Saturday night at the Toyota Center was an odd performance between the Houston Rockets, who found themselves down 18 points at halftime, and the visiting Los Angeles Lakers, who were content with letting anyone else outside of James Harden shoot the ball.
The Lakers were so committed to their strategy that they preferred for the other Rockets to have wide open shots rather than James Harden have the ball in his hands.
While Los Angeles’s strategy was effective in the first half, most of it had to do with the Rockets simply missing their shots as the Rockets shot a dreadful 8-for-32 from three in the first half.