7 teams the Washington Wizards can hope to emulate if they get 8th seed
By Keith Cork
2. 2012-13 Houston Rockets
This was the season that followed Jeremy Lin‘s “magical season” with the New York Knicks. Someone was bound to buy into the hype and it turned out to be the Houston Rockets.
They also bit the “poison pill” on the contract of Ömer Aşık, and the Chicago Bulls and Knicks didn’t match either offer for Aşık or Lin respectively. The Rockets felt like they had James Harden‘s supporting cast all set, but they wound up playing pretty mediocre basketball.
Lin played pretty well, contributing 13.4 points per game in a full 82 games, all of which he started. He also shot 33.9 percent from beyond the arc, which was a fair clip for him. Aşık aslo played well, averaging a double-double for the Rockets.
They just couldn’t win as much as they should have, even with the emergence of Chandler Parsons who was playing insanely good basketball in his sophomore season on his rookie contract.
Mainly this team is on the list because their young future scoring champion, 23-year-old Harden, got even more playoff experience. The Rockets went out and surrounded him with new talent like Eric Gordon and Clint Capela, and the 8th place finish of the 2012-13 season started an impressive 7-year playoff run for the franchise.
While Bradley Beal is 26, his potential window to do the same will probably be less lengthy, but perhaps this experience for the younger guys on the roster can help us capitalize on Beal’s later years.
Record at all-star break: 29-26
2012-13 Final record & result : 45-37, Lost in 1st round
2013-14 season record & result: 54-28, Lost in 1st round (Made Western Conference Finals the following year)