Facing a 19-point deficit midway through the third quarter, the Lakers didn’t fold. They got defensive.
In what ended up being one of their biggest wins of the season, the purple and gold outscored the high-octane Houston Rockets by 24 the rest of the way, gaining key ground in the Western Conference playoff standings.
The day was won with disciplined defense, as the Lakers hamstrung the team with the NBA’s second-best offensive rating.
“I love that it looked like we got our defensive mojo, our defensive confidence, back as that game went along,” coach Luke Walton said. “We had to get different groupings and different matchups, but we kept scrapping and found a way to give ourselves a chance.”
The Lakers’ defensive fortunes flipped as soon as they dug themselves that hole.
At the time of the Rockets’ 19-point lead, Houston had shot 50.9 percent from the field, 9-of-23 on 3-pointers and 14-of-15 on free throws. The rest of the way, they hit just 36.4 percent on field goals, 3-of-18 beyond the arc and did not even attempt a foul shot.
Houston’s entire offense revolves around the all-world talents of James Harden, and while he finished the night with 30 points (his 32nd straight game hitting 30), the Lakers were able to frustrate him, particularly in the second half.
The strategy was similar to their previous game against Houston, when they essentially put one defender directly on him and parked a 7-footer in the paint to challenge him at the rim. This forced him to kick out to teammates, and the Lakers gladly exchanged those open looks to get the ball out of Harden’s hands.
This time around, the Lakers used a small-ball lineup to execute a version of this plan. While they surrendered the rim protection of a true center, they gained mobility, as help defenders constantly made on-time rotations when Harden beat his man.
This was on full display in crunch time, when Kyle Kuzma and LeBron James planted themselves in Harden’s path, drawing two enormous charges that fouled the MVP frontrunner out of the game.
Harden is, unquestionably, the game’s top isolation player. His 18.9 iso points per game double the next-closest team (a tie between the Lakers, Nets and Thunder). Houston’s entire offense is built upon him flambéing one-on-one matchups.
Yet even when help defenders weren’t able to arrive, the Lakers often held their own against the man averaging more points (36.5) than anyone since Michael Jordan 32 years ago.
New Laker Reggie Bullock was the tip of the spear in this case, as the Lakers tasked their biggest wing player with shadowing Harden for most of the night.
While Harden shot a respectable 11-of-24 from the field, Bullock (and Kentavious Caldwell-Pope and Brandon Ingram) did an excellent job of playing tight defense without getting baited into Harden’s endless bag of foul-drawing tricks.
Harden averages a league-high 11.4 free throw attempts and was sent to the line 49 times in his previous three games against the Lakers; but only had seven foul shots on Thursday.
“We didn’t stop him, but, in my opinion, we did a very nice job of making it hard for him,” Walton said, “not giving him too many free looks at the free throw line and contesting the 3s without fouling.”
With so much attention paid to Harden and Chris Paul, the Lakers had to be completely locked in to strike the balance between loading up on Houston’s stars and recovering in time when they inevitably passed to the shooters left open.
Nobody did a better job at this than Josh Hart, who originally looked like he’d sit the entire game due to knee tendinitis that has hampered him over recent weeks.
But when Hart was called upon in the second half, he made an immediate impact with his defensive ability, as Houston shot 0-for-8 on attempts contested by him, until making a pair in the final minute with the game mostly in hand.
Hart was the key to the Lakers’ small-ball success, even guarding freight-train center Clint Capela. On one memorable play, he helped contain the ball handler, recovered to challenge Capela’s roll to the basket, and sprinted out to contest an open shooter.
The result was a brick forged by Hart’s hustle.
“That’s why people should not judge [based] on the status or box scores,” Walton said of Hart’s 19 minutes. “He [shot] 2-of-3 and he was plus-22. He was diving for loose balls, coming up with rebounds, just making winning plays.
“When he plays like that, he’s really important for us. … We needed to find some toughness and some of that scrap that, when he’s on his game, he brings. Credit to him for staying ready, even though he didn’t play the first half.”
Having contained one of the league’s hottest offenses, the Lakers’ challenge will be to continue that defensive prowess over these final 24 games of the regular season.
They’ve certainly shown they could do it before. After a rocky start, the Lakers boasted the NBA’s fifth-rated defense from November through January. But, coinciding with Lonzo Ball’s injury, they rank just 28th defensively in February.
The Lakers can’t wait for Ball’s return to amp up their defense, and Thursday’s performance showed that they’re capable of elevating with the pieces they currently have.
“For the majority of the season, we have been a top-10 defensive team,” Kyle Kuzma said. “If we want to accomplish our goals and get into the playoffs and win big, this is where it has to start.”