The change began nearly as soon as the Rockets' miserable 2015-16 season ended, but rarely has the turnaround been more obvious.

The side-by-side snapshots of the Rockets at the All-Star break, before and after looks of a team in turmoil and a team transformed, were striking.

Even with a dreary send-off loss to the Miami Heat on Wednesday, the Rockets reached this season's All-Star break at 40-18, moving to within one victory of their total of last season.

When James Harden boarded his flight from Portland to Toronto for last season's All-Star Game, the cloud over the Rockets was so dark that it threatened to ground air traffic.

"Everything's different," Harden said. "You can tell by our play, but on the court, off the court - the vibe, the relationships, communication - everything is different. As a result, the wins start racking up."

A year ago, the Rockets were led by interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff, who labeled them "a broken team." General manager Daryl Morey was shopping Dwight Howard but finding only offers of role players. Howard and Harden had met with Morey and Bickerstaff in the Moda Center locker room after a dispiriting loss to Portland dropped them to 27-28 and ninth in the Western Conference, solving little beyond sharing pledges to try.

"Right now, we're a broken team," Bickerstaff said that night. "It's easy to see. It's a fragmented bunch. You can't win that way."

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The fun returns

Things had become so dysfunctional that former Rockets guard Jason Terry marched through the media room on the way to the locker room and shouted, "No chemistry with that group … horrible."

The Rockets reached this season's All-Star break with the NBA's fourth-best record. They headed to the break with a home loss, but when they said the usual things about using it to fuel a 24-game push to the postseason, the evidence of the season made that no longer sound like empty rhetoric.

"We've done well," guard Eric Gordon said. "We just got to continue to play that way. We're going to work on all of our mistakes as soon as we get back. We will work on the things we need to do to keep on winning a whole bunch of games. We'll be fine."

Beyond the quantifiable improvement since last season, there has been an attitude change Rockets players say is just as dramatic. More than that, they said the improvement in attitude and approach led to the improved record.

"It feels good," forward Corey Brewer said. "It's fun. Every day we come in, we're having fun. Last year was real stressful. Everybody was crazy. This year is happy, and that's a good thing."

"We've been playing well all year long. We had a couple ups and downs, but when we're healthy we've been playing really well. We stay together. We have a good group of guys. We like playing with each other. It's easy when you like playing with each other."

A year older, wiser

Brewer was not necessarily referring to the difference between this season and last. He had not been asked about the change since then. But no one could think of last season's Rockets as a team that liked playing with each other.

But there could be another change that influenced the attitude adjustment that followed.

"We're all getting older," guard Pat Beverley said. "There comes a time you prioritize different. You start wanting different things in life. We are blessed to have everything we wanted growing up - the money, the cars. But we have families now, it's all about trying to leave your legacy in winning. Our focus is different.

"Me and James, when we first got here four, five years ago, it's definitely different than how it is now. I think our (team) has grown and we want more than everything that comes with it. We want to be champions."

To get that done, they pledged to handle adversity better than a year ago when they opened the season with three 20-point losses that opened fissures the winning streak that followed could not repair.

A year ago, issues simmered, unresolved and often unaddressed even with the many team meetings.

The Rockets do not claim to have rolled through this season without issues, but their relationships are strong enough to take on problems and move on. They do not have a losing streak as long as the three-game crash that opened last season and have lost consecutive games twice.

"I don't think you can compare the two (seasons)," Trevor Ariza said. "Last year there were a lot of unknowns, a lot of uncertainty. This year, everybody knows what's going on. We know what our problems are. It's up to us to fix them. We address our problems straightaway."

Seek to improve depth

There also is a sense the Rockets have to get better. Morey has said he will look only to tinker with the roster at next week's trade deadline, hoping to improve depth rather than the starting lineup, but Rockets players and coaches have said they want to become consistent defensively and develop chemistry offensively.

Still, a year after the hope was to sneak into the playoffs, a goal they accomplished on the season's final day, the Rockets have greater aspirations.

"We're just trying to get better and keep playing well," Brewer said. "Teams know when they play us, it's not an easy win. We pride ourselves in the way we play, the way we shoot the ball and the way we're winning games. We think we're an elite team. We think we have a chance to win a championship."