The Rockets Opened the NBA's First Camp With Durant at 38 and Fred VanVleet Back From an ACL Tear

The Houston Rockets opened the NBA's 2026-27 calendar on Tuesday, holding the league's first media day a week ahead of the other 28 teams because of their trip to Macao for the China Games against Dallas on October 9 and 11. The rest of the league holds media days on September 28 with camps opening September 29.

Houston enters the season as a team with a win-now mandate and very little roster turnover, which is exactly the kind of situation fantasy drafters misprice. Continuity is boring. It is also the most reliable predictor of early-season role stability, and roles are what fantasy basketball actually trades in.

Kevin Durant at 38

Durant turns 38 this season and is still expected to lead Houston in scoring by a wide margin. His production stayed in line with his career norms last season, which is the remarkable part: most forwards in their late 30s have already fallen off a cliff, and Durant's game, built on shooting touch and size rather than on explosion, has aged better than almost any comparable player's.

The fantasy calculus on Durant has never been about per-game production. It has always been about games played. A drafter taking him in the first two rounds is buying elite per-game value with a meaningful chance of missing 15 to 25 games, and the correct roster construction around that pick is depth at his positions rather than another high-usage star.

The Rockets have every incentive to manage his minutes and rest him on back-to-backs, especially in a season that begins with a trip to Macao. Expect load management language early, and expect the market to overreact to the first missed game.

Amen Thompson is the leap candidate

Thompson averaged roughly 18 points, eight rebounds, five assists and a steal and a half per game last season and signed a reported five-year, $208 million extension this offseason. That is a contract that tells a fantasy manager everything about intended role: Houston is paying him like a foundational piece, which means the usage is coming.

Thompson is the most valuable player on this roster in category leagues, not Durant. The combination of rebounds and assists from a wing position, plus steals, plus a defensive role that keeps him on the floor in every situation, is the profile that wins nine-category leagues. His weakness is free throw shooting and outside volume, which is a solvable problem through roster construction.

Drafters should treat him as a second-round value with first-round upside and should be willing to reach.

The VanVleet question

Fred VanVleet missed all of last season with a torn ACL suffered before training camp and is expected back as the starting point guard at 32. Houston never replaced his ballhandling, and the team's inconsistency without an established primary creator was the story of last season.

Point guards returning from ACL surgery at that age are a genuine fantasy risk. The recovery timeline for the injury is well understood, but the recovery of lateral quickness and the explosiveness required to create separation off the dribble is less predictable, and a 32-year-old guard whose game depends on getting to spots is a different projection than a 24-year-old.

The upside case is that VanVleet does not need to be what he was. Houston needs organization, spacing and a steady hand in crunch time, and all three survive a step of athletic decline. His assist numbers should be solid. His scoring efficiency is the number to watch in October.

Sengun, Sheppard and the rotation crunch

Alperen Sengun returns with his role essentially unchanged and should continue producing as one of the most valuable centers in fantasy, with the points, rebounds and assists combination that makes a big man a first-or-second-round pick in category formats. Steven Adams remains one of the league's best rebounders off the bench, which caps Sengun's rebounding ceiling slightly but protects his minutes from foul trouble.

Reed Sheppard is the interesting one. He showed flashes last season and is still on his rookie-scale contract, but the backcourt got more crowded with VanVleet's return and Marcus Smart available off the bench. Sheppard has the shooting and playmaking to force his way into minutes, and he is the player whose value swings most on the first two weeks of the season.

The honest fantasy read: Sheppard is a late-round pick and a stash rather than a starter, with the understanding that one injury in front of him turns him into a weekly starter.

The Verdexed model take

Verdexed's model builds team projections from role-weighted minutes rather than from last season's box scores, and the Houston projection is unusually stable because the roster is unusually intact. The model's biggest upward adjustment goes to Thompson, driven by the extension and by the usage patterns that typically follow one.

The model treats VanVleet's return as a probability-weighted input with a wide band, and that band is the largest source of uncertainty in Houston's team projection. If VanVleet is close to his old self, the model likes Houston's win total and its offensive efficiency. If he is not, the model's projection falls back toward last season's inconsistency, because nobody else on the roster solves the same problem.

On the futures side, the model's read on Houston is that the market is pricing continuity as a positive and health as a given, which is the standard way Western Conference contenders get overpriced in September.

What to do in your draft

Take Sengun and Thompson at or slightly above their consensus prices. Take Durant if the value falls to a manager who has already built a deep roster, and avoid him as a first-round anchor on a thin team.

Let someone else draft VanVleet at his name-recognition price and be ready to buy in November if the market gets impatient. Draft Sheppard in the last two rounds and hold him.

What is next

The Macao games on October 9 and 11 give Houston two extra data points before the rest of the league has played a preseason game, and those two games will be the first real look at VanVleet's knee in live action. Fantasy drafters with October draft dates should watch them closely, because the information asymmetry between a manager who watched and a manager who did not will be larger than usual this year.