Rockets: 3 reasons to be skeptical of the Victor Oladipo trade rumors

#3: The Houston Rockets’ Oladipo has the right mentality

This Rockets team is seen as the land of misfit toys, where injured players go to try to resurrect their careers. That makes this team full of players that feel doubted and has united the team to prove all of their haters wrong.

Victor Oladipo fits that mold, since he has been doubted everywhere he has been so far and people haven’t believed in him.

"Going through my career, it just feels like people keep kinda quitting on me. But it's a part of life and I embrace it."

—Oladipo reflects on his career after the Rockets’ fourth straight win pic.twitter.com/pNqUHpf8Vf

— SportsCenter (@SportsCenter) January 29, 2021

This characteristic has given this team a new identity of having a good culture, one that’s very different from the one that the Rockets had under the James Harden era.

He also is motivated to be the best player and teammate he can be. Players that are searching for a trade can often throw a tantrum to show they don’t want to be with their team (i.e. James Harden) but Oladipo didn’t do that.

Instead, he came in and immediately started learning the Rockets playbook and studied film to catch up with his new team.

Rafael Stone on Victor Oladipo: "First thing he did was ask for video so he could independently study our offense and defense so that he's up to speed…The background that we have on him is that he's exactly the type of person that we like in this organization." #Rockets

— Alykhan Bijani (@Rockets_Insider) January 17, 2021

While his performance on the offensive side of the ball thus far has been shaky, Oladipo has performed well defensively. Given time, the offense will likely return to the norm and his entire arsenal of skills will be on full display.

He had a bad game against the Thunder, but he didn’t blame the team, he took ownership of his mistakes and vowed to be better in the future.

.@VicOladipo takes the blame for the #Rockets loss at OKC: “I got to be better..This loss is on me. I take full blame. I got to do a better job making sure the guys are ready, making sure I’m ready, both physically and mentally..It happened. We just got to be better.” pic.twitter.com/ROxhbVUuKf

— Mark Berman (@MarkBermanFox26) February 4, 2021

Oladipo has shown that he will be a model teammate for as long as he is here and the Rockets have reciprocated that feeling.

Next: Reason #2