Speaking to Erik Horne of Andscape last week in Las Vegas, Rockets guard Fred VanVleet said his recovery from a torn right ACL and meniscus has “tested” his mental toughness and patience over the last “nine or 10 months.”

VanVleet, who exercised his $25MM player option for next season in June, was disappointed he missed all of 2025/26, including Houston’s first-round postseason loss to the Lakers.

“The playoffs was pretty hard,” VanVleet said. “I was about six months into that [rehab] time. I remember they told me I could come back in six months. I was feeling good some days. And then Game 1 or Game 2 [of the playoffs] and I was like, ‘Damn, I’m going to miss the whole [season]. I’m not coming back.’ That was a tough time.”

According to Horne, VanVleet has been working out every day and said he “feels like a rookie again” as he prepares for next season. The former All-Star is optimistic he’ll be ready to play in the Rockets’ preseason slate in October.

“I’ll be very disappointed if I’m not playing in the preseason,” VanVleet told Andscape. “What I missed the most was the outlet, the exertion, the escape of whatever our lives are in our worlds. I took for granted a lot of things of what I do because I just have been doing it every day for my whole life.

“But the mental escape and the physical exertion of getting that energy out and wanting to bump people and cuss at referees, to have the highs and the lows and the failure and the success, I really just love every aspect of the game. So, to have that taken away from me was very humbling and eye-opening.”

One of the top undrafted players in NBA history, VanVleet won a championship with the Raptors in 2019 and was named to his lone All-Star team in 2021/22. The 32-year-old is bullish about the Rockets’ title chances ahead of ’26/27, though he admitted the team has a “lot of work to do.”

“We can win a championship next year,” VanVleet told Horne. “But that’s internal.”