{"id":359401,"date":"2026-07-03T01:47:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T01:47:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/359401\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T01:47:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T01:47:08","slug":"rockets-keep-forward-tari-eason-on-five-year-81-million-contract","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/359401\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockets keep forward Tari Eason on five-year, $81 million contract"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Houston Rockets<\/a> locked up another member of their young core to a long-term contract Thursday. Houston and forward Tari Eason<\/a> agreed to terms on a five-year, $81 million fully guaranteed contract, according to a person with knowledge of the agreement.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 25-year-old Eason, who was a restricted free agent, was drafted by Houston with the 17th pick of the 2022 draft and has grown into an impactful two-way contributor. He played 60 games last season, starting 34, and averaged 10.5 points, 6.3 rebounds and 1.2 steals per game. Eason is one of the keys to Houston’s offensive rebounding dominance. He was in the 90th percentile among NBA wings in offensive rebounding percentage last season, per Cleaning the Glass.<\/p>\n

Eason has struggled with injuries during his career. After playing 82 games in his first season, he dealt with lower leg injuries that limited him to just 79 combined across the next two seasons. Hip and ankle injuries kept him out of the lineup at times last season. He was also an inconsistent shooter, despite finishing with a 35.8% mark from deep. Eason made 46% from deep before the All-Star break and 21.8% after it.<\/p>\n

Re-signing Eason pushes Houston into the first apron, bringing with it some team-building restrictions such as not being allowed to use the bi-annual exception or acquire players via sign-and-trade.<\/p>\n

But re-signing Eason to a $16.3 million annual average salary should yield value for the Rockets, especially as some around the NBA wondered if the forward could receive more than $20 million on the open market.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Houston and the forward could not come to an agreement<\/a> on a rookie-scale extension a year ago, which led to Eason hitting restricted free agency. The Rockets, per ESPN<\/a>, offered Eason a contract worth more than $100 million but with uncertain amounts of guaranteed money. The $81.5M in guaranteed money exceeded the guaranteed money in the deal Houston offered in October, per ESPN.<\/p>\n

Shortly before the deal was first reported by ESPN, Eason tweeted: “I guess bruh” with a shrugging emoji.<\/p>\n

Eason joins Alperen \u015eeng\u00fcn, Jalen Green (who was later traded) and Jabari Smith Jr. as recent Rockets draft picks who agreed to extensions with Houston.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Houston Rockets locked up another member of their young core to a long-term contract Thursday. Houston and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":354707,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[56,58,57],"class_list":["post-359401","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\/359401","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=359401"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359401\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/354707"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359401"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359401"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359401"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}