Lakers’ late comeback falls short in blowout loss to Rockets

HOUSTON — The Lakers’ 135-119 road loss to the Houston Rockets was the latest example of an issue that’s plagued them for the last 1½ months: whenever it seems like they’re about to have a breakthrough in their season, they have a game that leaves them back at .500.

Saturday’s double-overtime victory over the Golden State Warriors, the Lakers’ fifth win in seven games and one that put them over .500 for the first time since late December, looked like it could have been the start of that breakout.

And it still could, with four games remaining on this six-game trip and 34 left in the regular season after Monday.

But the Lakers (24-24) turned in a mostly abysmal defensive performance against the young, athletic Rockets (22-24) at the Toyota Center, continuing their trend of being between two games below .500 and a game above .500 for the last month.

The Lakers struggled in nearly every area defensively: they allowed 68 points in the paint (54 in the first three quarters), 19 second-chance points (13 in the opening three quarters) and 29 fast-break points (25).

The result was a 94-64 deficit with 7:34 left in the third and 108-84 at the end of the quarter.

“We just gave them too much early. We talk about shifting, showing bodies, coming into the game,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “The last 10 games, they’re [No. 2] in points in the paint. They’re also 26th in assists. The biggest thing for us was trying to be great on the ball and have a ton of support behind that initial on-ball defender. And we gave them too much early: transition, easy drives, drop-offs. When a team gets a rhythm like that, gets their confidence, the next thing you know everything starts going in for them. They threw in some 3s early. They had too much access to our paint.”

LeBron James (23 points, 10 assists), D’Angelo Russell (23 points, five assists) and Rui Hachimura (16 points) led a comeback attempt, cutting a 30-point third-quarter deficit to 10 late in the fourth, but it wasn’t enough to make up for their early struggles.

“A lot of miscommunication on our end that kind led them getting some easy ones,” Russell said. “You look up, that’s all a team needs to get some momentum and some of the best players get some rhythm.”

James was disappointed in how they performed to end the first quarter, after which they trailed 42-31.

“We just didn’t get back,” he said. “We didn’t have a sense of care factor. We didn’t have no care factor in those last two minutes.”

Already missing defensive ace Cam Reddish (sprained ankle), the Lakers played most of the game without the defensive-minded Jarred Vanderbilt after he was ejected early in the second quarter. He received two technical fouls after making contact with Rockets wing Dillon Brooks (17 points).

“He’s one of the best Swiss Army knives in the NBA,” Ham said of Vanderbilt. “The amount of things he can do, from initiating the break, catching and finishing in the paint, playing in the half-roll, playing DHO (dribble handoff) basketball, offensive rebounding, getting deflections, steals, making all the hustle plays you can possibly ask for. A bunch that don’t show up in the stat sheet. But he just gives us a lot of versatility doing the small intangibles that you need to win.”

The lineup of James, Russell, Hachimura, Max Christie and Jaxson Hayes cut the deficit to 116-96 with 7:37 left in the fourth, with Austin Reaves (six points, five assists) subbing in for Christie at that point, before the Lakers cut the deficit to 10 (121-111) on James’ pull-up 3-pointer with 3:54 remaining.

But their shotmaking fell off from there, missing their next three field-goal attempts, and they didn’t get any closer. Ham subbed James, Russell and Reaves out with the Lakers trailing 126-111 with 2:13 remaining.

“I’ve been in games when I’ve been up 30 and maybe I’ve lost that game,” James said. “I’ve been in games where I’ve been down 30 and won games. So, the game is never won or lost when you’re up a certain amount of points until there’s zeros on the clock.”