A look at the National Basketball Association (NBA) Western Conference right now will see the Golden State Warriors and the San Antonio Spurs living up to their preseason billing as top teams to watch for the season.

The Oklahoma City Thunder are also there rounding up third, but surprisingly, coming in fourth are the Dallas Mavericks who weren't even given a chance of holding a .500 record. Missing are the Los Angeles Clippers and the Houston Rockets, two teams that figured prominently last season.

The Clippers have been struggling, although they currently sit among the top eight teams with a 7–7 card as of this writing. They still have time to turn things around and given that the season has just started, expect the Clippers to still improve.

But to do that, they must do better on their defense, which has been weak despite the presence of known defensive stalwarts such as DeAndre Jordan.

The Houston Rockets didn't exactly start the season on a high note and things are still a bit bumpy as of report writing. The team fired Kevin McHale unceremoniously but such hasn't changed their fortunes a bit.

Since relieving McHale, the Rockets have only won one game and lost two consecutive. So what is the problem?

James Harden is being singled out as the problem, apparently distracted by his off-court issues involving Khloe Kardashian even if he denies it. Dwight Howard is far from the dominant player many thought him to be, although he is reportedly not playing at 100%.

Ty Lawson was supposed to help the team in the point guard department but the veteran guard seems to be struggling to co-exist with Harden on the floor.

So the heat is on J.B. Bickerstaff to turn things around and so far, it is not looking good. The Rockets still have about 68 games to play, so anything can still happen. But the immediate concern is how to fix the problem within, something they have failed to weed out or are perhaps blindly overlooking.