After an impressive win over the New Orleans Pelicans on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Lakers took on the Houston Rockets on the second night of a back-to-back set.
Los Angeles had its work cut out for it without Anthony Davis, who was sitting out to rest his right foot, on top of the absences of LeBron James and Mo Bamba.
With a very small lineup, the Lakers were simply too vertically challenged to seriously challenge a young and energetic Houston squad. In particular, they were beaten in two big effort categories: rebounding and points in the paint.
They were outscored 78-46 in the paint; they couldn’t stop Houston from getting to the basket off the dribble. They were also outrebounded by 13. To make matters worse, L.A. shot just 37.4% from the field and 25% from 3-point range.
The final score of 114-110 wasn’t indicative of how much the Rockets outplayed the Lakers.
With this loss, the Lakers are still in 10th place in the Western Conference, but they’re now 2.5 games behind the sixth-place Los Angeles Clippers.