The Rockets continued to shock the league Wednesday night. With Yao out and Tracy McGrady shooting horrendously (4-of-16, 8 points), Houston was still able to blow out the second best shooting (and fifth highest scoring) team in the league, the LA Lakers, 102-77. The Rockets are now 7-2 since Yao’s injury on December 23rd.

On a night like this when you need all the scoring you can get from your role players, it really helps when your starting point guard shoots over 30%. Rafer Alston finally hit a decent percentage, hitting 8-of-19 shots (4-of-9 three-pointers) for 20 points.

Juwan Howard was fantastic, hitting 10-of-20 for 23 points, and grabbing 11 boards. Shane Battier hit 6-of-10 (five 3-pointers) for 17 points. Luther Head was 5-of-11 for 12 points, with a one-handed slam from along the baseline over Ronny Turiaf that was unlike anything I’ve ever seen from him. I didn’t know he had it in him! Either did the crowd, who were on their feet after that slam!

And give credit to T-Mac, who still was effective by finding open guys after penetrating into the lane and dished 12 dimes.

Most inspiring of all was Dikembe Mutombo – the oldest player in the league – showing the youngest player in the league that you can’t mess with him. Andrew Bynum tried to go over Deke for two dunks, and both times he was rejected at the rim. His 5 blocks on Wednesday night moved him past Hakeem and put him in second place on the all-time block list. Oh yeah, he also grabbed a monstrous 19 boards, 7 offensive.

The highly anticipated matchup between Kobe Bryant and T-Mac never really materialized. Kobe only had 20 points on 6-of-18 shooting, and headed to the locker room with 3 minutes remaining to have a strained groin attended to. But the game was long over by then, with Houston pulling away slowly with great shooting by its role players.

This loss by the Lakers was a gut check for them. It was the second game of a back-to-back, having been whipped against one of the worst teams in the league – Memphis – after getting 46 points scored against them in the third quarter to turn a 5-point halftime lead into a 19-point deficit.

Meanwhile, it was a sweet win for Houston, who had lost 5 in a row to the Lakers and are now tied with them for the fifth seed in the Western Conference with a 23-13 record.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, January 10th, 2007 at 11:59 pm and is filed under vs. LA Lakers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.