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Fred VanVleet: “But I ain’t gonna lie, though—that’s the other thing too. I didn’t always play, and when you don’t play, you’re in the locker room all day, right? My first preseason game, I was in the locker room for four and a half hours. We had 20 guys trying to make the team—20 guys total. So, the game was at 7:30, and I was at the gym at 3:00, 3:30, getting my shooting time in. So when the media come in and I don’t exist, okay, cool. Because I’m a human—I’ma speak to somebody. If it’s, ‘Hey, what’s up? What’s going on?’ even if I don’t know you, whatever—‘Hey, how you doing?’ I’m going to speak to you. So if you’re going to treat me like I don’t exist, and then you want to spin back around when you need something, I’m going to remember that.”
Fred VanVleet: “And without me and without Steven (Adams) our margin for error is just so much smaller. So when we don't and that's that's a tough way to live for young guys that's trying to figure out because all of them guys is you know 23 24 and under. Um, so they figuring it out. But I don't think it's like doom and gloom like, ‘Oh my god, the sky is falling. You got to over because when you in these positions, you have to have a big picture mindset even when it feel and nobody's feeling worse than the players, the coaches. ‘The fans don't give a [ __ ] what y'all going through or what how much money you spent on a ticket. Like people dedicate their lives to this [ __ ] So I'll be hating to see that from my seat like like it's doom and gloom. Like, “Oh my god, the sky is falling. We We don't have no hope.” Well, how the [ __ ] was y'all just so optimistic a couple months ago? You can't have both.’
Fred VanVleet: “I’m about five, five and a half months, almost six months now. So, I’m getting there. I’m getting stronger. I’m getting better. I’m moving around a lot better. I’m getting some good on-court workouts. I think a lot of the predictions of where I was going to be were made pre-surgery, so we’ve had to adjust that timeline as things go on. But again, selfishly, I’m always going to keep my window open. I’m not going to come on here and tell you, ‘Oh, I’m not coming back,’ and then I come back like, ‘Oh, surprise.’ But I’m not ruling it out, and I’m not saying I’m coming back. I’m just rehabbing, I’m working on myself, and I keep that goal in mind because I’ve made such good progress.”
Fred VanVleet: “But there’s no more free there’s no there’s no opportunity. You can’t move. You can’t keep a player. There’s no free agency anymore. Free agency is the trade deadline. Now you you have a situation like JK where it’s like we don’t want to play you, we’re not going to pay you and we’re not going to trade you. So like I feel like that part of of the CBA is where the the real harm is done at and the Second Apron is the excuse for the teams to say, ‘Oh, we can’t do anything because of Second Apron.’ So obviously I feel like everybody is going to go to the table with like an idea that we need to change that somehow.”
Fred VanVleet sat in an Italian restaurant a short drive from the Houston Rockets’ practice facility. Between bites of his spicy pepper-topped pizza, he considered how the ubiquity of sports gambling has affected the players he represents as the president of the National Basketball Players Association. “Kind of feels like it’s gotten away from us a little bit,” he said. He tried a metaphor. “A nice little campfire makes you feel warm,” he said. “You got marshmallows and s’mores. But if it turns into a wildfire — that kind of feels like where we are right now. I don’t know how you rein it back in.”
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Do you see yourself coming back later this season or what's the timeline looking like? Fred VanVleet: Yeah, it's possible. The timeline is not in my favor. You know what I'm saying? Nobody really comes back from an ACL injury in six months. It's probably not the smartest thing to do, but I don't want to rule it out just from the standpoint like if I feel good at the end of the year and I feel like I can hoop and they telling me I can hoop, like I'm going to want to play. But we'll see.
What made you decide to leave the city that you won a championship with? Fred VanVleet: My time was just up. There's always a carryover from a championship and we just weren't able to gel that group together like we were supposed to. That team, me, Scottie Barnes, Pascal Siakam, OG Anunoby, like on paper you're like ‘damn that's a good ass team’, but we never really like made it what it was supposed to be. So my time was up and Houston came calling and yeah, we got such and such. I'm like, "Huh? What you mean?" I hung up. I called. You said, "How much?" All right, cool. Yeah, I love Houston. It's my favorite city in the world, actually. You know, so that was really it. And I wrapped my mind around it, but they had young talent there.
Ira Winderman: Rockets listing forward Jabari Smith Jr. out for Saturday at Heat due to ankle sprain sustained Thursday at Orlando. Also out for Rockets: Jae'Sean Tate (knee), Steven Adams (ankle), Fred VanVleet (knee) and Tristen Newton (G League). No other players listed on their report.
James Harden was interested in reuniting with the Houston Rockets, sources say, a natural fit because their point guard, Fred Van Vleet, had torn his ACL before the season. But the Rockets showed little interest in their former MVP. Cleveland did, however. The Cavaliers were intrigued to see how Harden could elevate their two standout big men, Evan Mobley and Jarrett Allen, and take some of the load off dynamic shooting guard Donovan Mitchell.
Kelly Iko: Alperen Şengün on the difference between last season and this season: “The difference is Fred.”
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Adam Wexler: #Rockets have recalled Isaiah Crawford from @RGVVipers . Houston at Indiana tonight with Adams (ankle), VanVleet (knee) & Durant (left ankle sprain) OUT.
Fred VanVleet: “The only funny thing is when I was in Toronto and uh like Masai just moved like Batman. Like he’s just like a super boss. So he come in and out and he wasn’t real like active in day-to-day practices and [__] like that. But he was just real executive like. But man, around this time of the year he come in — he’d be there. And he walk around that gym on that phone.” “Man, listen. [laughter] You working out in the morning before practice start and that man walking around the baseline, walking around the gym, working that phone, coming in out of that office. M— is like, ‘Man, somebody getting traded today.’ And more often than not, he didn’t do nothing. Like he was real not — you know, not active at the deadline for my years that I was there.”
VanVleet also used the same platform to praise Rockets head coach Ime Udoka, drawing a direct line to his coaching roots under Gregg Popovich, Basketball Network reports. “He gets credit for the stern face and holding guys accountable,” VanVleet said. “But I really just call him the black Pop. He came up under Pop.”
