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After the Houston Rockets became the lucky — or not so lucky, depending on your perspective — team to land former Los Angeles Lakers center Dwight Howard over the weekend, speculation immediately began to rise over the future of center Omer Asik.
Asik signed a three year contract with Houston last summer after the Chicago Bulls failed to match it, and has performed very well in his first year with the team. Being one of the top rebounders in the league and also having the ability to block shots better than most of his peers, Asik is one of the best young big men in the game.
According to ESPN, Asik has formally requested a trade out of Houston now that Howard is present — and believe me, there’s not many who disagree with his request.
Like I said, Asik should be highly sought after due to his tremendous upside still. In his first year with the Bulls, the guy looked like he had absolutely no idea what he was doing when he had the ball in his hands and appeared to get walked on defensively. Boy, what a difference a year makes.
Asik is more of a laid back guy for the most part, but on the court he is quietly dominant defensively. He does everything asked of him in terms of protecting that rim, and I tell you what, every team with a need at the center position should be calling the Rockets right now.
It is not clear who could be in the market for the big man, but at the moment Houston is rejecting every offer coming their way. For some reason, Houston is opposed to getting rid of Asik and has no plans to trade him apparently. To me, this makes no sense. Asik is much more than a bench player in the NBA, and Houston needs to get the most they can out of him.
Asik deserves the respect from Houston to grant his request. He has a bright future ahead of him and the Rockets would be foolish to stunt his growth like this. Not to mention, why wouldn’t they want to try and bring in another asset that could contribute at other positions of need rather than sitting on an unhappy Asik, hoping he will stay?
This will be a situation to monitor in the near future, as Houston has not budged so far. If I had to guess, I would say they eventually will — and should do it real soon.
Ryan Heckman is a Senior NBA Writer for www.RantSports.com. Follow him on Twitter @ryanmheckman, “Like” him on Facebook or add him to your network on Google.
