Houston Rockets: 4 Best Reasons to Get Excited About Jeremy Lin

The Houston Rockets pried the services of point guard Jeremy Lin from the New York Knicks this offseason with a three-year, $25 million contract.

If anything, the move surely hasn't lacked publicity.

Some think the Rockets are foolish.  Others think James Dolan is the dummy.

And according to the AP's Brian Mahoney, Carmelo Anthony dubbed the Rockets contract offer as "ridiculous."

Regardless of any personal viewpoint, the bottom line is this: Rockets fans have reasons to be excited about Jeremy Lin manning the point over the next three seasons.

And here's why.

4. Huge Fanbase

Over the past year, Jeremy Lin has become one of the most recognizable faces in the NBA.

Concurrently, he has also developed quite the fanbase.

So what does this mean for the Rockets?

Anyone remember Yao Ming?

As detailed by Kate Murphy of the New York Times, not only are the Rockets gaining Lin's on-court skills, they are garnering massive international interest as well. 

During the days of Yao Ming, televised Rockets games received nearly 30 million viewers from their Chinese audience.  That equates to millions of dollars of increased TV revenue.

And one more thing, his jersey will sell pretty well, too.

3. His Contract

After all is said and done, Jeremy Lin's contract amounts to three years, $25 million.

Broken down by a yearly basis, the details shake out as follows:

Year 1- $5.0 million
Year 2- $5.2 million
Year 3- $14.9 million

Most noticeable is the third year of this poison-pill deal, where the Rockets have made Jeremy Lin nearly a fifteen-million-dollar player.

While some choose to criticize this contract, in the words of Daryl Morey, the Rockets have taken an "extremely good risk" here (as reported by Tony Manfred of Business Insider).

ESPN's Beckley Mason breaks it down well.  Lin's average yearly salary of $8.4 million places him in a very reasonable spot among starting point guards in the NBA. 

He's priced just below comparable players like Goran Dragic, George Hill and Rodney Stuckey, and comes cheaper than pedestrian players like Andre Miller, Luke Ridnour and Jarret Jack..

At $5 million per year, Lin could very well be a steal over the first two years of his contract.  Naturally, his $15 million price tag in year three, will be quite substantial.

But if he is a league superstar by then, who will be complaining?

2. The Rockets Needed a Point Guard

Goran Dragic's breakout 2012 season had many Rockets fans dreaming of Dragic teaming up with Kyle Lowry to form one of the league's top backcourts for years to come.

Yeah, about that.

The Rockets ended up letting Dragic sign with the Suns, and then shipped Lowry to the Toronto Raptors.

Before they signed Lin, the Rockets were looking at having their point guard position filled by some combination of Shaun Livingston and Toney Douglas. 

Yikes.

Rockets fans should most certainly be excited that they ended up with Lin instead.

1. His Potential

There's a reason it was called "Lin-sanity."

Jeremy Lin took the NBA by storm last season, averaging 23.9 points and 9.2 assists over his first 11 games as an NBA starter.  He also shot over fifty percent from the field during that stretch, but ended his season averaging 3.6 turnovers per game.

Ah yes.  That turnover rate.  It's what most people point to as his biggest weakness. But is it such a big deal?

The stat guys at Basketball Prospectus say no.

You can read the article if you want, but what it boils down to is this.  Lin committed a large amount of turnovers.  The catch is, his usage rate in Mike D'Antoni's system was also extremely high.  When that is taken into account, one sees that Lin really doesn't have much of a turnover problem after all.

So the Rockets are left with a massively popular and reasonably priced point guard, who has already flashed game-changing abilities.  Just for the icing on the cake, he's only 23 years old.

Who wouldn't be excited about that?