{"id":359556,"date":"2026-07-03T04:34:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:34:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/359556\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T04:34:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T04:34:11","slug":"sources-eason-to-return-to-rockets-on-5-year-81-5m-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/359556\/","title":{"rendered":"Sources: Eason to return to Rockets on 5-year, $81.5M deal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao MvWXB TjIXL aGjvy ebVHC \">Restricted free agent <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/player\/_\/id\/4433192\/tari-eason\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Tari Eason<\/a> has agreed to a five-year, $81.5 million deal to return to the <a class=\"zZygg UbGlr iFzkS qdXbA WCDhQ DbOXS tqUtK GpWVU iJYzE \" data-testid=\"prism-linkbase\" href=\"https:\/\/www.espn.com\/nba\/team\/_\/name\/hou\/houston-rockets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\">Houston Rockets<\/a>, sources told ESPN&#8217;s Shams Charania on Thursday.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The deal is fully guaranteed.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The Rockets selected Eason in 2022 with the 17th pick in the draft, and the 25-year-old played a career-high 25 minutes per game last season, which included 60 games and 34 starts. He averaged 10.5 points, 6.3 rebounds and 1.2 steals. One of Houston&#8217;s top wing defenders, Eason has bounced back over the past two seasons after missing significant time during his second year in the NBA due to a lower left leg injury that raised questions about his durability.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">That likely played a role in the failed negotiations between the sides going into last season. Houston made a significant offer during the negotiations, sources said, but Eason&#8217;s side wanted more guaranteed money in the deal.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC TjIXL aGjvy \">The sides couldn&#8217;t reach an agreement on an extension before the deadline in October, making Eason a restricted free agent and giving Houston the right to match any offer made by another team in free agency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"EkqkG IGXmU nlgHS yuUao lqtkC eTIW sUzSN \">Eason earned $5.7 million in 2025-26 in the final team option year of his rookie contract and played well for the Rockets in the playoffs, raising his scoring average to 12.8 points on 47.7% shooting.br\/]<\/p>\n<p>Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Restricted free agent Tari Eason has agreed to a five-year, $81.5 million deal to return to the Houston&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":51167,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[127752,28939,7000,56,58,57,4854,3080,223],"class_list":["post-359556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-houston","tag-127752","tag-eason-tari","tag-espn","tag-houston","tag-houston-headlines","tag-houston-news","tag-houston-rockets","tag-nba","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359556","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=359556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/51167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}