On January 5, 2022, Beijing time, the NBA regular season continued, and in the Lakers' home game against the Kings, the Lakers played a fairly good first half. Their internal disadvantages in the first quarter of the game were very obvious when facing opponents, and they were grabbed by opponents for rebounds in the front court! Then the Lakers made adjustments, replacing Howard on the court, and after Howard came on, the effect was obvious, in the second half of the first quarter and the second quarter they still had a certain advantage, and in the end they only trailed their opponents by two points in the half!
James still showed good form in the half, he played 17 minutes, shot 5 of 12 shots, scored 13 points, Tucker Jr. became the best player for the Lakers in the first half of the game, he played 14 minutes, shot 6 of 8, got 13 points, 3 rebounds and 2 assists, which is the reason why the Lakers can bite the score!
In addition to these players, the biggest gain of the Lakers in the first half of the game was Howard, who got 4 points and 4 rebounds in the 3 minutes of the first quarter of the game! In the second quarter that followed, he played another 5 minutes and had 8 points, 4 rebounds and 1 steal in the quarter.
In the limited playing time of the first half, he had 12 points and 8 rebounds in less than 10 minutes, shooting 5 of 8 from the field and 2 of 2 from the free throw line, grabbing four frontcourt rebounds and four backcourt rebounds! Such an effect can be said to be immediate, I don't know why Vogel has not used Howard at all before, his role on the court is really very obvious, in addition to the role that the data can reflect, he also destroyed a lot of the Kings' interior attack, bringing great interference to the opponent, these are Howard effects!
It can be said that from this half game we can see that Howard is really a sword, the data of close to two doubles in the half can well reflect his role and strength, I hope that Vogel can recognize the current state, give Howard some more opportunities, maybe James will not play so tired!