Kevin Porter Jr., KJ Martin, Alperen Sengun lead Rockets

Kevin Porter Jr., KJ Martin, and Alperen Sengun are the best player salary values for the Houston Rockets in the 2022-23 season, according to HoopsHype’s new “Real Value” metric.

Using Global Rating as the main performance indicator, Real Value takes into account the productivity of each player from the last three seasons, giving extra value to the official NBA games played in the last 365 days. That includes regular season, play-in, and playoffs. With that as the base, HoopsHype is using the metric to calculate how that would translate to the “deserved” average salary per year.

Also factoring into Real Value: A player’s age, availability, defensive performance and off-court issues. For example, if a player gets admonished by his team due to detrimental conduct, it is directly reflected in his value. As part of this process, league insider Michael Scotto brings direct insight from executives, coaches, and scouts around the league to make Real Value as accurate as possible.

Further details on Real Value criteria are available here. As things currently stand, three Rockets are among the NBA’s top 100 “best value” contracts entering the 2022-23 season. Those are:

No. 43, Kevin Porter Jr.: $11.8 million in real value versus $3.2-million contract (+$8.5 million difference)

No. 63, KJ Martin: $7.6 million in real value versus $1.8-million contract (+$5.8 million difference)

No. 77, Alperen Sengun: $8.3 million in real value versus $3.4-million contract (+$4.9 million difference)

The complete list of all 515 current NBA players is available here. Rookies such as Jabari Smith Jr., Tari Eason, and TyTy Washington are currently at $0 in Real Value since they have yet to play, so their rankings should be ignored until actual data starts coming in.