Fred VanVleet of the Rockets may miss the entire season due to an ACL tear

This summer, the Houston Rockets re-signed guard Fred VanVleet to a two-year, $50 million deal after realizing his worth. It also demonstrates how devastating this most recent news is for a club hoping to win a championship.

According to Shams Charania of ESPN and later verified by others, VanVleet may miss the entire 2018 NBA season after tearing his ACL during an unofficial team exercise in the Bahamas. VanVleet has returned to Houston and is scheduled to undergo surgery later this week for this contact injury.

VanVleet was the glue at an otherwise thin point guard spot that kept everything together on a team full of talented players on the wings and in the frontcourt, including Kevin Durant, Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson, Jabari Smith Jr., and others. VanVleet is a good defender who finished the previous season with an average of 14.1 points and 5.6 assists. When VanVleet was playing last season, the Rockets outscored the opposition by 3.3 points per 100 possessions. The Rockets were 21 points per 100 possessions better when VanVleet was on the court during their series defeat to the Warriors, and his impact was particularly evident during the playoffs when he averaged 18.7 points, 4.4 assists, and 4.1 rebounds per game.

Second-year guard Reed Sheppard is under a lot of strain because of VanVleet's injury. He was expected to step up to the backup point guard position this season and now has more work to do. Aaron Holiday, a veteran, is behind him.

In a deep West where Oklahoma City brings back 14 players from the team that just won the championship, and the Denver Nuggets have stacked their roster around Nikola Jokic (not to mention Anthony Edwards and the Timberwolves or the LeBron James and Luka Doncic duo in Los Angeles), this could be a major blow to the Rockets' hopes of winning the championship.