Another blowout
» James scores 26, Davis 19 as Lakers hand Rockets second straight beatdown at home.
The Lakers did not just pound the Rockets. That was on Sunday’s agenda. They did not merely expose them. That was done with the blowouts in last season’s second-round series.
The Lakers on Tuesday in Toyota Center toyed with the Rockets. They dominated them and they mocked them, unconcerned that the Rockets could possibly do anything to stop them.
As they had after the Rockets won Game 1 of last season’s playoff series, the Lakers stomped all hope from them, not just sending them to a start-to-finish 117-100 beatdown but openly loving how easy running the Rockets off their home court had become.
LeBron James provided a game-high 26 points to go with eight rebounds and five assists to fuel Los Angeles. Star teammate Anthony Davis was just as dominant with 19 points, 10 boards and five blocked shots.
“They hit us over the head early in both games and we weren’t able to respond,” Rockets coach Stephen Silas said. “That’s not who we should be. We’ve got to be a team that as adversity comes, you will meet that adversity with force. We’re not doing that.”
The Lakers’ destruction of the Rockets (3-6) seemed most thorough when they began the second quarter with a dunk contest performed entirely off put-backs of missed shots.
Montrezl Harrell caught and slammed a Talen Horton-Tucker miss over his head. HortonTucker immediately followed by violently spiking home a Harrell miss.
That was just the appetizer. Those buckets took the lead to 25 in the first minute of the second quarter. But showing up the Lakers (9-3) is still James’ job.
When he returned, with the Lakers leading 43-19, he knocked down a jumper to loosen up and then put up a 3-pointer in the corner.
As if to kick sand in the Rockets’ faces, he immediately wheeled around to face the Lakers’ bench, not needing to watch the flight of his shot, instead just waiting for the boisterous celebrations he had inspired and making it clear he knew exactly how the shot — and the night — would go.
“It doesn’t feel good. It sure doesn’t,” Silas said. “They’re obviously a together group and they’re having fun at our expense. It doesn’t feel good at all and we should take umbrage. It’s like they’re dancing on our home court. We just have to fight, fight through it.”
When asked if the Rockets showed a lack of fight, Silas paused and said, “I’m not going to say that. I’m not going to say there’s a lack of fight or competitiveness. But we didn’t bring the right intensity to the game.”
James spent the first half as if in a rush to pile up numbers in case Lakers coach Frank Vogel would clear his bench at halftime. James had 22 points on 9-of-14 shooting in his 18 minutes, hitting 4 of 6 3-pointers while the Rockets needed to put up 18 shots from deep to knock down just one more than he had.
If it did not seem things could get worse than Sunday’s drubbing, it did. Instead of trailing by 27, the Rockets were down 28. And this time the Rockets dug that hole in the first half.
The offense was slow from the start. The defense was worse. The rebounding was even more abysmal, with the Lakers piling up 19 second-chance points in the first half to easily surpass the average of any team for a game.
The Rockets’ offense usually wandered slowly and aimlessly, often devolving into going one-onone late in the clock just to get shots up. But jn the second half, the Rockets looked so disinterested they were flipping lazy passes around the floor that the Lakers routinely deflected or stole.
Body language screamed.
From the start, the Rockets looked as if they knew they had no chance.
There were right. But unlike Sunday when they were inept offensively to start the Lakers’ blowout, on Tuesday they were hopeless defensively. The Lakers scored on 11 of their first 13 trips down the floor, making 11 of 17 shots to lead 28-10 in barely seven minutes.
The Lakers took a 21-point lead into the second quarter. The Rockets never even hinted at a face-saving rally, never even got that close again until the final minutes with the benches longsince emptied.
By the time Silas began clearing his bench to start the fourth quarter, the Lakers had led by as much as 30, James Harden had made just 5 of 16 shots in scoring 16 points, moving him to 28 of 74 and 10 of 39 on 3-pointers in his past five games, averaging 21.8 points in that stretch.
Christian Wood’s streak of 20-point games to open the season ended at seven with 18. John Wall contributed a season-low 10 points. The Rockets’ starting forwards, P. J. Tucker and David Nwaba, combined to take one shot, a 3-pointer Tucker missed.
And in case the Lakers needed to remind the Rockets of their overwhelming superiority, Davis added that, too.
When the Rockets’ Sterling Brown tried to slam home a finish of a break over him, Davis swatted it away — one of his five blocks on the night — and then stared down Brown with a look of bemusement as if he could not believe Brown would have dared try such a thing.
He had no chance. Neither did the Rockets.