2012-13 NBA Sleepers: Houston Rockets

Looking ahead to the upcoming 2012-13 NBA season, there is no shortage of talk about teams expected to do well. The Heat, Thunder, Lakers and now the Brooklyn Nets have all eyes on them and considering their rosters, the expectations are reasonable. With Champions, MVPs, All-Stars, Defensive Players of the Year, 6^th Man award winners and Scoring Champions among the starters, predicting that these teams will do well doesn’t take much effort.

The tough part will be spotting the sleepers that could make top tier teams think twice about walking into an arena with no game plan and simply hoping for a blow out win. If they’re not careful, games that were previously marked as a win when the schedule was released or even a playoff game or two could have them red in the face.

Over the next few weeks I will go through the 6 teams I feel that could make some noise in their division and some that could sneak into the 7^th or 8^th playoff spot in their respective conference.

6. Houston Rockets (Southwest Division)

Division Rivals: San Antonio Spurs, Memphis Grizzlies, Dallas Mavericks and New Orleans Hornets

Jeremy Lin, Jeremy Lamb, and Kevin Martin are sadly pretty much all this team has going for them. Likely to remain at the bottom of the division throughout the entire season just below the New Orleans Hornets, my hope for them lies with their youth and speed.  With only Lin and Martin averaging more than 10 points, this team is sure to have a really rough year relying purely on their guards. Regardless of coach Kevin McHale’s preference in offensive strategies, this team will need to try and run opponents out of the building and make sure their supporting cast like Asik and Morris perform inside the paint and Delfino finally becomes more of a consistent threat from the outside.

Honestly, this is not one of the teams on my list that I see making the playoffs but, I still feel that if they can find a run and gun style of play that keeps opponents back pedaling, they can perhaps avoid having the worst record in the NBA coupled with a few major upsets, which would actually be a great accomplishment. No doubt with Linsanity still quite a big part of the NBA, you will be surely kept up to date with all the winning, and mostly losing of the emerging international star. The only difference now is that the losing can’t be blamed on Carmelo Anthony and Amare Stoudemire, which I’m sure Lin will miss dearly.