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In a piece of ominous news, the Houston Rockets' All Star guard Russell Westbrook revealed through a tweet that he had tested positive for the novel coronavirus. The 12-year veteran, who was traded to the Houston Rockets by Oklahoma City Thunder last summer, had already been conspicuous by his absence on social media in the past few days.
NBA Twitter had already guessed that something could be off with the Houston Rockets' dynamic guard when he stopped posting updates of his workouts on 21st June. The premonition turned out to be perfectly accurate with this latest update.
The Houston Rockets will count themselves lucky to have Westbrook diagnosed over a month before the season restart. The 9-time All Star was having one of the best seasons of his career and was expected to shoulder a lion's share of their scoring and playmaking responsibilities this season.
Russell Westbrook is currently averaging 27.5 points, 8.0 rebounds and 7.0 assists per game on a career-best 47.4% field goal percentage. Although the Houston Rockets would have preferred him to be shooting better than his lowly figure of 25.4% from 3-point range, they will still be thankful for his two-way play.
The Houston Rockets needed a player to be able to facilitate and score when James Harden sits. While Chris Paul fit the bill pretty well in his first season, his scoring took a hit in 2018-19 and Daryl Morey will be rather happy with the bet he took to trade for Russell Westbrook at the cost of the Houston Rockets' draft future.
Houston Rockets forward Bruno Caboclo quarantined
The Houston Rockets were dealt another blow in their preparations for the season restart as forward Bruno Caboclo was found to have violated quarantine protocol. According to NBA's restart rules, all players were instructed not to leave their rooms within their first 48 hours inside the bubble.
Caboclo apparently was unaware of this, and he broke protocol by exiting his room. The forward, who was traded to the Houston Rockets from the Grizzlies in February, has had a chequred NBA career. Drafted by the Raptors in 2014 for his potential, he was infamously labelled as being 'two years away from being two years away' - but 6 years have passed without him nailing a place in the NBA.
His Houston Rockets sojourn could have represented a change in fortunes if he had been a good Moreyball player. But this latest setback to his career is a problem both for him and for the Houston Rockets, who are already shorthanded with the current absence in practice of All-NBA guards James Harden and Russell Westbrook.
