Covington ready

Forward eager to prove himself again as league restarts later this month in Florida

» Once-overlooked Rockets forward still plays with an edge.

Rockets forward Robert Covington summed up the sentiments of hundreds of NBA players and NBA personnel regarding the league squeezing in the rest of the season in Orlando, Fla., starting later this month and stretching into October.

“We don’t know how this whole thing is going to go,” Covington said. “This thing is unpredictable.”

Covington is one of the gung-ho players ready to make the best of it, however, at the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex at Disney World, as a once-overlooked, lanky defender out of Tennessee State who had to make it in the NBA the hard way: By capitalizing on every opportunity to prove himself early.

“I’ve had that edge,” Covington said of not being drafted out of college seven years ago. “I feel like I wasn’t given a fair shot.”

The Rockets in early February traded center Clint Capela to the Minnesota Timberwolves for Covington as part of a complex fourteam exchange, with the notion of upgrading their defense the rest of the season (Capela wound up with the Atlanta Hawks as part of the deal) and relying on a smaller lineup.

A little more than a month later and 14 games into Covington’s tenure with the franchise that first bet on him in 2013 as an undrafted free agent, the season was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The Rockets plan to travel to Orlando later this week and will play their first of eight “seeding” games on July 31 against the Dallas Mavericks. The Rockets are assured of one of eight playoff spots in the Western Conference and are tied for fifth place with the Oklahoma City Thunder, with the Mavericks 1½ games behind.

“The team that catches a rhythm first, kind of has an advantage overall,” Covington said of his expectations for the abbreviated sprint to the NBA’s finish line this season.

Covington (6-foot-7, 209 pounds) is a big reason for the Rockets’ shift to a center-less approach, and he has averaged 12.8 points, 7.9 rebounds and 2.5 blocked shots after the trade. Impressive numbers for a player the Rockets originally signed as a free agent out of Tennessee State based merely on potential as he started his pro career in the G League – and grinded his way up from there.

“I wouldn’t change it for anything,” Covington said of the last seven years with the Rockets, Philadelphia 76ers and Timberwolves. “I love the grind, and I love the grit. I’ve had that my whole life and with every team I’ve played on. I’ve had to prove myself for everything.

“That’s something I’ll never shy away from, and I’m always on the edge because I never know what to expect.”

Covington, raised in Bellwood, Ill., spent part of his unexpected time off this spring and summer helping clean up Nashville, Tenn., home of Tennessee State, following protests there and nationwide in the wake of the death of George Floyd, a Black man who grew up in Houston and died in late May under the knee of a white Minneapolis police officer, now charged with murder.

“I (wanted) to let people understand rioting is not the way to make a change,” Covington said of his role in Nashville’s cleanup.

“Everyone has to live (there) — we don’t want to see those types of things.”

Rockets teammate Austin Rivers agreed, and he has also disputed Brooklyn Nets guard Kyrie Irving’s declaration of wanting to forego the rest of the season to fight social injustice.

“It’s admirable for him wanting social change, I want it, too,” Rivers said of Irving. “The way I want to go about it is different than what he does. It’s not that it was right or wrong, I just felt my way was the better way, and he might still think his (way) is. I don’t know whose is; we’ll find out.”

Meantime, Covington recalled an exchange with police back home in Bellwood when he was in middle school that stings to this day.

“Basically, I had a cop who falsely detained me, and took me and my cousin off our home property,” Covington said.

He recalled that he and his cousin and two other youths were playing football in the street and occasionally running into a neighbor’s yard. The neighbor told the children to stay out of his yard, and Covington said he and his cousin obliged.

The other two kids did not, and the man called the police. The officers began to detain all four of the youths, even though the neighbor told police Covington and his cousin had done nothing wrong.

“The cop didn’t care; he arrested all of us,” Covington said. “He put is in the back of the car and took us down to the station. I got stuck in the car – I was too tall and my foot was wedged in between (the front seats). I told the officer I couldn’t get out.

“He said if you don’t get out of this car, I’m going to break your leg to get you out.”

As Covington recalled, “the interaction kept going downhill from there” and could have severely escalated had Covington responded angrily to the officer’s taunts and threats.

The adolescent Covington kept his cool, however, and said the officer eventually was fired for the way he handled the arrests and subsequent detentions.

“Racism is not (about) a color; it’s just racism, period,” Covington said. “It’s about what’s right and what’s wrong. I’m big on helping people have a voice, and making a change.”

“We don’t know how this whole thing is going to go. This thing is unpredictable.”

Rockets forward Robert Covington

Robert Covington was averaging 12.8 points, 7.9 rebounds and 2.5 blocks since the Rockets acquired him in February as part of a deal that ultimately saw Clint Capela go to the Hawks.