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Sunday night in Houston brought a decisive shift in the Western Conference playoff series, as the Rockets defeated the Lakers 115-96 in Game 4 at Toyota Center to avoid elimination. The series now heads back to Los Angeles for Game 5.
Marcus Smart didn’t hide from the performance, especially the 23 turnovers that disrupted the Lakers’ rhythm from start to finish.
“Just a little bit of lack of days from us,” Smart said. “Shots weren’t falling early. We was getting to the rim. A lot of contact, wasn’t getting the call, so it played a part, but we’ll be all right. It’s part of it.”
Houston turned those mistakes into momentum, building a comfortable cushion behind a balanced scoring attack led by Amen Thompson’s 23 points and Tari Eason’s 20.
Smart emphasized that the problems were not new to this series. “They’ve been doing that this whole series. So it’s nothing that we haven’t seen. It’s nothing that we haven’t dealt with. We just got to be better.”
Despite the loss, the guard framed the situation as a temporary setback rather than a turning point in the series.
“We’ve been playing our asses off these last three to four games,” Smart said. “They came out, they did their job. So we just bring it back to LA and we’ll see them there.”
The Lakers struggled to generate consistent offense, finishing with just five made three-pointers and multiple stretches of stagnation. Smart pointed to execution and ball security as the core issues.
“Just take care of the ball, execute, and relieve pressure off our ball handlers in any way we can,” he said. “We just got to be better. We understand it, we know it, and we will be.”
When asked about the nature of the mistakes, Smart leaned toward mental fatigue over physical wear.
“Majority of them was mental,” he said. “We were dropping passes. I was throwing passes to guys’ legs, normal passes that we make on a regular basis.”
The Lakers now return home for Game 5 facing a tightened series after Houston’s response win. Smart dismissed any notion of complacency with a 3-1 lead slipping away.
“That’s not the case at all,” he said. “Now they got to come to our house and we get our home crowd behind us and we get that momentum in our house. But no, definitely no let up.”
