Rockets-Lakers Highlights: LA certainly doesn’t look like a title threat
The Houston Rockets celebrated Christmas in style, producing a rousing and dominant outing in a 119-96 loss to the Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday.
Amen Thompson led six Rockets in double figures with 26 points in the win, which ended a brutal six-game road trip — three overtime losses plus a 20-point blowout at the hands of the woeful Clippers — on a strong note to improve to 18-10 on the season. Luka Dončić scored a career-high 25 points for the Lakers, but also committed six of their 16 turnovers in a game that LA never led, and in which Dončić, LeBron James and Co. only briefly appeared competitive.
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Here are three highlights from the Rockets’ commanding performance Crypto.com Arena:
So, regarding the Lakers defense…
After back-to-back losses to the Clippers and Suns, Los Angeles coach JJ Redick offered a blunt response to a question about whether his Lakers – who entered Christmas ranked 25th in defensive efficiency – had shown sufficient willingness to dig in and grind out the less glamorous end of the court:
LA carried a similar flavor of indifference to much of its Christmas Day matchup with Houston. The Lakers repeatedly allowed the Rockets’ ball players to beat them at the point of attack, drive into the paint, and generate one big look after another, seemingly whenever and wherever they wanted:
Houston needed just five minutes of play to build a double-digit lead it would never relinquish, finishing the opening frame with 37 points on 24 possessions — a torrid offensive rating of 154.2. For reference, the best offense in the NBA, the Denver Nuggets, scores 125.6 points per 100.
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“The two words of the day were ‘effort’ and ‘execution,’” Redick said after the game. “I feel like when we’ve done both at a high level, we’ve been a good basketball team, and when we haven’t, we’re a terrible basketball team. And tonight we were a terrible basketball team. And it all started, legitimately, right away.”
When the Lakers made a brief push midway through the second quarter, cutting the deficit to four at 48-44 after 3-pointers by Dončić and Jarred Vanderbilt, the Rockets held steady, scored 15 points over the next three minutes and pushed the lead back to 10 at halftime. After the Rockets opened the third quarter with four consecutive possessions, Redick changed tactics and set up a zone, which resulted in a pair of stops… which Houston promptly made irrelevant by grabbing offensive rebounds, scoring second-chance points and further extending its lead.
Redick searched his Rolodex for different combinations that could offer a level of physicality and defensive activity that could short-circuit Houston’s fluid machine. The combination of Vanderbilt and Marcus Smart helped create an 11-4 run in the second quarter that constituted some of Los Angeles’ best basketball of the night; a unit flanking Dončić and quiet center Deandre Ayton with Vanderbilt, Smart, gap-plugging connector Jake LaRavia (someone who had played just 10 possessions together all season before Thursday) showed intermittent sparks.
For the most part, though, the Lakers’ Christmas fiasco looked a lot like their Emirates NBA Cup quarterfinal loss to the San Antonio Spurs: a team rich in scoring prowess but light on size, athleticism and defensive steel that proved unable – or unwilling – to hold its own against a younger, stronger, more physical and more relentless opponent.
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“We don’t care enough right now,” Redick said. “That’s the part that bothers you a lot. We don’t care enough about, like, doing the things that are necessary. We don’t care enough about being a professional. We had that. We had that. I always say that about culture, I always say that about a team that’s a functioning organism: It can change like that. We don’t have that now.”
What the Lakers have, in Dončić, James and Austin Reaves (who missed the second half with what the Lakers call left calf soreness, a concerning note considering he missed just three games with a calf strain) is enough high-level scoring and playmaking to produce a world-class offense. If they can’t provide a higher toughness class against equally skilled opponents, however, that won’t be enough, especially not if the goal is to make a deep postseason run in this Western Conference.
“It’s a matter of making the choice, and too often we have guys who don’t want to make that choice,” Redick said. “And it’s pretty consistent who those guys are. I told the guys: Saturday’s practice is going to be uncomfortable. The meeting is going to be uncomfortable. I’m not going to play another 53 games like this.”
Possession is worth nine-tenths of the law
Coming into Christmas Day, the Rockets were the sixth-best team in the NBA at winning the possession battle on a night-to-night basis, per Jared Dubin’s analysis at Last Night in Basketball, averaging three more offensive trips per game than their opponents. They used that advantage early and often Thursday, pulling down four offensive rebounds against some lackadaisical Lakers boxouts and forcing six turnovers in the first quarter alone.
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That allowed them to take five more shots than LA in the opening stanza — a key factor in the Rockets opening that early double-digit lead and keeping the Lakers at arm’s length.
The Rockets finished with nearly the same number of offensive rebounds (17) as the Lakers defensive rebounds (18) and monster advantages in second chance points (24-10), points off turnovers (23-11), points scored per possession in transition (1.33-1.13) and total field goal attempts (90-77). Getting so many bites at the apple, and capitalizing on them so effectively, is how the Rockets can shake off 25 points from Luka and the Lakers shoot 50.6% overall as a team — and how a Houston team that takes fewer 3-pointers per game than any other team in the NBA can still boast one of the most potent and efficient offenses in the league.
Many hands make light work
At their best, the Rockets attack you in waves on the offensive end. It’s Thompson (26 points on 12-of-19 shooting with five assists) who repeatedly drops into the paint, and Alperen Şengün (14 points, 12 rebounds, four assists) pirouettes meanly into all sorts of maddening tip-ups and needle-threading drop-offs, and Kevin Durant (25 points on 8-of-14 shooting, eight assists) barely seems to break a sweat as he gets to his favorite midrange spots or snaps a trail 3 in the eyes of an unsuspecting defender.
When they are Truly scary, it’s because those headliners have help: Jabari Smith Jr. (16 points on nine shots) drilling jumpers while spotting and running away from pindowns, Reed Sheppard (13 points, 5 of 10 from the floor) meandering through the pick-and-roll to get to CP3-style elbow pulls at pace, and Tari Eason — an all-time threat on both ends of the court, just doing the Grinching: snatching, running and terrorizing.
On some nights, a point guard’s lack of an adequate half-court organizer will rear its head; on others, though, the size of Houston’s athleticism, ferocity and talent will eliminate such concerns. On those nights, these Rockets can take you out of the gym. Ask the Lakers. They can tell you everything about it.