Was Game 4 an anomaly or have the Rockets figured out the Lakers?

HOUSTON — To see the Lakers struggle offensively as much as they did in Sunday’s Game 4 loss to the Rockets wasn’t surprising.As coach JJ Redick reminded reporters, the Rockets had been a top-10 defensive team the entire 2025-26 season, finishing at No.6 in defensive rating for the regular season. The Lakers were also due for shooting regression after making a playoff-best 46.1% of their 3-pointers through the first three games of the best-of-seven first round playoff series against the Rockets. But it also wasn’t surprising because most of the Lakers’ offensive struggles from Sunday night carried over from Friday’s Game 3 win, in which the Lakers needed a miraculous comeback to pull off the victory. The Lakers have averaged 22.3 points over the last six quarters of regulation against the Rockets after scoring a series-low 96 points in Game 4 and being held to a combined 38 points in the third and fourth quarters of Game 3. “It’s obviously very challenging without your two leading scores to generate offense,” Redick said, referring to Luka Doncic (hamstring) and Austin Reaves (oblique) and the 55.8 points and 13.8 assists they averaged during the regular season being sidelined.Redick added: “We’ll take a look at the process again on that end as well.

And I know our points per shot and our expected points per shot were slightly below our season average.So to me, again, it goes back to the two keys: Take care of the ball, and we’ll look at that and how we can be better there.”LeBron James took responsibility for the Lakers’ struggles with ball security on Sunday.He finished with 8 of the Lakers’ 24 giveaways, marking back-to-back games in which James finished with that many turnovers after having 8 of the Lakers’ 21 giveaways in Game 3. The Lakers won Game 1 and Game 3 despite struggling with turnovers.That wasn’t the case in Game 4.“We knew coming into the series, we have to protect the ball versus them and not have not have...