Howard: 'I really believe we have a championship-caliber team'

This season hasn't exactly gone as planned for Dwight Howard or his Houston Rockets.

After winning 56 games and marching all the way to the Western Conference finals a year ago, the Rockets stumbled out of the gate, fired their coach 11 games in, and have been trying to find their footing ever since. They're 35-35, clinging to a playoff spot by a game, have seen their defensive rating drop from sixth in the league to 23rd, and seem plagued by a persistent sense of mopiness and malaise.

Howard, though, has faith that his team can turn things around if they simply rediscover their belief, and that if they do, they'll be a force to be reckoned with.

"Regardless of how our season is going so far, regardless of the fact that we haven't played up to our expectations, I really believe that we have a championship-caliber team," Howard told USA Today's Sam Amick. "Nobody else has to believe it, and that's fine. The whole world can be against us. But if those 15 guys in the locker room believe that we can win, then we will win. There's no doubt about it. We had a great season last year, and the reason why we were able to come in the playoffs and do what we did is because we believed."

Howard and All-Star teammate James Harden have been at the center of the Rockets' season-long firestorm. Rumors that Howard was unhappy in Houston started to swirl way back in December. With Howard set on opting out of his contract at season's end and general manager Daryl Morey mum on re-signing him, the Rockets reportedly shopped Howard aggressively at the trade deadline. Howard reportedly said he wanted to land in Milwaukee.

After the deadline passed with no deal materializing, Howard split with his agent, Dan Fegan. A rumor surfaced that Harden had pushed for Howard to be traded, on top of having angled for Kevin McHale to be fired earlier in the season. That came on the heels of another rumor, which suggested that Howard and Harden had maneuvered to have each other traded two seasons ago.

Howard and the Rockets have denied all of this, but that seems like an awful lot of smoke to be emanating from a place that isn't on fire.

One of the reasons Howard might conceivably be frustrated is that the Rockets are heavily perimeter-oriented, and the most 3-point-happy team in the league. Harden uses up nearly a third of the team's possessions, and Howard, a once-dominant center, is averaging his fewest field-goal attempts since his rookie season 11 years ago. He hinted to Amick that the shifting NBA ethos is something he's struggling with as a dying breed of big man.

"The way the (NBA) game is played (now), it's all outside-in, it's threes, it's super-fast," he said. "It’s really like we're dinosaurs, and they're trying to extinct us. But the ice age will not come, and we will not be extinct."

All the same, Howard stressed once again that he and Harden are on solid ground.

"People feel ... like we hate each other," he said. "I have no hate in my blood for this man, you know? For what? He came from nothing. We both came from nothing. And we're doing something that we love. ... So I want him to succeed. I want us to succeed. I just - before coming here - I watched endless hours of YouTube videos on James Harden, before he had the beard. I watched all that stuff, because I'm like, 'Dang, this boy, he's got so much talent.'"