On February 1, Fred VanVleet sprained his ankle. Since then, the Houston Rockets are 3-5 with two of those wins coming against teams outside of the playoff picture.

FVV has been the subject of a lot of ire from Rockets fans during his time here. He’s shot Houston out of a few games, and some nights it feels like he’s barely there. His shooting numbers are down across the board. The only worse shooters on the Rockets by basically any metric? Cam Whitmore and Reed Sheppard. Alperen Sengun is having such a bad shooting season that Xiane and I have given him a quota of four missed “bunnies” per game. And Sengun is still shooting better from the field (again, pick eFG%, TS%, it doesn’t matter) than Fred.

What’s even worse are that his assists are down. That’s a bit understandable since others on the Rockets have taken steps forward this season and FVV’s usage rate has dropped. But then you would expect his turnovers to be down too, and they’re right in line with last season.

So I just spent two paragraphs bashing Fred VanVleet just to say this: the Rockets desperately need him. The veteran presence running the offense, the player who doesn’t panic when things get tough, and the guy that can hit the rainbow 3 when given a grenade are all desperately needed with this version of the Rockets. If you haven’t seen the regression of the team on both sides of the ball without Fred, then you haven’t been watching. This team relies on Fred so much that the hope that Rockets fans had that Houston might be able to negotiate a cheaper AAV contract extension with him this offseason seems gone. If I were Fred’s agent, I’d come in asking for a maximum.

And Houston needs Fred back so badly that they would have to consider it.

Oh yeah, tonight’s opponent is the Milwaukee Bucks. You already know Damian Lillard is going to go off. Chalk this one up as a loss and get ready for a nationally televised game on Wednesday against the Wemby-less San Antonio Spurs.