Rockets attempt to catch lightning in a bottle with Bucks' draft bust

Throughout the course of the season, any given team will make a number of minor roster moves, and, per NBA Insider Jake Fischer, the Houston Rockets made on of those on Tuesday in signing power forward Tyler Smith to a two-way contract, waiving Kevon Harris as their corresponding move to free up roster space.

Yet, Smith has shown an ability to be impactful in his young career insofar as he is a capable rebounder and defender and also a viable perimeter shooter. If any team can get the best out of his unique skill-set, it certainly would be the Rockets.

The Rockets can afford to take a swing on a two-way forward

Smith, since being drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks with the 33rd overall pick in the 2024 NBA Draft, has struggled to find his footing at the NBA level, having averaged just 5.3 minutes across his 23 career NBA games, all of which came in Milwaukee.

While he was rather productive on a per-minute basis in his appearances, he was ultimately waived by Milwaukee this season as Amir Coffey beat him out for the final roster spot. Their waiving of Smith means that there is now only one player that they have drafted in the last six years that remains in thier organization (2025 second-round pick Bogoljub Markovic).

Although Smith has not played particularly well in his eight games in the G-League this season, he has shown flashes earlier in his career of tools that Houston can potentially harness.

In the year before his draft, on a G-League Ignite team that also featured Ron Holland and Matas Buzelis, he was the team's third-leading scorer, averaging 14.3 points, 5.2 rebounds and 1.7 assists and shooting 35.2% from 3-point range on decent volume. He is an impactful defender and, at 6'9" and 224 lbs, represents a physical presence in the paint.

This is, undoubtedly, the type of player that the Rockets love to collect. In his pre-draft profile done by Rotowire, in fact, he was compared to both a current and a former Rockets forward. The profile claimed that Smith, perhaps, possessed the two-way ceiling of someone like Christian Wood while also maintaining the ability to take on an energetic role like Tari Eason's.

While he has been primarily limited to G-League play, and has a long way to go in terms of developing his physicality and polishing his scoring approach, the tools are certainly there, and the Rockets can never have a shortage of lengthy forwards.

His path to playing time at the NBA level, given the role that Jae'Sean Tate has taken on this season, will likely be obscured for the time being. Yet, Houston is hoping that they can find a diamond in rough at Milwaukee's expense.