Amen Thompson scored 26 points to lead six players in double figures and the Houston Rockets never trailed in beating Luka Doncic and the Los Angeles Lakers 117-96 on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Kevin Durant added 25 points and nine assists for the Rockets, who ended a two-game skid while improving to 7-7 on the road. Thompson had seven rebounds and five assists.<\/p>\n
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Doncic scored 25 points and LeBron James added 18 points for the Lakers, who fell to 25-27 in their 27th consecutive appearance on Christmas and 52nd overall in a tradition that began in 1949. They\u2019ve dropped three in a row overall.<\/p>\n
Doncic and James were a combined 4 of 11 from 3-point range. They also combined for nine of the Lakers\u2019 16 turnovers. Doncic returned after missing a loss at Phoenix after injuring his left leg in a loss to the Los Angeles Clippers last weekend.<\/p>\n
James and Durant squared off in the highest-scoring matchup in NBA history. No two opposing players ever entered a game with more combined career points.<\/p>\n
Alperen Sengun had 12 rebounds in helping the Rockets dominate the boards, 48-25. He had as many as the Lakers\u2019 entire starting lineup combined.<\/p>\n
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The Rockets led by 14 points in the first quarter and were up 63-53 at halftime, when James had just eight points. Durant and Thompson had 16 each in the half.<\/p>\n
Houston opened the third with an 18-5 run that extended its lead to 23.<\/p>\n
The Lakers got no points from starter Rui Hachimura while losing starter Austin Reaves to a sore left calf. He had 12 points and didn\u2019t return after halftime.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Rockets: Host Cleveland on Saturday.<\/p>\n
Lakers: Host Sacramento on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Amen Thompson scored 26 points to lead six players in double figures and the Houston Rockets never trailed…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":498754,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[1307,883,1013,7,160,305,32192,292,194,4066,938,185,251,135,150,368,6,211,1012,986,3209],"class_list":{"0":"post-498753","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-alperen-sengun","9":"tag-amen-thompson","10":"tag-austin-reaves","11":"tag-basketball","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-cleveland","14":"tag-gary-a-vasquez-imagn","15":"tag-houston","16":"tag-houston-rockets","17":"tag-houstonrockets","18":"tag-kevin-durant","19":"tag-lebron-james","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-los-angeles-clippers","22":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","23":"tag-luka-doncic","24":"tag-nba","25":"tag-rockets","26":"tag-rui-hachimura","27":"tag-sacramento","28":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/115790937178841695","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=498753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/498753\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/498754"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=498753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=498753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=498753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}