After selecting Jabari Smith Jr. from Auburn at No. 3 in the 2022 NBA Draft, the Houston Rockets won 22 games in his rookie season. In Smith’s second campaign, Houston’s win total jumped to 41.

While that still left the Rockets’ five games out of the final playoff spot in the NBA’s Western Conference last season, Smith said he had a different feeling at end of his second season.

“You wasn’t ready for the season to be over,” Smith said. “You wasn’t ready to wrap it up. You know what I mean? You still had that hunger. You still wanted to play. You wanted to go to the postseason. So going into the offseason, it was kind of like a bad feeling, a bad taste in your mouth that you don’t really like, so we’re carrying that into this year. We’re carrying that into training camp, and we’re ready to go, man. We’re excited.”

Houston will tip off its four-game preseason schedule against the Utah Jazz at 8 p.m. CDT Monday at the Delta Center in Salt Lake City.

Smith said he expects the Rockets to make “more strides” this season.

“This year, we’re looking to do big things,” Smith said. “… We know how close we were to making it to the postseason and how many games we let slip out of our hands, so we’re just really ready to put it all together and have a really good year.”

The Rockets should benefit from their continuity, Smith said. The 11 players who averaged at least 10 minutes per game of court time for Houston in the 2023-24 season are back for the 2024-25 season.

“Some of these guys – Alpey (Sengun), Jalen (Green) — I’ve been with for two years now, going on to my third,” Smith said, “so it’s like we know each other. We know to expect of each other. We know how to talk to each other. And just spending a whole year with Fred (VanVleet), Jeff (Green), Dillon (Brooks), it’s just like we have that understanding that we can talk to each other. We have that understanding what is expected out of each other on a nightly basis. We’ve seen each other’s best. We’ve seen each other when we’re not OK. We’ve seen each other when we’re not playing up to our potential. So we know what to expect out of each other. And when we don’t see that, we can hold each other accountable, so I feel like that’s just so important. And I feel like we got that off the court, on the court. We love each other, so it’s cool.”

Smith went to the NBA Finals last season as the league’s player correspondent for the first two games between the Boston Celtics and Dallas Mavericks. He asked Jayson Tatum what advice the Celtics star would give a player preparing for his third NBA season who had fallen short of expectations.

“I just meant by like personal expectations,” Smith said. “Everybody sets expectations for theirself, and you might meet them or you may not meet them. But I set really high expectations on myself, and I didn’t mean it to like downplay myself or downplay what I’ve done. It was just like what I see myself as, I’m not there yet, so I was just asking him: How do you feel about that? And he gave a great answer to me, and he was, basically, just stay the course and just work. Just let the work do the talking, and everything else will show.”

As a rookie, Smith averaged 12.8 points, 7.2 rebounds and 1.3 assists while playing 31.0 minutes in 79 games, all starts. He made 48.7 percent of his 2-point shots, 30.7 percent of his 3-point shots and 78.6 percent of his free throws.

In his second season, the 6-foot-11 forward averaged 13.7 points, 8.1 rebounds and 1.6 assists while playing 31.9 minutes in 76 games, all starts. He made 53.0 percent of his 2-points shots, 36.3 percent of his 3-point shots and 81.1 percent of his free throws.

“My growth has been something that I’m really happy about from my rookie year to sophomore year,” Smith said. “Just the comfortness I have. You know what I’m saying? The confidence, — you know what I mean? Like going into each season, I feel more good, more confident, more like I belong, more sure about myself, so just this offseason, I was real confident.

“I knew what I needed to work on. I was ready for the next season. It’s like I just was ready to start fresh and start from the ground up and just know that we’re a team that’s competing in this league, and it’s time to win some games, and I’m going to be a big part of that. So I’m just excited, man. I’ve been working my butt off all summer, working my butt off all my life to put myself in positions where I can compete in the best league in the world, so I’m ready for it.”

Smith’s offseason work included playing on the USA Basketball Men’s Select Team this summer, providing the practice competition for the U.S. men’s basketball team as it prepared for the Paris Games, where it won the gold medal.

“It was a great experience just to even see how those dudes prepare, how serious those dudes was taking practice, and just compete against them,” Smith said. “That’s one of the greatest teams ever assembled, in my opinion, and just to see how they all can take steps back, how they all can put their pride aside and just play together to win, it was great to see. So just to see their preparation and how they approached the game, it was good to see. It was a good learning experience. I enjoyed it.”

The Rockets tip off their regular-season schedule against the Charlotte Hornets at 7 p.m. Oct. 23 at the Toyota Center in Houston.

Mark Inabinett is a sports reporter for Alabama Media Group. Follow him on Twitter at @AMarkG1.