The Houston Rockets are scuffling big time lately as they have lost four straight games to bring their record down to 4-7. There are a lot of NBA people concerned with how they have been playing to start the season especially when you consider their goals this year are NBA Championship or bust. Houston received some more bad news on Wednesday morning as rookie Sam Dekker will reportedly undergo back surgery, according to Jeff Goodman of ESPN.
Dekker will undergo the procedure on Friday and he is expected to miss about three months with rehab and recovery. Dekker reportedly had been dealing with back pain since his final year at Wisconsin when he helped lead the Badgers all the way to the National Championship game. The pain in Dekker's back didn't show in his play though, as he had great performance after great performance up until the loss to Duke in the title game.
The former Badger was taken 18th overall by the Rockets in the 2015 NBA Draft but has not had a role for the Rockets this season. Dekker has only appeared in three games and played a total of six minutes as he is stuck behind guys like Terrence Jones, Marcus Thornton, James Harden and Trevor Ariza to name a few.
Dekker really saw his draft stock rise in the 2015 NCAA Tournament and when he fell to the Rockets at 18 many people considered that a steal. Dekker is technically a small forward but he doesn't shoot the ball all that well for an NBA wing player so the Rockets had said they wanted to use him primarily as a stretch four. Dekker has the size to play the position (6 foot-9) and he also possesses a great ability to drive the ball to the rim so playing power forward would be an area where he could create some matchup problems going forward.
Dekker's injury won't really effect Houston this season as he wasn't getting playing time anyway but it will set back his development a little bit. The good thing for Dekker is that he played three years of college so he may not need as much time to develop and getting this procedure will allow him to finally get rid of pain that has reportedly been bothering him for a little while now.
