Slowly, and ahead of schedule, the Houston Rockets are working well together. Since Jeremy Lin’s breakout performance in a loss to the San Antonio Spurs last week, the team has won four of five games and dropped in a Western conference playoff bracket few thought they’d have a place in. Even after the team traded for All-Star James Harden, pairing him with Jeremy Lin in one of the league’s more intriguing backcourts, the Rockets were still thought to be a young rebuilding team that would need at least a year’s worth of chemistry-building before it could be counted on to play past the regular season. Instead, just seven weeks into this experiment, the alchemy is in place.

Truly, this team has no business putting anything together this soon. And yet, 25 games in, the Rockets are above .500 and overcoming quite a bit. To hear coach Kevin McHale tell it, though, the team’s potential is far from being met. From the Houston Chronicle:

Coach Kevin McHale, Lin and Harden again said Wednesday time will take care of everything. And Houston’s coach was more concerned about the Rockets’ defense than the on-the-court relationship between the team’s star point guard and shooting guard. “A lot of our offensive flow is predicated on our defense,” McHale said. “If we can get stops, we can get out and go – we’re just much, much better.”

It’s true that the team’s defense – currently ranked 19th in defensive efficiency – still could use quite a bit of touch-up work. In terms of getting out and going, though, the Rockets already have that down pat. They’re first in the NBA in possessions per game, pushing with abandon to the dismay of their “we have 55 games left, dude”-opponents.

And that 13-12 record is remarkable when you consider the obstacles the team has overcome this season.

There was the offseason signings of Lin and former Chicago Bulls center Omer Asik, players who were dotted to strange contracts meant to take advantage of bigger market teams (though the Bulls don’t always act like one) and front offices that might make decisions based off of personal spite. Both were set to make superstar money in their third year had Chicago or the New York Knicks matched the terms, which set off an uneasy discussion about the relative merits of each player.

Then, each player had to learn life as a starter. A switch in roles that shouldn’t be sloughed off.

Asik had averaged just 12.1 and 14.7 minutes per game in his first two seasons in Chicago, minute allotments that allowed him to take chances defensively while playing a wearing style of defense that might not hold up over extended rotation stints. Lin played against relatively iffy competition while in Harvard and the NBA’s D-League, and barely played at all as an NBA pro save for seven sublime weeks as a Knick starter in 2011-12. Though both won’t be paid as stars with their Rockets contracts, they have been asked to take on the minutes usually afforded to stars.

Lin’s ligament tear from last March also complicated things. Jeremy might not be coming back from a massive reconstruction or break, but the first significant injury of a player’s career always serves as a massive setback. The player, whether he’s a relative neophyte like Lin or a lauded veteran like Dirk Nowitzki, has to completely re-learn how to play, and to trust a part of the body that had never been called into question before. That’s no quick fix.

Then, in one of the more stunning moves of the NBA’s 2012 calendar year, the Rockets traded for former Oklahoma City Thunder star James Harden just before the season started. Harden was at once asked to leave the only team he’s ever known, work as a starter for the first time in his NBA career, and acclimate to a Rockets team that just finished a training camp and preseason that he wasn’t a part of. Oh, and also sign a lifetime-defining maximum contract to be the Houston Rockets’ Next Great Franchise Player.

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