Why the Rockets Are Watching Cam Thomas' Nets Future Closely

Cam Thomas remains a restricted free agent—and there doesn't seem to be much interest in signing the 23-year-old from franchises outside of the Brooklyn Nets. Even Brooklyn has been hesitant to offer Thomas more than $14 million annually.

Largely due to an inability to place a true value on the talented scorer, Thomas has had trouble generating much of a market. Thus, there is a possibility he spends the 2025-26 season on the qualifying offer, allowing him to become an unrestricted free agent next summer.

Should he leave the Nets for an organization of his choosing, Thomas' next team wouldn't be the biggest winners of the transaction. The Houston Rockets would be.

Houston's had a fantastic offseason in its own right, adding the likes of Kevin Durant, Dorian Finney-Smith and Clint Capela. The Rockets are undoubtedly title contenders, but they also own one highly valuable future draft choice.

Come the 2027 NBA Draft, Houston will have the right to swap its selection with Brooklyn, which could be catastrophic to the latter's rebuild.

Technically, this summer kicks off "year one" of the Nets' overhaul. They didn't have any draft picks last year, and didn't make many noteworthy moves outside of trading Mikal Bridges and re-signing Nic Claxton.

If the 2025-26 season is to be viewed as the first year of the rebuild, that would force Brooklyn to be out of the draft lottery in just two seasons in hopes of preventing its pick from conveying to Houston.

That puts a lot of pressure on the Nets' front office, incoming rookie class and next summer's class. General manager Sean Marks essentially has 24 months to build a roster capable of being the Eastern Conference's seven seed or higher to avoid the lottery completely.

Or, Brooklyn could just sit back and hope Houston's experiment with Durant and company fails—just as it did in Kings County a few years ago.

Obviously, the Nets don't want to bank on the Rockets' lack of success to hold onto a potentially highly valuable draft pick. The ultimate goal is returning to contention, and doing so as soon as possible.

And that could mean giving in to Thomas' demands, winning a couple more games and preventing the 2027 pick from falling into Houston's hands.