Rockets Demote Guard JD Davison To G League Affiliate

The Rio Grande Valley Vipers, the Houston Rockets’ G League affiliate, announced today that the Rockets had transferred Isaiah Crawford and JD Davison to the Vipers. On the year, Davison has appeared in 20 games for the Rockets, averaging 2.0 points and 1.0 assist, shooting 35.9% from the floor and 28.6% from three-point range.

While Davison’s aggregate stats have not been impressive, he had come on of late, even appearing earlier in the month as if to have cracked Rockets head coach Ime Udoka’s rotation. On January 13, in a win over the Chicago Bulls, Davison played 24 minutes, scoring 9 points, grabbing 7 rebounds, and dishing out 4 assists. The next game, on January 15, in a loss against the Oklahoma City Thunder, Davison played 20 minutes, scoring five points. He has not appeared in any of the Rockets’ last three games.

After the loss of veteran point guard Fred VanVleet due to an ACL injury suffered this past summer, the Rockets have been looking for answers at the point guard position all season. It was believed that sophomore guard Reed Sheppard would settle into the starting role by this point, but that has not yet happened. For now, Amen Thompson is the starter at the position. Davison had shown promise as a playmaker and looked like a possibility off of Udoka’s bench. He may be the purest point guard currently on the Rockets’ roster.

The 23-year-old Davison is currently on a two-way contract. Per the league’s collective bargaining agreement, a two-way contract is a deal that lets a player split time between an NBA team and its G League affiliate while remaining under one contract with the NBA team. Only players with relatively limited NBA experience are eligible for two-way contracts. For teams, two-way deals are a low-risk way to hold a player’s NBA rights, develop them in the G League, and call them up for depth or injuries.