Let's hear it for the bench.

​In my season preview for the Houston Rockets, I cited the current portion of the season as the "make or break stretch" for the team -- a six-game road trip against a bunch of pretty-good-but-not-great teams followed by a six-game homestand against mostly good teams.

And once the season started, and the Rockets evolved into a fairly predictable group, essentially knocking off bad teams and struggling against good teams, this current road trip looked even a little more daunting.

But don't look now, after losing to Minnesota in the first game of the road swing (the infamous "Kevin Love Using Luis Scola's Face As Welcome Mat" game), the Rockets have won three in a row and the last two have been in a highly improbable fashion.

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Wikiepedia

Jeremy Lin

​Daryl Morey's incessant shuffling of second-rate players over the past few seasons, constantly tweaking and tinkering looking for "assets," came to an almost comical head last week when a player the Rockets cut in the offseason to make room for Jonny Flynn, who they acquired from Minnesota, came to the forefront with the Knicks doing damage to the Rockets in more ways than one.

Let me first start by explaining who Jeremy Lin is exactly. The Harvard-educated California native point guard went un-drafted last year before signing with the Golden State Warriors. He played in 29 games averaging 2.6 points per game. He also spent 20 games in the NBA Developmental League.

He was signed in the offseason by the Rockets, but waived after the Rockets traded with Minnesota to pick up Flynn, a talented former first-round pick at guard, who hadn't fulfilled his potential.

And that's where things start to get interesting.

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NBA All-Star time already?

​Go ahead and chalk up the NBA All-Star Game taking place in a few weeks (Sunday, February 26, to be exact) in Orlando's Amway Center as the next "feels weird" moment of the NBA season. It feels like the season just tipped off a few weeks ago and yet here we are, about 20 games in, deciding who the best of the best are for the 2011-2012 season.

It's like The Bachelor making Ben decide who he's marrying after the opening cocktail party and one group date. I mean, do we really know who is most deserving? Truth be told, do we really know after the 40-some odd games we get most seasons?

It doesn't matter. On February 26, there will be an All-Star Game, and in it there must be players. Here are my picks if I had a vote for the reserves in each conference:

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I wake up at about 4:15 a.m. each weekday morning to head to the studio and do my radio show on 1560 The Game (also, shameless plug, simulcast on television on Comcast 129), so many nights I go to bed before the sports world has shut it down for the evening.

My tool to catch up on things when I wake up, not surprisingly, is Twitter, so when one single event dominates my Twitter timeline for the better part of a couple hours of the timeline, I know I missed something.

Last night, I missed the Clippers' Blake Griffin's eviscerating dunk on the Thunder's Kendrick Perkins. Fortunately, between the magic of YouTube and an apparent bet in the ESPN newsroom on how many times they could show it in one SportsCenter broadcast, I got caught up fairly quickly.

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Photo by Daniel Kramer

GM Daryl Morey makin' moves.

​The Houston Rockets announced this week that they would not exercise their option to extend the contracts of guard Courtney Lee and the four rookies from the 2009 draft, center Hasheem Thabeet, forward Jordan Hill, guard Johnny Flynn and guard Terrence Williams. The Rockets had the option available to extend them one year beyond their rookie contracts, but had to make that move before a league-imposed deadline.

Everyone except Lee will be unrestricted free agents. Lee will be restricted, meaning the Rockets could match any offer for him, which is not an uncommon tactic teams use allowing other teams to set the market for a player.

Clearly, this move is designed to free up cap space for the summer, which should include some of the biggest names in basketball. The Rockets clearly want to go after one if not two max-dollar free agents next summer.

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Photo by groovehouse

​While everyone was cheering on the Texans and fretting about whether or not Jim Crane would go completely nuts and change the Astros to the Craniums, a funny thing was happening at Toyota Center. The Rockets were winning.

They have won their last seven games and are 8-2 in the last ten. During this winning streak, they are scoring 103 points per game while holding opponents to just 94. The charge has been led primarily by the backcourt, with Kevin Martin averaging nearly 24 points and Kyle Lowry continuing his dazzling all-around play with 18 points, 7 rebounds and just under 8 assists per game, including a triple double Monday at Minnesota.

