The Rockets’ championship window is wide open no matter what happens against the Warriors

James Harden’s Houston Rockets have never been in better position to win an NBA championship. That is not to say the Rockets are actually in position to win a championship: the epic Golden State Warriors, at the very least, stand in the way. But after Houston’s masterful regular season and a convincing opening two rounds of the NBA playoffs, this is as close as the Rockets have come to the promised land since Harden arrived.

The question is whether, if the Rockets fall short, they’ll be back for more.

The offseason presents a number of major quandaries for Houston. Chris Paul, age 33, will be an unrestricted free agent. Clint Capela will be a restricted free agent, meaning that Houston can match any offer sheet he signs. One expects another team will float a very large contract his way. Trevor Ariza will hit the market.

Meanwhile, Ryan Anderson will still be on the books for $41 million over two years. Eric Gordon is still due $27 million over two years. Bringing the 2017-18 squad back would be pricey and risky, especially given CP3’s age and injury history. But you never walk away from a 65-win team.

That said, Houston’s front office has shown a remarkable ability to remake the Rockets on the fly around Harden. That’s what gives one confidence that this team will be knocking on the championship door for years to come, even if they fall short this season.

The championship window of the core is wide open precisely because there really is no core of the Rockets. The core is simply Harden.

Consider that CP3 is brand new to this team, the latest super co-star that Daryl Morey was able to add in his annual quest to bolster the squad around Harden. It was an inspired choice, and a huge accomplishment to convince Paul to delay free agency a year and force a trade to Houston.

CP3’s presence has sprouted a new era of Rockets’ basketball, yet Houston was really good a year ago, with shooters and defenders around Harden. They fell short of their postseason goals only because Kawhi Leonard shut down The Beard in the playoffs.

The core before that featured Dwight Howard, which was a big miss for Morey. But the miss was easily resolved by letting D-12 leave as a free agent.

Harden is now 28 — right in his expected prime — and he’s signed with Houston for five more years. What an advantage for Morey to know that he has an All-NBA scorer and playmaker on the books for that long. He has a half-decade to wring a championship out of the best player he’s ever acquired. With such a talent at the core of the team, Morey can rebuild the cast around him until he finds a configuration that gets Houston where it wants to be.

This version just might be that. We’ll find out over the next two weeks as they battle the Warriors.

If not, trust Morey to figure out how to spin an improved version out of this roster.

When he took over the Rockets in 2007, he inherited a good but aging squad. While Houston did have a few years outside the playoffs, they never bottomed out. Morey constantly adjusted the roster until he landed Harden in a blockbuster, league-changing trade in 2012.

The Rockets have been through two cycles since then: one focused on the Harden-Howard pairing coached by Kevin McHale — that edition blew up in a disastrous 41-41 season in 2016 — and this one under Mike D’Antoni, now centered on Harden and Paul.

The best version of that McHale cycle (the 2014-15 Rockets) topped out at getting blasted by the Warriors in the West finals. A repeat of that is obviously the fear this year. Should that happen this month, skeptics might begin to believe that the Rockets are cursed by timing, coming of age with Harden just as the Warriors became unstoppable.

History is littered with epic teams with awful timing. In fact, the sheer number of those crestfallen contenders belies the idea that there can be a class of teams that would be champions in another era. If you add them all up, we have more should-have-been champion teams than available years for them to win titles!

If the Rockets don’t win a title with Harden — in this cycle or the next — they will not have been good enough to do it, just as the ‘90s Sonics and Jazz, and ‘00s Kings and Suns weren’t good enough.

Even if Harden and the Rockets fall short this season, Morey has proven able to retool quickly and give Houston a new look to take into battle. So long as Harden is an MVP caliber player, and so long as Morey puts talent around him, the Rockets will stay in the mix, whether that’s with CP3 and Capela or not.

The championship window is wide open for the Rockets. The only question is whether Houston can get around the Warriors and climb through it.