The Houston Rockets celebrated Christmas in style, delivering a crushing and dominant outing in a 119-96 beating of the Los Angeles Lakers on Thursday.
Amen Thompson led six Rockets in double figures with 26 points in the victory, 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 team-high 25 points for the Lakers, but also committed six of their 16 turnovers in a game that Los Angeles never led and in which Dončić, LeBron James and Co. even looked competitive only briefly.
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Here are three takeaways from the Rockets’ commanding performance at Crypto.com Arena:
So, about that Lakers defense…
After back-to-back losses to the Clippers and Suns, Los Angeles head coach JJ Redick responded briefly to a question about whether his Lakers — who entered Christmas ranked 25th in defensive efficiency — had shown enough willingness to dig in and fight on the less glamorous side of the court:
Los Angeles brought a similar flavor of indifference through much of its Christmas matchup with Houston. The Lakers repeatedly allowed the Rockets’ running backs to beat them at the point of attack, get into the paint and generate good looks, seemingly when and where they wanted:
Houston needed barely five minutes of play to build a double-digit lead it would never relinquish, finishing the first period with 37 points on 24 possessions – a scorching offensive rating of 154.2. For reference, the NBA’s best offense, the Denver Nuggets, score 125.6 points per 100.
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“The two words of the day were ‘effort’ and ‘execution,’” Lakers head coach JJ Redick said. said after the match. “I feel like when we’ve done those two things 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 legitimately started right away.”
When the Lakers briefly made a push midway through the second quarter, cutting the lead to four at 48-44 after three-pointers from Dončić and Jarred Vanderbilt, the Rockets calmly stuck to their guns, scored 15 points in the next three minutes and cut the lead to 10 at halftime. After the Rockets opened the third quarter with baskets on four straight possessions, Redick changed tactics and dialed up a zone, resulting in two stops… which Houston quickly rendered useless by grabbing offensive rebounds, scoring second-chance points and extending its lead even further.
Redick searched his Rolodex for different combinations that could provide a level of physicality and defensive activity that could short-circuit Houston’s smoothly running machine. The combo of Vanderbilt and Marcus Smart contributed to an 11-4 second-quarter run that was the best basketball of the night in Los Angeles; a unit flanking Dončić and quiet center Deandre Ayton with Vanderbilt, Smart, gap-filling connector Jake LaRavia (the one who had played only 10 possessions together all season before Thursday) showed intermittent sparking.
For the most part, though, the Lakers’ Christmas brilliance looked remarkably like their Emirates NBA Cup quarterfinal loss to the Spurs: a team heavy on scoring skills but light on size, athleticism and defensive steel proving unable — or unwilling — to hang with a younger, stronger, more physical and relentless opponent.
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“We don’t care enough about it right now,” Redick said. “That’s what bothers you the most. We don’t care enough to do the things that are necessary. We don’t care enough to be a professional. We had it. We had it. I always say this about culture, I always say this about a team that’s a functioning organism: It can change like that. We don’t have it right now.”
What the Lakers have, in Dončić, James and Austin Reaves (who missed the second half with what the Lakers called left calf pain – a worrying note considering he narrowly missed three games with a calf strain) is sufficiently efficient to produce a high-level attack. If they can’t provide a superior class of toughness against similarly matched opponents, it 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 choice, and too often we have guys who don’t want to make that choice,” Redick said. “And these guys are pretty consistent. I told the guys: Saturday practice is going to be uncomfortable. The meeting is going to be uncomfortable. I’m not going to do another 53 games like this.”
Possession is nine-tenths of the law
Heading into Christmas, the Rockets were the sixth-best team in the NBA at winning the possession battle night in and night out, according to analysis from Jared Dubin at Last Night in Basketballaveraging three more offensive moves per game than their opponents. They exploited that advantage early and often on Thursday, grabbing four offensive rebounds against some lackadaisical Lakers box-outs and forcing six Lakers turnovers in the first quarter alone.
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That allowed them to shoot five more shots than Los Angeles in the opening stanza — a key factor in the Rockets opening that first double-digit lead and keeping the Lakers at arm’s length.
The Rockets finished with almost as many offensive rebounds (17) as the Lakers. defensive rebounds (18) and monster passes in second chance points (24-10), points off turnovers (23-11), points scored per possession in transition (1.33 to 1.13) and total field goal attempts (90-77). Getting so many extra bites into the apple and taking advantage of them so effectively is how the Rockets can ignore 25 from Luka and the Lakers shoot 50.6 percent as a team overall — and how a Houston team that takes fewer 3 points per game than any other NBA team can still boast one of the most powerful and efficient attacks in the league.
Many hands make light work
When at their best, the Rockets come at you in waves on the offensive end. It’s Thompson (26 points on 12-of-19 shooting with five assists) repeatedly going down in the paint, and Alperen Şengün (14 points, 12 rebounds, four assists) petting his way through all manner of maddening return shots and needle drops, and Kevin Durant (25 points on 8-of-14 shooting, eight assists) barely appearing to break a sweat as he gets to his favorite spots in the midrange or flashes a 3 in the eyes of an unsuspecting defender.
When they are Really scary, that’s because these headliners have help: Jabari Smith Jr. (16 points on nine shots) drilling jumpers spotting and escaping pindowns, Reed Sheppard (13 points, 5-for-10 from the floor) snaking the pick-and-roll to get to CP3-style elbow pulls in rhythm, and Tari Eason – an absolute threat at both ends of the court, completely smiling – ripping, running and terrorizing.
Some nights the lack of a true half-court organizer of a playmaker will rear its ugly head; on others, however, Houston’s tonnage of athleticism, ferocity and talent will eliminate such concerns. On those nights, these Rockets can knock you right out of your gym. Ask the Lakers. They can tell you everything.
