The score of this one might suggest that the Rockets weren’t in fact spanked, by the Lakers. They were. This was a wire to wire win for LA, and at no point did it seem like the Rockets were going to push past LA, take a lead, and keep it. The Lakers held the Rockets to 16pts below their season average for points allowed for this 9 point win. It could have been more. The final four minutes saw something of a Rockets garbage time scoring flurry, and they narrowed the Laker lead, slightly. The Lakers for their part
seemed mostly interested in turning the scoreboard over enough that the Rockets never got close enough for discomfort.
The Rockets were, of course, missing Kevin Durant, the expensive painting that mostly covers the hole that is the Rockets offense. The Lakers, of course, were missing Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, and had a 41 year old LeBron James leading the charge of… Luke Kennard, Marcus Smart and Deandre Ayton. That turned out to be plenty for Los Angeles.
There are two ways of looking at this. One is, the Rockets probably won’t shoot this badly, again. LeBron won’t be playing with a week off, again. Kevin Durant is far more likely to play again soon than Doncic or Reaves. So, it’ll be fine. After all, the Rockets shot 93 times to the Lakers 66 and lost by 9. That really shouldn’t happen. A team has to miss a lot of shots for it to happen, and the Rockets certainly did. There’s really not a good offensive line anywhere, except for Tari Eason. Tari didn’t miss at all, and the rest of the team missed a ton. Unfortunately Tari only took 7 shots.
So one view is that the Rockets probably won’t shoot that badly again, and that Kevin Durant might well be back for the next game, and that will help, too.
If that’s where you come down on things, it’s fairly safe to stop reading now.
This is another view. The Rockets had a week to prepare to play a Lakers team without their two best players. The Lakers had the same. One team came out with a fairly clear plan to win this game, despite injury woes. The other came out looking almost exactly the same as the rest of the season.
The Lakers, evidently, made a plan to win this game despite obvious talent limitations. The Rockets seemed flummoxed by everything LA did, while LA seemed to know exactly what the Rockets would do, all the time.
Sometimes it is worthwhile to put yourself in the shoes of your opponent. To think about what you might do in their situation.
If your team is playing the Rockets, you know certain things about them on offense.
- They do not run any sort of coherent offense, with plays and actions that reliably work for them, or even ones that don’t. There’s usually a dribble hand off, a perhaps a badly set pick, and then a player trying to find a shot. This sometimes leads to passes out to shooters, but more often leads to difficult, or at least congested, attempts fairly close to the basket. This was confirmed, once again, by outside observers. This time it was Charles Barkley and Kenny Smith saying the Rockets don’t run an offense, they just sort of attack one on one from the same spots. At this point, pretty much every national media former NBA player who has covered a Rockets game has said as much. It certainly matches what I’ve seen, and I think it’s true as well.
- Three of the Rockets offensive mainstays require access to the paint to be most effective. These players are: KD, Sengun, Amen.
- KD can shoot it from deep, well, but he mostly doesn’t in any volume. Sheppard is a threat from deep who must be covered, the rest of the Rockets can be guarded on 3pt shots largely by run outs on defense from the paint, or near it. Or by the two players who aren’t in the paint (see below) covering half the arc each. The Rockets rarely move, or overload, a side, so that’s straightforward.
So knowing that, what would you do? Pretty much what every intelligent, non tanking, opponent has done, right?
Try to gum up the initial dribble handoff and desultory pick attempt, and have the two defenders up at that action point try to soft trap the ballhandler to prevent a pass out. Such a pass is easy to defend, as the Rockets are largely stationary off ball. After that, play way back on the dribbler/initiator, if it’s anyone but Sheppard, or Durant. We won’t address defending Durant, as he didn’t play.
Will the Rockets patiently work pick and rolls to call up a weak defender, or matchup they want on offense? They will not. Or almost never do. They will attack whomever is guarding them. Would they, say, try to get Luke Kennard, not the swiftest of foot, on Amen Thompson? Nope. They wouldn’t.
So not having a weak defender called up on the pick, which is rarely good enough to peel a defender off the ball handler, or even allowing a switch to a stronger defender, say swapping Kennard for Smart or James, the Rocket will then try to attack the rim, or at least get closer to it.
Two more defenders, ostensibly guarding the corners or wings, collapse into the paint as Sengun, Thompson, or really any other Rocket, gets closer to the basket. These defenders stand on either side of basket, which cuts off both Thompson getting to the rim, and denies Sengun his superior mobility close in, to get easy shots. There’s literally nowhere for either player to go, a defender is standing there. They are forced to take a shot over the center, or another big, or pass out. As this usually happens at the end of the shot clock, because it takes so long to move close to the basket, there’s only one run out on a shooter called for in most cases. There isn’t time for more passes around the perimeter most of the time, and there isn’t anyone cutting, or screening for a shooter anyway.
The Lakers simply did a variant of the standard defense on the Rockets. The Rockets response to this was: nothing.
So the Rockets offense was stymied, and while it dominated the offensive glass, those extra shots often seemed to be just as bad as the initial shot. That’s not everything, the Rockets also missed close in shots, put backs, you name it. They probably won’t miss as many of those. But this is the playoffs, so the defensive intensity isn’t going to slacken. The Rockets have shown little to no ability to adjust on offense. So it could be the bad shooting continues, as well. Still, plugging in Kevin Durant, and his career 29pt playoff scoring average, probably changes some results.
On defense, we saw the Lakers also use some fairly effective approaches. The first is to attack the rim, with almost whomever has the ball, very quickly, from a spread out offense. The Rockets, last season, would trap, send help, double, opponents very quickly, sometimes ahead of the actual play. Not all the time, but frequently enough to be very disruptive. They don’t do that as much this season. I think it’s due to not having Dillon Brooks and Fred VanVleet both calling offense, and anticipating plays, so they could be there to help, or attack an offense, without much “reaction time”.
This season it appears the Rockets send help later, after it’s clear that a defender has been beaten. It seems rare, for instance, that a help defender is already in place, ahead of a driver. That could be deliberate, as there’s risk involved there if the helper can’t recover to his man on a pass off. Or it could be the Rockets have no one with the experience to do that on defense. In general the Rockets play solid individual defense, but seem to be less aggressive, and less cohesive. Maybe they’re tried to reduce the risk profile from aggression, but it there are downsides, mostly in losing transition attempts.
Tonight the Lakers decided to feature a player who is an excellent shooter, in Luke Kennard, and of course, LeBron James. What I noticed was that the Lakers went to great lengths, of movement, passing or screening, to find Kennard space to shoot. Shoot he did, scoring 27 points on an astonishing efficient 9-13, and 5-5 from three. The Lakers, as a team, shot 61%. That probably isn’t sustainable, but their shots were mostly easy, or open.
You might think the answer would be to double Kennard, but the problem was, James was usually nearby, and so the man doubling Kennard would have to come off James. Which, given his ability to pass, shoot, or drive, creates a problem. He’s not what he was, but he will find an open man. His 13 assists to 2 turnovers are evidence of this.
Overall, the Rockets were simply stymied on offense, and gave up too many easy looks on defense.
The best sign going forward is that a great shooting night still only produced 107 points for the Lakers. Kevin Durant should, individually, if healthy, paper over the inadequacies on offense, enough so that similar defense should produce wins.
The worst sign is that the Rockets had a week to prepare for a specific opponent, one missing by far its two best scorers, and there was no evidence they did so. A short handed Lakers team beat them handily instead.
I still think they’ll win the series, if Durant plays.
