Jeremy Lin has said that the Houston Rockets want to be championship contenders in the upcoming NBA season.

The club have brought in former Los Angeles Lakers center Dwight Howard during the off-season in a bid to strengthen their roster.

The point guard told ESPN: "I think Dwight Howard himself is already pretty deadly of a player. For us, it's just a matter of getting on the same page and buying into the system, and I think adding [Howard] as a piece to the puzzle, it's incredible.

"We don't have the [post-season] experience, so we're going to have to make up for that somehow, some way. And we don't really want to wait around and wait three years down the line to be able to compete for a championship, we want to do that now.

"If everything jells together in an ideal situation, I think we can be a championship contender for sure. But that's a big 'if', and we understand that, and our coaching staff understands that."

Houston have previously won two championships in the 1990s.