The NBA season is right around the corner and the Houston Rockets 2013 NBA Championship Odds are currently at 175-1 ($100 bet pays $17700. They are 100-1 to win the Western Conference and their over/under season win total projection is 30,5. Below is the overall season preview by Pregame Pro André Gomes.

The Rockets were one of the biggest surprises of the past season. The team was involved in the fight for the playoffs when nobody expected that and they were at a specific time 7 games ahead of 0.500 at the end of February. However, two losing streak of 5 and 6 games in March and April prevented them from reaching the playoffs.

2011-12 Regular Season Numbers:

Statistically, the team wasn’t in the top 10 of any ranking, but at the same time, they weren’t horrible in almost nothing, with the exception of having a low number of free throws. Offensively, the Rockets were very efficient in Pick and Rolls – ball handler plays, as they were #5 in the league with 0.84 PPP in this kind of plays, which made me have the following conclusion:

Kevin McHale’s system helps the Point Guards a lot

When McHale was coaching the Timberwolves in the 2008-09 season, this doesn’t happen, but also at that time, he had only available Sebastian Telfair, Randy Foye and the veteran Kevin Ollie for the PG position and they didn’t form a very talented PG unit. But the truth is that McHale didn’t only allow Kyle Lowry to have a career season last year until he got injured, as also Goran Dragic had later the opportunity to shine. On this new season, both players will be the starting PG of Toronto and Phoenix on new lucrative contracts that they got due to the opportunity McHale gave them to shine. Jeremy Lin was the player picked by the Rockets to replace them and Lin will immediately be in a good position to play well on this system.

Offseason moves 2012-13:

There wasn’t a team more involved in this offseason than the Rockets. GM Daryl Morey had a well defined plan, close to what Boston did in 2007 with the formation of their “big 3”. The following are some parts of a Morey interview from the end of July:

"It's very similar to what Boston did," Morey said. "Hopefully, it will yield the same result."

[…]

"Last season, we won more than half our games with a roster of youth and experience," he said. "I liked what we had, but we didn't have enough."

This time, he could end up with draft picks, young, intriguing players and salary-cap space in which to make his run at [Dwight] Howard or [Andrew] Bynum. That's the plan, anyway.

"We'll be very well set up in a year," Morey said.

Houston made some trades to get draft picks that would eventually be used to sign a star player. At the start of the last season, a traded was vetoed by the league that would send Pau Gasol to Houston and in this offseason there were talks about Andrew Bynum and Dwight Howard as possible signings, but that didn’t happen.

With Lowry and Dragic leaving Houston, Morey took advantage of the Knicks’ indecision to offer a good contract to Lin that wasn’t matched by the Knicks. In a similar move, the Rockets did the same thing to get Omer Asik from the Bulls. These two players ended up having contracts a bit higher than their market value, but we are also taking about two young players with a lot of margin to progress in the future.

Houston also signed Carlos Delfino, Shaun Livingston and Toney Douglas, but it was via draft that Morey invested the most for this season: Jeremy Lamb, Terrence Jones and Royce White are coming from this year’s draft, while Donatas Motiejunas decided to join the NBA after being drafted by Houston last season.

The most inexperienced team in the league

From the probable starting lineup, only Kevin Martin can be considered as an experienced NBA player and there are even rumors that Martin may get traded sooner or later.

NBA years of experience from the probable starting lineup:

Jeremy Lin                         2
Kevin Martin                     8
Chandler Parsons            1
Patrick Patterson            2
Omer Asik                          2

If we add to this the four rookies the team will have on their rotation this season, then we can say that no other team comes even close to the level of inexperience that the Rockets will have this season.

Kevin McHale’s challenge this season will be to develop his young players and anything more than that will be an unrealistic goal and it seems obvious to me that the Rockets will have one of the worst records in the Western conference this season.

However, I watched some Summer League games of the Rockets and their rookies impressed me so much, especially as none of the rookies was even a top 10 pick: Lamb has excellent shooting skills, White impressed me from being an all-around player (a bit like Lebron James, with the obvious differences), who is undersized for the PF position but has an excellent feel for the game, while Terrence Jones also promised a lot during the time he played. If these rookies adapt so quickly to the NBA, then the Rockets will be more competitive than expected.

Jeremy Lin will benefit from playing in McHale’s system, just like it happened with both Lowry and Dragic. Lin had an excellent run with the Knicks last season and even though he still needs to play more games to be considered a top PG, what he showed last season is enough to say that we are already talking about a good player: underrated defensive skills, excellent in taking decisions on the pick and roll, good in attacking the basket and also good in the outside shooting.

Chandler Parsons was the team’s biggest surprise last season by showing that he is a good all-around player in such a way that Morey didn’t hesitate in trading Chase Budinger to Minnesota, in order to give more space to Parsons In the rotation.

Frontcourt with no offensive ability

This might become one of the biggest problems for the Rockets this season. Asik has already showed the whole league that he is an excellent defender and rebounder, however he has no offensive skills besides being an underrated passer. The rookie Montiejunas will still have to adapt to the NBA and in the PF position (even though he is the most talented player of the unit on the offensive end), the Rockets have three inexperienced players: Patterson, Morris and White. Both Patterson and Morris didn’t show a lot on offense last season, while the rookie White has a lot of positive aspects on his game, but unfortunately for the Rockets, his scoring skills is the less developed part of his game right now.

 Final Thoughts:

The Rockets are well positioned to get a top draft pick next season. The team’s “leader” Kevin Martin might not even finish the season as a Rocket and besides that, Martin is unlikely to keep himself healthy during the whole season, as he never had a season on his career where he played in all games of the season.

The team’s competitiveness will depend from how quick the rookies will develop or not to the league and to McHale’s system. Speaking of McHale, he made a good job last season and the expectations are naturally not very high for this season. Eventually, the Rockets will be the kind of team that are competitive on their games, but where their lack of experience will be crucial down the stretch.

 Follow Andre Gomes on Twitter @GomesCapper

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