The Rockets have brought back Jae’Sean Tate on a one-year deal, keeping the veteran forward in Houston for another season.
Varun Shankar of The Houston Chronicle reported that Tate’s contract is a minimum-salary agreement with a partial guarantee. Michael Scotto of HoopsHype added that the partial guarantee is worth $1.04MM. Tate will make $3,066,143 on the deal, and Houston’s cap hit comes in at $2,449,421.
Tate has been with the Rockets since 2020, when he arrived as an undrafted free agent. He’s now the team’s longest-tenured player and has logged 342 regular-season games plus five playoff appearances in a Houston uniform.
His role has shrunk over time, though. Tate was a 29.2-minute-per-game player in 2020/21, when he also earned All-Rookie first team honors, but his court time has dropped in each season since then. Last year, he played 8.8 minutes per game across 46 appearances and averaged 2.8 points and 1.6 rebounds while shooting .514/.313/.636.
Even with that reduced workload, the contract details point to Tate sticking on the regular-season roster. Houston is close to the luxury tax line, and a partial guarantee of more than $1MM would be an unusual commitment for a player the team expected to cut.
With Tate and Isaiah Crawford re-signed, the Rockets are at 15 players on standard contracts and sit $2.57MM above the luxury tax line. The club could move just under that number by waiving JD Davison, who is on a non-guaranteed $2.58MM deal.
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