Houston Rockets<\/a> currently don\u2019t have a pick until Wednesday\u2019s second round of the 2026 NBA draft. Here\u2019s everything you need to know about the draft and the Rockets’ options.<\/p>\nThe first round of the NBA draft starts at 7 p.m. Tuesday and will be broadcast on ABC and\u00a0ESPN.<\/p>\n
The league expanded the draft to a two-day event in 2024. Wednesday\u2019s second round will start at the same time and will only be broadcast on ESPN.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re outside the United States and Canada, you can stream the draft on NBA League Pass.<\/p>\n
Houston has the 39th and 53rd picks in the draft.<\/p>\n
It is unlikely, but not impossible, that a player picked in this range contributes to Houston\u2019s squad next year. The learning curve in the NBA is steep and opportunities could be sparse on a Rockets team that has moved from a developmental phrase to a competitive one.<\/p>\n
The Rockets traded away their 2026 first-round pick, No. 22, in a 2019 deal with the Oklahoma City Thunder that swapped Chris Paul and Russell Westbrook.<\/p>\n
The Thunder then traded the pick to the Philadelphia 76ers for Jared McCain.<\/p>\n
The Washington Wizards secured the first pick in May\u2019s draft lottery. The Utah Jazz and Memphis Grizzlies slot in at second and third, respectively.<\/p>\n
BYU wing AJ Dybantsa, Kansas guard Darryn Peterson and Duke forward Cameron Boozer are the consensus top three options\u00a0\u2014 but it remains unclear who will go with the top pick.<\/p>\n
Guard Kingston Flemings is projected as a lottery pick, and\u00a0 center\/forward Chris Cenac could go anywhere from the end of the lottery to late first round. Both are in New York for the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The NBA offseason kicks off in earnest Tuesday evening with the first round of the draft. The Houston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":346872,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-346871","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346871","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=346871"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/346871\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/346872"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=346871"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=346871"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=346871"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}