Following a 52-win season in 2014-25, Houston Rockets are poised to follow up their breakthrough year with something even better. That’s largely due to the blockbuster offseason addition of all-time great Kevin Durant, who they managed to attain by trading defensive anchor Dillon Brooks, 2021 No. 1 pick Jalen Green and the 10th overall pick in the 2025 NBA Draft to the Phoenix Suns.
A four-time scoring champion, Durant’s perimeter offense will help address the one major weakness the Rockets had last season. This should be especially impactful for them in the playoffs with defenses tightening the screws. Still, they’re going to need all the hustle, ferocity and athleticism that got them to the postseason in the first place. All those qualities are best exemplified by a player who just so happens to be the sixth man in the rotation.
Rockets 2025-26 Predictions: Tari Eason A Sixth Man Contender
Tari Eason, drafted 17th overall by the Rockets in 2022, was the perfect physical embodiment of what his team wanted to accomplish last season. Putting the numbers into focus, he averaged 12.0 points, 6.4 rebounds, 1.5 assists, 1.7 steals, and 0.9 blocks. That’s a decent representation of who he is as a player.
He can score a bit, crash the boards, and disrupt opponents’ game plans with his defense.
However, so much of what Eason gives the Rockets can’t be expressed by box score numbers. The intensity that Eason plays with is a coach’s dream. There are subtle statistical hints of this trait, such as his 3.2 offensive rebounds per 36 minutes. Yet, when actually watching Eason on the court, there’s nothing discreet about it.
Eason is always in attack mode, focusing on getting in the paint every chance he gets. That’s with the ball or without the ball. Even while the ball is already in the air, he’s ready to hunt down an offensive rebound. At the defensive end, he’s so assertive that every pass and dribble is vulnerable. If there’s a shot being attempted anywhere in his vicinity, he’ll go after that too.
‘The Terror Twins’
Eason’s tenacity requires him to have a supercharged battery. His style of play also injects a lot of energy into the game, oftentimes more than opponents can keep up with. That’s especially true if those opponents are one-dimensional reserves. For all those reasons, he’s perfectly suited for his afterburner bench role.
Eason started just 16 of his 57 games last season. Early in the season, he came in as part of a reserve duo with rising star Amen Thompson, the duo’s menacing defense leading to them being nicknamed “the Terror Twins.” Thompson inevitably became a full-time starter as the season wore on but Houston could still give their opponents 48 minutes of defensive hell because of Eason.
The Rockets retaining that defensive identity will be key next season. The team didn’t add Durant for free this offseason. They didn’t get to swap him straight up for the intermittently incandescent Green either. They also gave up Brooks, the team’s vaunted culture-setter. Eason could be the one stepping into the role as Houston’s secretary of state next season.
6MOY Competition
The Sixth Man of the Year award race is typically rife with score-first guards. In all likelihood, just one such player will triumph in that race again next season.
Last year’s winner, Boston Celtics guard Payton Pritchard, will likely be out of the running . Following the trade of Jrue Holiday, the Oregon product is on a trail that could lead to a starting role. There’s no guarantee that 2025 Sixth Man of the Year runner-up Malik Beasley will be a serious contender again, either. Nevertheless, there are always more score-first guards (much to the contractual chagrin of Brooklyn Nets restricted free agent Cam Thomas).
In Houston’s frontcourt-heavy rotation, Eason may be the closest thing to a playmaker coming off the bench. That could help him, as long as he isn’t overburdened by the responsibilities of being a decision-maker and table-setter. Any improvement in his outside shooting would go a long way to changing perceptions about him as well. He only managed to drop in 34.2 percent of his 3s last season but nailed 38.9 percent of his catch-and-shoot 3s in the playoffs.
He’s probably never going to be the quintessential scoring sixth man. If he can pile more points on top of his wrecking ball, all-terrain game though, he could score more points with voters.
With that in mind, he will have a much more important hurdle to overcome than stereotyping. He’ll have to meet the pesky minimum games played requirement (65 games). Rather injury-prone, he was eight games short of that mark in 2024-25 after playing just 22 games total the season prior. Ergo, the voters will need a healthy Eason to give him more than honorable mentions in awards discussions.
The Last Word On Tari Eason Winning Sixth Man Of The Year
One of the most compelling factors in Eason’s Sixth Man of the Year case would be a strong regular-season record. If the Rockets can meet the lofty expectations and be one of the league’s best teams in 2025-26, then voters will be looking for anybody in the organization to give awards to. That’s just the general nature of NBA awards voting.
That being said, your culture-setter start the game in a sixth-man role might be a problem for some teams. But those teams don’t have sixth men like Tari Eason.
Eason could be a beneficiary of this, taking home a nice piece of hardware. What he definitely won’t be doing is changing how he plays, trying to chase the win. Instead, expect Eason to carry on being exactly who he’s always been – a hellacious havoc merchant with a sixth sense for the ball.
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