It seems unlikely that another team would acquire Lawson and automatically insert him as their starting point guard, with how poorly he has played to this point in the season.
Advertisement
Enter Trader Daryl (Houston Rockets General Manager Daryl Morey) who banged out a quick trade sending 4 players who saw virtually zero time on the floor: Joey Dorsey, Nick Johnson, Pablo Prigioni and Kostas Papanikolaou.
Along with news that the National Basketball Association was considering suspending point guard Ty Lawson in relation to a DUI charges from 2014, which has since come to fruition with a two-game ban, Adrian Wojnarowski of Yahoo! The Rockets turned early dominance on the boards – Houston outrebounded Los Angeles 20-5 in the first quarter – into a lead they wouldn’t relent.
Dwight Howard scored 22 points (8-11 FG, 6-16 FT) while adding a game-high 14 rebounds and two blocks in 26 minutes during Saturday’s win over the Clippers. The Clippers finally broke the drought on a 3-pointer by Jamal Crawford with about 4 1/2 minutes left in the first. Motiejunas had 10 points…. Howard made five of 10 attempts and Capela two of six. The Clippers would slow the game to a grinding halt and take the Rockets out of their offensive flow. The tactic helped the Clippers go on a 15-7 run to cut the lead to 50-36.
Fouls, both by him and against him, limited his minutes as Houston Rockets coach J.B. Bickerstaff pulled him off the court whenever the Clippers tried to employ a Hack-a-Howard strategy, but the big man was still very productive when he was in the game.
Advertisement
Aside from missing free throws on Hack-a-Howard (which I will get to later) this was probably one of Howard’s best games of the year. That was the 10th time this season that Rivers had started that lineup, the most among the 10 lineups the Clippers have used…. But that’s just the beginning of his struggles.
