Los Angeles Lakers escape the Houston Rockets and win once again

The Los Angeles Lakers ran it back against the Houston Rockets Tuesday night after basically dominating the action Sunday winning 95-85.

• Los Angeles Lakers dominate the Houston Rockets to win two straight!

After watching one of the sloppier games of the entire NBA season, both teams decided to run a track meet in a more entertaining run-and-shoot affair. The Los Angeles Lakers fell behind 11 points in the third quarter, but the stars took over and despite a letdown in the last 40 seconds, disaster was avoided with a 119-117 victory.

A special Lake Show Life shoutout goes to Carmelo Anthony. Since that airball against OKC, he has been in a zone. He shot lights out again scoring 15 points on 6-9 shooting (3-5 from the land of the extra point!). This has possibly been the hottest shooting streak of Melo’s career and at least since he was in a New York Knicks uniform.

The good from the Los Angeles Lakers’ win:

Anthony Davis destroyed every frontline player on the Houston Rockets roster! 

AD starting at center (More on that later!) seems to bring out the aggressiveness in him to look for his start. After scoring only 15 and 16 points in the last two games, he nearly matched that total in the first five minutes of the game.

What the Lakers got away from the last few games was establishing Davis early to get him engaged. When he did, it allowed him to do other things like lead the Lakers fast break!

Anthony Davis made a much bigger impact overall finishing with a stat line of 30 points, 9 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals and 3 blocks. He is probably scaring Lakers Nation to death with these ankle rolls and awkward falls, but he gets up every time and keeps playing.

While AD worked the frontline, his starting point guard was smoking the Rockets backcourt like a pack of Kools.

Russell Westbrook gave all of Houston’s young guards a basketball lesson!

In this age of analytics, most fans look at Westbrook’s stats and assume he has had for the most part a good start for the Lakers. But in actuality, he has not. Even though he scored 30 points against the San Antonio Spurs, this was far and away his best game in a Lakers uniform. Folks, it’s not even close.

Russ saw inexperienced guards in front of him and used his experience to blow by them using angles to get to the rim with relative ease. Then when he got established, it allowed open lanes for his teammates.

What Lakers fans should be very excited about is Brodie’s free-throw shooting. He came into this game shooting 48 percent from the line. In this game, he shot 7-8 from the charity stripe.

Russ finished with 27 points, 9 rebounds (5 offensive!) and 7 assists. He played hard and in control. This is what the Lakers fans signed up for.

The quality of play from both teams.

To be clear, if rearranging your sock drawer or watching paint dry was a basketball game, Sunday’s matchup was just that. Both teams shot poorly overall and watching the Rockets turn the ball over like a little league team was just painful to watch much less cover and report.

But in Tuesday’s game, both teams came out with energy and shot the ball very well at the start. Give the Rockets credit, just about six inches to the left on Kevin Porter Jr.’s last 3 point attempt and the mood would be very different in Los Angeles right now.