A fully healthy season from Tari Eason is absolutely needed for the Rockets.
Tari Eason is and has been since his college days at LSU a favorite of mine when it comes to just playing the game of basketball. For starters, he’s just a dog, a straight hustler on the court. A loose ball, he’s diving for it. The opponent on a fastbreak, he’s chasing it down. Just the small hustle plays like those that are made consistently by Eason is what makes him so great to me.
But if you can’t stay on the court, you can’t make plays, and for Tari, that was unfortunately the case. Entering his third season now, it’s been quite an interesting dynamic for the former first round pick in his career so far. After playing all 82 games his rookie season, last year that number exponentially fell to just a mere 22. Suffering from a lower left leg injury, the forward missed the first few games of the year before playing the next 22 of 28 games.
In the small sample size of games Eason did play however, he really thrived as a two-way player, helping Houston tremendously. Between the rebounding, both offensive and defensive, improved shooting, and mainly the defense in general, Tari played a huge role. Averaging just over 20 minutes a game, it always felt as if we were getting the best from Eason when he was on the court.
This truthfully, was in fact the case and it showed. It the limited time we actually saw Tari Eason in a Houston Rockets jersey, his defensive metrics were among the league’s best. Holding a defensive rating of 103.1, Tari ranked second among all players defensively, helping lead Houston to at the time a top 10 defense in the NBA.
But as we all know, injuries are brutal, and for both Eason and the Rockets, that was the case. What initially started as a not so serious lower leg stress injury soon became more as eventually in early March, the Rockets shut down the forward for the rest of the season. Soon after, he underwent surgery to fix the benign growth in his leg, but continued to support from the sidelines.
This all leads to where we are now. There’s many questions about Eason leading into his third season. Will he be healthy? Where will he fall in the rotation? Can he maintain his defensive prowess? And the answer for all three of these questions are the same, we don’t know.
But what we can do is assume, and if a small game against casual hoopers at the Drew League over the summer says anything, it’s that Tari is more than healthy and ready. For Eason, this season is about maintaining health, but also about fighting for that starting small forward spot. Eason’s defense is good enough to earn him that opportunity alone, but if the shot can fall, and the efficiency stays where it needs to be, there is a realistic shot Tari starts at some point this season.
Eason has always been “my guy”, someone who I’ve been really high on ever since his freshman year at LSU. So to not only believe he can be an elite defender, but also see it, well, I may be a slight bit biased when I say he’s irreplaceable for Houston. You don’t just produce top five defenders on a tree in an instant, you develop them over time. For Eason, time is certainly still on his side at the young age of 23.
So will this season be a big year three for Tari Eason should he stay healthy? I, along with what I’d like to say is the entire Rockets fan base, would love to believe so. We know the talent is there, the work ethic is there, but seeing and believing are two different things. We need to see Eason in a jersey and on the court for more than 22 games. And know if we do, Houston’s playoff hopes only go up.