ShareThisCritics will say the Los Angeles Lakers didn't learn anything in their latest misadventure in Houston.
That's not true at all. They learned that one competitive half doesn't get the job done, either.
And so it has come to this -- a Game 7 Sunday against Houston, the cost of failing to take the Rockets seriously. Again.
You had to rub your eyes as the first half unfolded Thursday night at the Toyota Center. Hadn't we just seen this on Sunday? Except this start was even worse, a 21-3 deficit before the Lakers realized they were in a playoff game.
"It was really tough to watch," reserve guard Jordan Farmar said. "We started tentative, and they hit us in the mouth again early."
The Lakers closed a 16-point halftime edge to two, midway through the third quarter, but that just jump-started the Rockets and their Lakers-killing point guard, Aaron Brooks, back into action.
Brooks had the ball glued to his fingers most of the game, scoring 26 points, dishing out four assists and leading Houston to a 95-80 win.
On the bright side, no matter what else happens in this topsy-turvy postseason, the Lakers aren't going back to Houston.
One more game -- win or lose -- and they're done with the Rockets.
That's about it, folks, for cheerful news in Laker Land.
Anything to avoid the Toyota Center, home of the Houston Rockets, otherwise known as the Lakers' personal Wonderland, where their superiority -- and their overblown sense of it -- gets turned on edge.
"Slow starts," offered Lakers forward Trevor Ariza. "That's it. We made a lot of mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes."
Much to the Lakers' dismay, history all but repeated itself -- at least through the first half. Four days after they were blown away on the scoreboard, as well as in the eyes of a judgmental basketball nation, the Lakers revisited the same ground.
Maybe they'll work up a sweat now.
Asked if the Staples Center home-court advantage will work in their favor again, Ariza said the Lakers shouldn't count on it.
"I don't think so," he said. "We just have to be ready to play at the beginning, and not worry about anything else."
No matter what happens now, the Rockets have earned a lot of respect by pushing this series to the limit.
The Lakers shouldn't count on Houston rolling over, as they appeared to in the 40-point loss at Staples on Tuesday.
"We won the first game there," said Houston coach Rick Adelman, already dismissing talk of home-court advantages before the crowd had completely left the building Thursday. "We've won a lot of places."
He also made a point to turn attention away from the Lakers' talent, that the game is ultimately in their hands.
"It's not about them," said Adelman. "It's about us. We have to play our game."
Common wisdom suggests otherwise, that the right effort will propel the more skilled Lakers.
Not that the Lakers wanted to gamble one game on that theory.
Anyway, it's a series that is lasting longer than it had to, or should have, but that doesn't matter at all now.
(Contact Gregg Patton at gpatton(at)PE.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Press-Enterprise of Riverside, Calif.
