EVERY-THING SPORTS
After the draft, here's the most likely scenario for Texans
May 5, 2021, 10:53 am
This rebuild could take some time. Composite image by Jack Brame.
Nick Caserio is wheeling and dealing for Texans with 2 trades being reported Sunday
When an NFL team enters the offseason, the fanbase of said team has some excitement. NFL teams can rebuild fairly quickly depending on several key factors: spending wisely in free agency, drafting well and having good draft capital. Finding players that fit your scheme is a huge part of this also. That being said, the Texans didn't (couldn't) do much of this. They had little to no draft capital, didn't make wise use of it, and only spent money on low level free agents. Given the way this offseason has turned out, the best fans can hope for is mediocrity this coming season.
The Deshaun Watson saga is playing out slower than molasses flowing uphill in winter. Whether he plays this season or not, which I don't expect, this roster doesn't have enough talent to win more than five to six games at best. So who plays at quarterback in his absence? Tyrod Taylor would be the presumed starter in this scenario. They used their first draft pick, number 67 overall, to take quarterback Davis Mills. While Mills has some skills and tools, he'll need time before he's truly ready to lead a team. Taylor is best as a backup. If he's a full time starter, don't expect much. It may benefit the Texans to give Mills the keys and see what he's got. Worst case scenario, he sucks and they're drafting high next offseason. Not a bad trade off.
Wide receiver Nico Collins and tight end Brevin Jordan weren't high priority needs, but they seem like they could be good depth guys. They both have traits that could make them into players, but their ceilings aren't very high to be big time difference makers. Linebacker Garret Wallow and defensive tackle Roy Lopez aren't anything to write home about. Wallow may see time as a special teamer, but I don't see Lopez getting much playing time at all. The only one in this group I expect to get significant playing time is Collins. At 6'4, he's the team's tallest wide receiver and at 215lbs, he's almost their heaviest. A big target is a quarterback's best friend.
All this supports the fact that the Texans are in for a poor season in 2021, maybe even again in 2022. This franchise was left for dead. General manager Nick Caserio has done as well as he possibly could, outside of this draft. Trading up twice and severely overpaying was not smart. I'm hoping this isn't indicative of what's to come from him in the future with a full compliment of draft picks. While he managed the cap hell fairly well by signing bargain free agents, restructuring some deals, and cutting dead weight, he still has a ton of work to do in order to build a contender. Finding some diamonds in the rough this offseason would help, but so would picking in the top three picks in every round in next year's draft and hitting on every one of them. Here's to hoping Caserio has a better offseason next year.
They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”