HOUSTON — As LeBron James and Russell Westbrook traded baskets with Jalen Green and Kenyon Martin Jr., it was hard to tell which team was which except for the names on the back of the jerseys.
Which franchise entered the season with title aspirations? Which was built to lose? For much of the evening, the Lakers and the Houston Rockets looked pretty evenly matched.
Then a missed shot by Carmelo Anthony sent them to overtime. And that’s where the comparison truly began to unspool for the Lakers.
In the extra period, they were demolished by the young, inexperienced Rockets (17-49), who earned just their third win in their last 20 games by outlasting their guests, 139-130. Led by the high-skipping rookie Green (career-high 32 points), Houston looked positively energized as the moribund Lakers (28-37) slogged to the finish of a largely joyless affair.
Back after sitting out one game with knee soreness, James pursed his lips in a frown as Alperen Sengun knocked in the last of the Rockets’ 19 overtime points from the wing completely unguarded. He finished the evening with more shot attempts (26) than points (23).
Westbrook had his best scoring game in more than a month, leading the Lakers with 30 points. But it wasn’t enough given the team’s inattentive defense, which allowed Green to score seven unanswered points to begin the OT – bringing all the more attention to veterans who looked either unequipped or uninvested in the final frame. Houston led by 10 before the Lakers finally scored in the extra period on a basket by Westbrook with 2½ minutes left.
The Lakers themselves are skating on thin ice, just 1½ games ahead of the 10th-place New Orleans Pelicans in the Western Conference standings (the Pelicans also lost on Wednesday night). But just when urgency should be building for the run the Lakers still publicly say is coming, they’ve let down in a big way losing nine of their last 11 games and going just 1-6 since the All-Star break. They have dropped nine consecutive road games.
After scoring 56 points in a victory over Golden State on Saturday then taking a game off on Monday in San Antonio, James was rusty on Wednesday. Lacking some of his normal burst and coming up short on his jump shot, he made just seven of his first 17 shots and finished 1 for 9 from 3-point range.
Instead, he became more of a distributor, racking up a triple-double (season-high 12 assists) by the middle of the fourth quarter. But toward the end, it was clear that he had a little extra fuel in reserve: He thrilled the Toyota Center crowd with a high-flying dunk that momentarily gave the Lakers a lead.
Throughout the night, casual defense threatened to upend the Lakers. From the get-go, their rotations were slow – especially when it came to protecting the paint. Starting small and never deploying Dwight Howard at center, the Lakers left a runway for Houston’s drivers, who wound up with 62 points in the paint.
That shortcoming was especially felt in the third quarter, when Rockets big Sengun scored 10 points to little resistance. The Lakers never fell behind by double digits in regulation (as they had in their previous eight games) but they trailed by as much as eight points in the third quarter before a 7-0 run put them right back in the thick of things.
They took their first lead of the second half as time expired in the third quarter: Wenyen Gabriel and Avery Bradley both missed 3-point attempts, but 5-foot-11 D.J. Augustin grabbed a putback and sank a quick-fire jumper with a half-second left to put the Lakers ahead, 98-97.
More to come on this story.