The Houston Rockets and the Oklahoma City Thunder shocked the league again on Thursday because of a trade – Houston sent Chris Paul, two first-round picks in 2024 and 2026 and two swaps in 2021 and 2025 to OKC in exchange for Russell Westbrook.

According to ESPN's Adrian Wojanarowski, the 2024 first-rounder is 1-4 protected. Meanwhile, multiple reporters said that OKC have no interest in keeping Paul who is already 34 years old and has three years, 120 million U.S. dollars left with his contract.

"We're excited to have Russell Westbrook. I would watch him play for Oklahoma City and he's so athletic. At the same time this franchise just had the two years with the most wins its ever had in consecutive years and we wouldn't have accomplished that without Chris Paul. Chris Paul is unbelievable and he's gonna be sadly missed," said Tilman Fertitta, owner of the Rockets to Fox 26 in Houston.

Since OKC sent away Paul George, the team made it very clear that they are ready to rebuild, which makes Westbrook and his four-year, 170-million-U.S.-dollar contract left, very unnecessary. Westbrook himself also expressed his interest in departure, though for south beach (Miami Heat), not space center (Houston Rockets).

Such a blockbuster it is, this deal is also very confusing and the first question to be asked is: Why?

Though the Rockets were able to have to MVPs in their franchise, just like the Golden State Warriors in the past three years (Stephen Curry and Kevin Durant), the team lacked a working system. In the past two years, the team only had one play style: James Harden or Paul launched isolated attacks before they either scored or passed to open teammates.

That won't work for Westbrook because he's not as threatening as Paul in offense. Last season, Westbrook's offense, simply speaking, collapsed in every aspect. His field goal rate (42.8 percent) and 3-point rate (29.0 percent) dropped to the fifth- and the third-worst in his career. Moreover, Westbrook's free throw rate fell to 65.6 percent – he was never below 70 in his career in that area. Simply speaking, Westbrook was hurting his team's offense unless in transition.

Secondly, Westbrook does not know what to do on the court without the ball in his hands. Fox Sports this week presented a list of the top two-player partnerships of the league, putting Westbrook and the ball as the best partners, which was a joke but partially true. Sure, Westbrook continued to drop triple-double seasons but he did that by controlling almost all the possessions of the ball. However, Harden was just like him because "the Beard" did not even bother to move on the court when he was not handling the ball. It's hard to imagine that the two can have a decent chemistry.

Thirdly, both Westbrook and Harden have issues with their attitudes in the court. Since Houston was knocked out by Golden State in the playoffs, there were various reports about Paul unhappiness in Houston. Somehow, Harden has never seemed to care enough about victory. The same could be said about Westbrook. In the past two years, he was considered by many a stat stuffer, making questionable decisions that need explaining like passing the ball to a teammate when he had an open basket in the paint or walking away from his defensive target, just to grab a rebound.

One more reason to doubt whether this trade will work was the Rockets owner Fertitta. Since he bought the team in 2017, he kept talking about not hesitating no spend to help the Rockets win the championship. However, what he did was to ask general manager Daryl Morey to avoid luxury tax at any cost. In order to do that, Fertitta watched the team ruin their best unit in years by losing Trevor Ariza in 2018 summer.

Paul's contract in the 2019-20 season is worth 38 million U.S. dollars and so is Westbrook's. If Houston still don't want to pay luxury tax, the team won't be able to do any useful improvement to their franchise. By the way, Paul's contract will end in 2022 summer but Westbrook's is one year longer and will pay him 46 million U.S. dollars in the 2022-23 season.

As for the Thunder, the deal was much more worthy. According to Slam, the team are now watching 15 first rounders from 2020 to 2026, which is more than enough for rebuilding and making further trades. Their general manager Sam Presti may not be a good businessman, but he really knows how to find promising young men.