The Rockets are $14,077 under the luxury tax line: how Houston’s 14-man roster got there and what Amen Thompson’s $208 million raise does next

The Houston Rockets are the best team by margin in the NBA this season, and they are one small signing away from paying the luxury tax. Their 14 standard contracts add up to $200,413,923 against a tax line of $200,428,000, which leaves a cushion of $14,077, or about seven thousandths of 1% of the payroll. That is the figure on Spotrac’s 2026-27 Rockets page, and a second payroll table built from Basketball-Reference data put the gap at $15,709 when it was updated on Oct. 28. The league decides the real number after the regular season, and the Rockets’ roster is built to land on the right side of it.

The #Rockets aren't in the luxury tax. Why? Looked into some of the potential factors and options Houston has moving forward.https://t.co/yGbfMdBBEw

— Varun Shankar (@ByVarunShankar) October 28, 2026

Where the $200.4 million goes

Four players take up more than half of Houston’s tax payroll, and the rest of the roster is built from role players on small deals. Here is the full 14-man payroll on the tax line, with contract figures taken from Spotrac:

Player	2026-27 salary
Kevin Durant	$43.90 million
Alperen Sengun	$35.64 million
Fred VanVleet	$25.00 million
Jabari Smith Jr.	$23.64 million
Tari Eason	$14.05 million
Steven Adams	$13.00 million
Amen Thompson	$12.26 million
Reed Sheppard	$11.11 million
Clint Capela	$7.04 million
Marcus Smart	$6.06 million
Bogdan Bogdanovic, Jae’Sean Tate, Isaiah Crawford (about $2.45 million each) and Bruce Thornton ($1.36 million)	$8.71 million
Total, 14 players	$200.41 million
Tax line	$200.43 million
Room under the line	$14,077

Three more players are on two-way contracts, which do not count toward the tax. Houston has 14 of its 15 standard roster spots filled, and the 15th is empty on purpose: a minimum-salary signing would cost more than the $14,077 cushion, and the Rockets would need to send out a salary at least as large to stay under.

How Houston got here

The Rockets made the room in July. They agreed to send Dorian Finney-Smith and three second-round picks to Charlotte, moving his $13.36 million salary off the books. He had played 37 games in his first season in Houston and averaged 3.3 points. The trade pulled Houston away from the second apron, and it reopened the full non-taxpayer mid-level exception, which they used on Marcus Smart.

The bigger savings came from the stars. Amen Thompson signed a five-year, $208 million rookie-scale extension on Sept. 3, about $44 million less than the roughly $252 million the maximum would have paid over five years. The deal, which has a 10% trade bonus, does not start until 2027-28, so it adds nothing to this year’s payroll. Smart’s contract and Eason’s, which pays him only $14.05 million this season, left just enough room under the line.

Rafael Stone, Houston’s general manager, was asked after last season whether the Rockets would be in the tax in 2026-27. “We’ll see,” he said, as Shankar reported. “The roster, the way it’s set up, we very likely will be but all of that’s like – what contracts become available, what trades happen, all of this. I don’t see us, I don’t see Tilman ever wanting to take a step back that isn’t strategic.” Houston has paid the tax just once since Tilman Fertitta bought the team in 2017, last season, and in only three seasons since 2002.

Why $14,077 matters

Shankar points out that sitting in the tax, unlike sitting above an apron, carries only financial penalties. The bill is also steep, and it grows with repeat visits. His example is Golden State, which is in the tax for a seventh straight season: because it is a repeater, it would pay about $86 million if its payroll stays where it is, against about $47 million if it were a first-time payer. Houston is not close to that tier, but the same logic explains why a team on the line is careful with every dollar. We went through the same math for Denver’s empty 15th roster spot and for Golden State’s hard cap.

The tax is set by the payroll on the last day of the regular season, which makes the Feb. 11 trade deadline the last chance to adjust it. Houston still holds levers, and each one has a price:

Resource	What it is worth	The catch
Rest of the mid-level exception	About $8.98 million	Using any of it hard-caps Houston at the first apron, and it adds salary on a roster with $14,077 of room
Trade exception from the Finney-Smith deal	About $13.3 million, good until July 2027	Absorbing a player into it adds payroll
Room under the first apron	About $8.6 million	A hard cap would apply the moment Houston uses the mid-level
Jae’Sean Tate and Isaiah Crawford	$3.07 million and $2.45 million	Both contracts are only partly guaranteed until Jan. 10, 2027, per Spotrac’s tracker, which gives Houston a way to shed salary if it needs the room

The bill that comes next year

This season’s squeeze is the easy one. Next season Thompson’s pay jumps from $12.26 million to $35.86 million, an increase of about $23.6 million, and it keeps climbing through the extension:

Season	Amen Thompson’s salary
2026-27 (current)	$12.26 million
2027-28	$35.86 million
2028-29	$38.73 million
2029-30	$41.60 million
2030-31	$44.47 million
2031-32	$47.34 million

The cap is projected to rise 5.5% to $174 million in 2027-28, and the tax line usually moves with it, so some of the raise is absorbed. Other decisions arrive in the same months. Fred VanVleet’s $25 million expires after the season, Kevin Durant holds a $46.1 million player option for 2027-28, and Reed Sheppard becomes eligible for an extension in July 2027, with a $19.8 million qualifying offer waiting the year after. Shankar noted that Houston might need new deals for Sheppard, Durant and VanVleet while also paying Thompson, and that the Rockets could be in the tax for the next few seasons.

What we don’t know

Payroll trackers do not all agree. Most show Houston under the line by a few thousand dollars, and at least one that adds up cap hits shows the Rockets about $2.5 million over. The league’s official calculation, which treats waived players and bonuses in its own way, is the only one that counts. Next to watch are any change to Houston’s 14-man group before the Feb. 11 deadline, the Jan. 10 guarantee dates for Tate and Crawford, and whether the front office decides that a team with the league’s best margin is worth a tax bill.