Lakers tie the series as Rockets’ second-half comeback falls short.
Big comeback wilts as James, Davis pull even
The Rockets had repaired all the damage, the mess they insisted later that they had made of things.
They knew the Lakers would come out to hit them with everything the considerable might of LeBron James and Anthony Davis could throw at them. They had to have known. In many ways, the Rockets responded, rallying from a 21-point deficit to take a fivepoint lead.
They could not make all that momentum hold up. They could not make the barrage of 3s last. When the Lakers answered, surging in the fourth quarter to even their Western Conference series, 1-1, with a 117-109 win Sunday at the Advent Health Arena in Lake Buena Vista, Fla., the Rockets could lament many
things that went wrong. But mostly, they could not get past the way they had made things so much more difficult on themselves.
Despite the Lakers’ fast finish, despite the issues the Rockets had attacking the Lakers’ zone and Russell Westbrook’s decision to fire up 3-pointer after 3-pointer, all wasting their effort to climb from their early hole, the Rockets most lamented that they fell so deep in the first place.
“They started the game off … they just hit us in the mouth,” Rockets coach Mike D’Antoni said. “We didn’t play with enough intensity to match their fire. We adjusted in the second half in the sense that we played harder. When you get down 20, everything’s got to go right. We had a chance, but we didn’t do it.
“We got them going because we came out a little softer than they did. Hopefully next game, right from the opening tap, we’re going to fight a lot harder.”
The Rockets stumbled in most ways to start the game, with the only surprise in the Lakers’ desperate, determined start that they did not blow the game open more quickly. The greatest issue was the Rockets’ turnovers that not only kept them from shooting, but usually came with sloppy, live-ball turnovers that sent James and the Lakers flying the other way.
“The whole story of the game was we had 17 turnovers. They got 27 points on them,” D’Antoni said. “That for us is a death sentence. We have to do a better job taking care of the ball and keeping them out of transition.”
When the Rockets settled down enough to get shots up, they rallied. The Lakers played a zone and trapped James Harden. But the Rockets got many open looks from deep, and when they poured in nine 3-pointers in the third quarter, they erased the remainder of the Lakers’ early lead and went up by as much as five.
That, however, only taunted the Rockets with what could have been had they not done so much damage to their chances before they rallied.
“It was all about what we did to fuel them,” Eric
Gordon said. “We beat ourselves. Turnovers. Weren’t very aggressive on defense. Didn’t get back. If we want to be a great team, if we want to get where we want to go, we have to be consistent. We didn’t play our game tonight. It’s clear-cut that we beat ourselves.”
There were other challenges, and not just in slowing James and Davis, who combined for 62 points, or the huge boost the Lakers received from Rajon Rondo off the bench in his second game of the restart.
While the Rockets found success taking the 3s made available by the Lakers’ emphasis on defending Harden, attempting 53 (the third most in NBA postseason history), Westbrook tried to join the 3 party but kept missing.
The seven 3-pointers he attempted were his most since Christmas when he adjusted to attack off the dribble. When he did look to drive, he was reckless with the ball, committing seven, mostly live-ball turnovers.
“Maybe that (taking 3s) is what he saw is the best play,” D’Antoni said. “We’ll look at it and we’ll make adjustments.”
The Rockets did adjust. They got strong offensive games from Harden, Gordon, P.J. Tucker and Danuel House Jr. They rallied to the lead. They were within three with 6½ minutes left and still in the game, down six, with 90 seconds remaining. But having had to rally from so far back, they had long since spent their margin for error, forcing them to face not how the game finished when James and Rondo put it away, but how they started.
“They came out and played harder than us I felt like,” Harden said. “In the second half we woke up and we took the lead. We just got to have that intensity from the beginning of the game and we’ll be all right.”