Rockets are now in serious trouble with devastating Fred VanVleet injury

As the Houston Rockets enter the 2025-26 NBA season, both fans' and the organization's hopes are sky high for what the team can look like with a revamped offense and superstar scorer Kevin Durant on the roster.

Yet, with the shocking news that starting point guard Fred VanVleet has torn his ACL, this entire outlook has been turned on its head, and Houston will now seriously need to re-adjust or face their championship hopes being dashed.

Despite a relative dip in VanVleet's production last season, he is still a highly important and highly skilled facilitator in this offense, and, especially given the Rockets' lack of backcourt depth, this injury could prove to be absolutely disastrous if they cannot find an adequate replacement.

The Rockets' lack of backcourt depth just go significantly worse

It remains unclear when or how VanVleet, 31, suffered the injury, but, in all likelihood, it will be season-ending given its apparent proximity to the start of training camp.

VanVleet, through 60 games last season, averaged 14.1 points, 3.7 rebounds and 5.6 assists, shooting 34.5% from beyond the arc and helping to keep the Rockets' offense afloat when its halfcourt game failed to click throughout the course of the season.

Yet, despite their lack of depth behind and alongside VanVleet following the departure of Jalen Green, the organization still chose to focus on bringing in further frontcourt depth this summer. Neither Aaron Holiday nor Reed Sheppard, who currently make up the rest of the team's guard rotation, have proven themselves as potential starters.

In Sheppard's case, he has not yet even truly proven himself as a rotation player. Moreover, while it was already likely that Amen Thompson would slide back to the shooting guard spot given Durant's presence in the lineup, he does not have the ball-handling skills to take over full-time point guard duties, and it would be an utter misuse of his skill-set to expect him to do so.

Therefore, it appears likely that Houston will pursue some sort of stop-gap solution either through trade or the remaining free agent market, meaning that a reunion with polarizing guard Russell Westbrook could certainly still be in play.

Yet, there is nothing on the market at the moment that can effectively replace the veteran experience of VanVleet, and the Rockets could be in serious, serious trouble as they attempt to reconstruct their offense yet again.