Surprisingly, the team's most recent acquisition, center Samuel Dalembert, has been playing extremely well, scoring 14 points and grabbing nearly 12 rebounds per game while blocking almost 3 shots. He had double doubles in points and rebounds twice during the streak.

There have even been a couple of impressive wins over Portland and San Antonio as well as two wins in overtime. They are headed into four straight at home against some rather mediocre teams (two they've already beaten) and one God-awful Washington club. They should raise their streak to nine games before meeting the spiraling Knicks in what could prove to be an interesting showdown of two completely different kinds of teams with vastly divergent expectations.

But before we all get too giddy, there is some reason for concern.

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​Jimmie Jones doesn't yet have his name on the back of his jersey. He's just a walk-on. His stat sheet doesn't look that impressive, and he's played in less than half of the Houston Cougars' basketball games this season. But if Saturday night was any indication, then Jimmie Jones could well end up being the Cougars' most important player this season.

For about 33 minutes on Saturday night, the Cougars played their best basketball of the season. The offense pushed the ball up the court at a quick, efficient, effective tempo. The defense kept the high-scorers of the visiting East Carolina University squad quiet while pulling down rebound after rebound. The mistakes were minimal. It was the kind of Cougar squad that hasn't been seen much on the basketball court this season.

In that 33 minutes, the Cougars did everything right that could be done right, and it saw the Cougars (10-9, 2-4 in conference) up 74-50 with 7:46 remaining in the game. Unfortunately, college basketball games are 40 minutes long, and over the next 6:37 the Cougars would be outscored 26-3 by a ECU team (9-10, 0-5 in conference) that went into a full-court press, forcing turnover after turnover, causing the Coogs to waste timeout after timeout, and saw missed shot after missed shot.

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These guys are turrible!

​The Rice Owls (11-8, 2-2) lost a basketball game they should have won on Wednesday night. The Houston Cougars (9-9, 1-4) were blown out yet again. It's turning into another disappointing men's basketball season in Houston, Texas.

It's not supposed to have been this way. Not this season. For the Rice Owls, at least. The Owls came into this season led by forward Arsalan Kazemi, arguably the best player in Conference USA. It's a team with some veteran leadership: Kazemi, point guard Tamir Jackson and shooting guard Connor Frizzelle, who have been through the wars, so to speak, and who were ready to seemingly lead a talented group of freshmen to heights not seen by Rice basketball in several seasons.

Only that's not happening. Kazemi's battling through an injury -- he played on Wednesday night despite an injured right knee, the results from a Wednesday MRI the team was still waiting for -- and hasn't been the player he was earlier in the season. Jackson's been relegated to bench duty. Freshman Dylan Ennis and Ahmad Ibrahim have shown flashes (Ibrahim was the C-USA Freshman of the Week last week). But the parts have yet to jell into one cohesive whole.

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Photo by Jeff Balke

Rockets need more than Rowdies this year.

​It's been a tough start for the hapless Rockets. With early injury problems, a trade that didn't happen in the lockout-shortened offseason and a new, unproven coach, it's no wonder the first few weeks of the season have been somewhere between "OH GOD NO!" and "Just shoot me."

This, of course, makes it highly unfair to compare them to one of the greatest teams in the history of the franchise, the 1993 championship winners. But, I thought it was an exercise worth doing if for no other reason than to illustrate the ladder this current team has to climb.

I should point out that I like a lot of the players on this team, but it takes stars to win. As Rockets superfan site ClutchFans.net pointed out just before the season started:

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​It hasn't been making a lot of waves here, given the excitement over the Texans' playoff games, but the NBA season has begun.

Of course, if you're a Rocket fan, you know what that means: A team not good enough for the playoffs but not bad enough to get a franchise pick in the draft.

Our Sean Pendergast assesses the 2012 team in this week's cover story, and predicts that not much will change:

They are the best of the non-playoff teams, the tallest midget, the perennial fourteenth selector in the NBA Draft. Too good to be terrible and bottom out, not good enough to make the playoffs, with ownership willing to spend and a razor-sharp management team, they are just blessed enough to be cursed.

Feel the excitement!! At least Pendergast's story, "NBA Purgatory," is entertaining, even if the Rockets generally aren't.