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.
“We knew coming into the series, we have to protect the ball versus them and not have not have too many pick-sixes, which we did all [Sunday] night,” James said. “It started with me obviously. My turnovers were unacceptable. But we’ll do a better job with that on Wednesday.”
Marcus Smart, who had four turnovers in Game 4, said a majority of the Lakers’ were because of mental fatigue instead of physical fatigue, with Game 4 being the first matchup of the series that had a one-day break between games.
There’s another two-day break before Wednesday’s Game 5 at Crypto.com Arena before one-day breaks ahead of a potential Game 6 on Friday at the Toyota Center and Game 7 on Sunday in Los Angeles.
“We were dropping passes, myself included,” Smart said. “I was throwing passes to guys’ legs, you know, normal passes that we make on a regular basis, right? But it’s something we gotta clean up. We know it, we understand it. It’s not gonna get easier.”
To the Rockets’ credit, their defensive pressure and tenacity played a part in the Lakers’ offensive struggles over the last six quarters.
Houston was already playing physically, but with their season on the line, the heightened desperation led to more possessions with intensified ball pressure and more focused off-ball defense.
And understandably so, having a 3-1 lead in the series which will go back to Los Angeles with the Lakers having three more opportunities to close out the series.
The decisions from the referees were just as much of a talking point inside of the locker room and at the podium as their offense was.
But the Rockets have shown enough during the series that it shouldn’t be a foregone conclusion the Lakers will close it out on Wednesday.
“There’s no such thing as being comfortable until a series is done,” James said. “None of us are.”
If the offense on Wednesday looks anything like it did on Sunday, the Lakers will find themselves coming back to Houston.
