LOS ANGELES — It felt like a playoff game in many ways. It was defensive, grinding, at points feeling more like a throwback to a 2003 game. It certainly wasn’t always pretty.
But it was illuminating.
Monday night, the Lakers beat a Rockets team on the second night of a back-to-back 104-98. While we don’t want to read too much into one game, this one shed some light on these teams heading into the playoffs because of its intensity. Here are my three takeaways.
West playoffs will be bloodbath
We say that every year. We REALLY mean it this year.
This Rockets/Lakers showdown was a perfect example: Two of the top four teams in the West locked in a physical game filled with little chess matches. For example, the Lakers went small with Dorian Finney-Smith as the center to space the floor and pull the Rockets’ bigs out from the paint; the Rockets countered by playing two seven-footers — Alperen Sengun and Steven Adams — to try and overpower the smaller Lakers. And then there was Dillon Brooks trying to get under LeBron James’ skin. Just like old times.
Now imagine all that and more with the added urgency and intensity of the playoffs.
The West is a conference where the current No. 8 seed is 11 games over .500 (43-32), has a top-three defense in the league, and those Clippers feature future Hall of Famers Kawhi Leonard and James Harden. (For comparison, all four teams headed to the play-in in the East are below .500.)
Lakers’ small lineup can defend
When was the last time you saw Luka Doncic hustle like this on defense?
“They emptied the tank on the defensive end,” Lakers coach J.J. Redick said, not just of Doncic but his team. It’s that defensive effort that should give Lakers fans hope.
The knock on the Lakers’ chances at a deep playoff run is directly tied to their defense — Austin Reaves and Doncic are below-average defenders who will be targeted in a playoff series, and there’s no traditional big man providing rim protection behind them to clean up the mess.
Except, the Lakers’ defense is thriving anyway (at least when LeBron James is healthy). For a couple of nights now (against Memphis and Houston), the Lakers have shown these smaller lineups are very active and aggressive defensively. It threw the Rockets off for stretches.
“Well, defensively it’s just packing the paint and gang rebounding. I think we did that tonight,” Redick said of the defense. “LeBron [James] eight rebounds, Austin [Reaves] eight rebounds, Luka [Dončić] six rebounds, Doe (Dorian Finney-Smith) six rebounds, Gabe [Vincent] four rebounds and Vando (Jarred Vanderbilt) six rebounds. That’s how we have to control the glass is by committee.”
What makes it all work is LeBron’s versatility. He was fantastic much of the night, particularly covering Sengun, using his physicality to slow one of the key hubs of the Rockets’ offense. He didn’t do it alone, the Lakers did a great job fronting Sengun at points, bringing the double-teams and taking away what he wanted to do.
“I thought defensively we were very locked in with our gameplan and what we wanted to do…” LeBron said. “We understood that we had to key in on our keys defensively in order to win the game.”
LeBron seemed to be everywhere, and he had the key block late for Los Angeles.
With Jaxson Hayes his only traditional big, Redick is going to go small during the playoffs and the Lakers’ defense will be tested. However, with wings like Dorain Finney-Smith and Jared Vanderbilt, the Lakers defense might be good enough.
Who is Houston’s go-to option?
It’s the question posed by many in league circles about the Rockets and their potential for a deep playoff run: Who is their go-to guy to get a bucket in the clutch? Reggie Miller brought it up on the broadcast.
In the moments when the Lakers’ defense gave Houston fits, that lack of a clear number one guy who could be a relief valve stood out. The Rockets don’t have one guy they trust to just bail them out, get a bucket and change the game’s momentum. Houston does it by committee — Jalen Green, Amen Thompson, Sengun — all with their veteran (and the guy with the ring) Fred VanVleet as the table setter. It can work, this is a deep team, but that approach lets them down at points. One of those points was against the Lakers, when the Rockets didn’t break 100 against an aggressive Lakers D.
To be fair, the Rockets were on the second night of a back-to-back and tired legs may have been behind some of the missed 3-pointers. Then there were the turnovers.
“The difference is just making shots and limiting turnovers,” Amen Thompson said. “We had two turnovers at the end that we didn’t need. Without those, it could have been a different game. I think our defense was pretty good, but we just needed to score more.”
Which comes back to who is the go-to person on the offense. It’s one thing the playoffs will tell us about the Rockets — or it will tell the front office they need to go get a player like that.
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