Rockets-Lakers takeaways: L.A. certainly doesn’t have the look of a title threat

The Houston Rockets celebrated Christmas in style, delivering an overwhelming and dominant outing in a 119-96 thrashing of 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 team-high 25 points for the Lakers, but also committed six of their 16 turnovers in a game L.A. never led, and in which Dončić, LeBron James and Co. only briefly even appeared competitive.

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Here are three takeaways from the Rockets’ command performance at Crypto.com Arena:

So, about that Lakers defense …

After consecutive blowout losses to the Clippers and Suns, L.A. head coach JJ Redick offered a curt reply to an inquiry as to whether his Lakers — who entered Christmas ranked 25th in defensive efficiency — had shown enough of a willingness to dig in and grind it out on the less glamorous end of the floor:

L.A. brought a similar flavor of indifference for much of its Christmas Day matchup with Houston. The Lakers repeatedly allowed Rockets ball-handlers to beat them at the point of attack, get into the paint and generate good look after good look, seemingly whenever and wherever they wanted:

Houston barely needed five minutes of game time to build a double-figure lead that it would never relinquish, ending the opening frame with 37 points on 24 possessions — a torrid 154.2 offensive rating. 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,’” Lakers head coach JJ Redick said after the game. “I feel like when we’ve done both of those 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 that started, legitimately, right away.”

When the Lakers briefly made a push midway through the second quarter, cutting the deficit to…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/nba/article/rockets-lakers-takeaways-la-certainly-doesnt-have-the-look-of-a-title-threat-050616230.html

Author : Dan Devine

Publish date : 2025-12-26 05:06:00

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