The Houston Rockets' 2025-26 season drew mixed reviews. On the one hand, it feels like the Rockets were a disappointment. They finished with a 52-30 record, identical to the previous season, but dropped to fifth in the standings. Last season, they were second in the Western Conference standings. The Rockets also were eliminated in the opening round of the playoffs, losing to an injury-riddled Los Angeles Lakers team that was without Austin Reaves and Luka Doncic for a rather significant amount of time. Doncic missed the entire series (and postseason), while Reaves played in two of the six games.Kevin Durant played in just one game --Game 2-- and his impact was felt (and noticed). In fact, Durant was graded as the league's second-most impactful player in the postseason by TipOff, the advanced analytics crew.The only player graded higher than the Houston Rockets superstar forward was Denver Nuggets three-time MVP Nikola Jokic. The grade was based on a player's offensive true shooting impact, which is a gauge and/or estimate of how much a player improves their team's scoring efficiency when they're on the floor.It's a bit different than the true shooting metric, as that factors in a player's scoring efficiency as an individual. This is an overall composite of how efficiently the team scores with that player on the court and in the lineup.It's an all encompassing metric, which factors in scoring, playmaking, spacing, off-ball movement and shot creation. The list is ten deep. Jokic graded first with a score of 6.2, Durant was second, with a score of 4.7, Joel Embiid was third with a score of 3.5, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander was fourth with a 3.2 score and Devin Booker was fifth, with a 2.6 score, tied with Luke Kennard. Durant's inclusion on the list, despite playing just one game of the series drew criticism to the panel. In that game, Durant had 23 points on 7-of-12 shooting from the field, 1-of-4 from deep, 8-of-9 from the foul line, 6 rebounds, four assists and one steal.Durant also had nine turnovers and was held to just three points in the second half. However, he also posted 72.1 percent true shooting and 62.5 percent effective shooting splits. Durant was the only Rockets player in the entire top ten, which is also not all that surprising. At least, it shouldn't be. Durant has shown no signs of slowing down, establishing himself yet again as one of the NBA's top 10 players, after making the Second Team All-NBA, even at age 37.Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow