marcus Smart poses for a photo during Rockets Media Day in Houston, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
Houston Rockets guard Marcus Smart poses for a photo during Rockets Media Day in Houston, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
Houston Rockets guard Marcus Smart poses for a photo during Rockets Media Day in Houston, Tuesday, Sept. 22, 2026.
Brett Coomer/Houston Chronicle
Marcus Smart always had a feeling that when he got deeper into his career, he’d try and come home.
After spending almost all of his first 12 NBA seasons on either the East or West Coast, the Flower Mound, Texas, native achieved that goal ahead of the 13th by signing a two-year, $12.4 million contract with the Houston Rockets with a player option in the second year.
Smart told The Chronicle that he chose Houston — where he has cousins, extended family and family friends — despite getting a bigger offer from the Los Angeles Lakers, with whom he played the 2025-26 season. At the same time, Smart said the Lakers offer, which he declined to specify, was “disrespectful.”
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“First off, I played so well that the offer that was ultimately given didn’t match the way that I played,” he said, “especially when you see guys who played way worse than I did, the offers they’re getting. And then it wasn’t any security that we wanted that they were willing to do.”
Los Angeles reshaped its team with a spending spree in free agency. According to The Athletic, Los Angeles gave out “nearly $480 million over 26 combined contract years, including four player options, to a group of players who have zero combined All-Star appearances or year-end awards.”
That included two years and $19.2 million for guard Collin Sexton, four years and $60 million for wing Quentin Grimes and four years and $52 million for wing/big Sandro Mamukelashvili — all three received player options.
Last offseason, Smart signed a two year, $10.5 million deal with a player option to join the Lakers. He was a reliable contributor across 62 regular season games, averaging 9.3 points, three assists and 1.4 steals per game. He hit a new level in 10 playoff games — including six against the Rockets — averaging 12.9 points, 5.1 assists and 2.4 steals per game.
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The predictive metric DARKO, which tries to estimate player performance using box score, on-off and tracking statistics, put Smart in the 90th percentile of all players and said he was worth $29.9 million in salary.
That makes his $6.5 million salary with the Rockets a steal.
“They gave me an opportunity to be able to go out and try to get what I’ve earned,” Smart said, “and what I’ve been working my tail off to provide for my family is a decent-sized paycheck with obviously years on it, right? Or a big paycheck with less years, but to be able to have that option.”
In addition to returning home, another draw for Smart was reuniting with Rockets coach Ime Udoka. The two overlapped during Udoka’s lone season leading the Boston Celtics — Smart won the Defensive Player of the Year. He said Udoka’s coaching techniques are unique in the NBA and informed by his playing career. Udoka understands what it takes to succeed in the NBA and can bring the best out of players because nothing is sugarcoated.
Smart, speaking at Houston’s first training camp practice Wednesday, said he and Udoka were a perfect fit. The coach concurred.
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“He’s everything I’m all about and vice-versa,” Udoka said.
Smart said the Rockets and the young Celtics teams he came up with are very similar. Both are overachieving squads that entered the playoffs with lofty expectations — but then had to learn how to function without their stars, Boston doing so with Kyrie Irving and Gordon Hayward injured, and Houston doing the same last season with Kevin Durant.
“You got some games where you should have won that you end up losing… now your confidence drops a little bit,” he said. “But everything is for a reason, right? You have to go through those battles, those storms, to get to the land.”
Smart and Udoka didn’t get to the land with the Celtics. Both were ousted from Boston by the time the team won the 2024 NBA title. Together again, they’ll try to reach that goal with Houston, with Smart trying to win near home.
“I’m from Texas,” he said. “… I get to represent in Texas. ‘
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Rockets feel overlooked
The Rockets are ramping up cautiously at the start of training camp in an effort to avoid soft-tissue injuries. Udoka said the first day of camp was about setting the tone for what Houston wants to be this season.
Part of that message? The coach feels like the Rockets are being overlooked and made sure they knew it.
“We played on opening night last year,” he said. “We played on Christmas last year. So, that says it.”
Houston is playing on neither, this season.
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What could aid offense?
The Rockets’ offense, despite finishing with a top 10 offensive rating, at times seemed stagnant and gummed up at points last season. Houston was 19th in points per play in the halfcourt, per Cleaning the Glass, and often struggled with turnovers.
“Good basketball is body movement, player movement, sharing the ball,” said point guard Fred VanVleet, who missed all of last season with a torn ACL. “You gotta have some sets and things for late game and getting into your actions… but just looked a little disjointed, looked like we didn’t have a point guard last year, so you hope that alleviates some of the problems.”
Without VanVleet, last year’s Rockets turned to young talents Reed Sheppard and Amen Thompson to fill the role and it came with expected growing pains. Udoka said the duo at times thought rather than reacting and playing and that the pick and rolls weren’t as crisp as they were in previous seasons.
VanVleet also pointed to how Houston didn’t know how to play together last season with some new pieces — namely Durant — in the mix. The Rockets had to learn each other.
“It’s not pretty when it’s on national TV all the time,” he said. “But you got to go through those moments, and I’m confident that it’ll look better this year.”
Udoka also pointed to Houston’s pace an issue — the Rockets were 29th in the league in the percentage of their plays that started in transition, per Cleaning the Glass.
“You don’t have to be number one,” he said, “but you’d like to be at least middle of the pack.: