The Houston Rockets have championship aspirations as they head into the 2013-14 season and the main reason for that is signing Dwight Howard and adding him to a roster that includes one of the best young superstars in the game with James Harden.
The two players give the Rockets one of the best duos in the league and continues to show why the Thunder were foolish to trade Harden in the first place. The team decided to be nickel counters and sent away Harden, a budding superstar player, for Jeremy Lamb, Kevin Martin and three draft picks and while those picks may end up as great players, Martin is already gone and Lamb is an unknown quantity. The team may have made an NBA finals run last season with Harden, but now no one will ever know.
The Rockets were thrilled to take the Harden problem off the hands of the Thunder and the team gave him a nice extension after the deal was complete. Harden averaged 25.9 points per game last season and shot over 43 percent from the field and now along with Jeremy Lin, Chandler Parsons and Omer Asik, the Rockets have one of the best and most talented rosters in the league and they should challenge for a division title in the West this season.
In his final season with the Thunder, Harden averaged 16.8 points and 3.7 assists and clearly he is a much better player as a starter, since he scored nearly 10 more points per game with Houston. Howard was not happy in LA last season and now that the two are together, the Rockets may pull off something special.
Last season the team ranked second in the league in scoring with over 100 points per game, but they were 28th in points allowed and adding Howard will only help with that. The team already ranked in the top 10 in assists and rebounds per game and as long as that stays steady, they should easily get more than the 45 wins they has last year.