On December 29, Beijing time, the NBA regular season, the Lakers challenged the Rockets away. The Lakers once took a double-digit lead in the second half of the game, and were repeatedly tied and overtaken by the Rockets. The two sides need to fight until the last minute to decide the winner. The Lakers scored consecutive points at key moments to bring the game advantage to the end of the game. In the end, the Lakers narrowly defeated the Rockets 132-123 on the road, ending the team's five-game losing streak.
In this game, the Lakers played well with multiple players, including 4 players who scored 20+. James had 32 points, 11 rebounds and 11 assists in triple-doubles, Munch had 25 points, Westbrook had 24 points, 12 rebounds and 10 assists for a triple-double, and Substitute Anthony had 24 points and nine rebounds. It is the joint efforts of the players that the team can refuse to reverse the opponent in the absence of personnel and end the losing streak.
Compared to the previous game, Westbrook's status in this game has warmed up, once again contributing a triple-double. He only hit 4 of his 16 shots in the box in the last game, and his performance was very bad, and there were many unbearable empty basket losses on the field. In this game, he scored 7 of 13 in the penalty area and hit 7 goals in his first 8 shots, which is very efficient.
Although the state has recovered, Westbrook still exposed a lot of problems in this game. His mistakes in possession and his shortcomings in the free throws are still difficult to hide. The Lakers only had 12 turnovers in the whole game, in fact, they did a good job in controlling the number of mistakes, but Wei Shao contributed 7 mistakes. There are also a lot of low-level mistakes, which really make fans feel hot. His free throws were 2 of 6 in the game, and although Westbrook's average of 65.6% of free throws per game was not high, his performance of losing all four free throws in a single game was still unreasonable.
In the first half, Westbrook made two mistakes that he shouldn't have made. One of them was no confrontation, dribbling the ball directly out of bounds, giving the opponent an offensive ball in vain. This scene caused a heated discussion among netizens, who thought that Wei Shao's state was really too bad. Another time was when Wei Shao controlled the ball and was frightened by a fake action of the opponent and directly lost the ball. In the fourth quarter of the game, he once again appeared out of the violent buckle frame, which was also ridiculed by netizens.
Wei Shao has been questioned a lot recently, and even caused a war of words with Downs. If Westbrook wants to get rid of the infamy, he must show more on the field and lead the team to win consecutive games to stop the decline.
According to the schedule, the Lakers' next game will be back-to-back against the Grizzlies tomorrow morning Beijing time. Hopefully, Westbrook can adjust his form, minimize his mistakes and improve his personal hit rate.
(Text/Yuwen Basketball)