The Houston Rockets basketball team is trying to persuade two major cable providers to begin broadcasting the struggling Comcast CMCSA +0.02% SportsNet Houston television channel, which now shows basketball games and Houston Astros games to less than half of the region's households.
At a court hearing Thursday, lawyers involved with the network told U.S. Bankruptcy Court Judge Marvin Isgur about the potential deals with the cable providers—whom they didn't identify—in an update of their progress to grow the network's footprint and revenue. 
The Houston Rockets' lawyers have taken the lead on the negotiations, which were initiated by the Astros, with the hope of finalizing them before another hearing set for Jan. 7. The Rockets took control after Mr. Crane sued Comcast Corp. with accusations that it set the network's subscription rates so high that other distributors such as Time Warner Cable Inc., TWC -0.33% DirecTV and AT&T Inc. refused to pick up it up.
After Thursday's hearing in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Houston, Astros owner Jim Crane released a statement stating both the Rockets and the Astros "want our fans to view our games."
A profitable network would also enrich the two teams and the Comcast affiliate that now runs the network. The Astros own a little more than 46% of the network; the rest is owned by Comcast affiliates and the Houston Rockets.
The network, which launched in October 2012, is broadcast to Comcast customers, but other cable and satellite companies have been reluctant to carry the network in exchange for subscriber fees some have said are too high.
Mr. Crane has criticized Comcast officials for failing to find moneymaking broadcasting deals for the network. In October, Judge Isgur gave Mr. Crane, a Texas businessman, bought the Astros for more than $600 million in 2011, several months to make those deals himself.
Throughout the negotiations, Judge Isgur has put off the question of whether the sports network should even be in bankruptcy court.
Comcast moved to force the network into bankruptcy on Sept. 27 by filing an involuntary Chapter 11 petition on its behalf. Comcast said in earlier court papers it would make a bid for the network at a court-supervised auction if that is how the case unfolds.
The bankruptcy filing blocked Mr. Crane from yanking the team's media-rights agreement with the network and looking for buyers who would purchase the broadcast rights to Astros games.
Comcast SportsNet Houston is one of 12 regional networks that are part of the sports division of Comcast's NBCUniversal unit, and it pays Comcast an annual fee for management oversight and other operational help. The network owes more than $100 million to Comcast for a loan that it provided under the deal that created the network last year.
The network employs about 130 workers and broadcasts sports programming out of a 32,000-square-foot space in downtown Houston, according to its website.
The network's promotional material said that it plans to broadcast more than 135 regular season Astros games and more than 65 regular season Rockets games. In addition to that, the network broadcasts Houston Dynamo soccer games, high school football games and sports talk shows.
Write to Katy Stech at katherine.stech@wsj.com