[Extreme DJ Khaled voice]

Another one.

With Wednesday night’s 128-108 loss to the Dallas Mavericks, the Houston Rockets have now lost four straight games. Losing by 20 is bad; doing so at home is worse. Losing by 20 at home to your in-state rival is enough salt to give you hypertension.

It wasn’t just the fact that the Rockets got the brakes beat off of them by Dallas. It was that it looked so darn easy, it became laughable by the second quarter.

The Mavericks carved up the Rockets like [insert holiday reference here]. They scored 50 points in the paint, and complemented that with a 17-of-34 explosion from three. On the defensive end, they made everyone not named James Harden (25 points, 17 assists, 11 rebounds, 6 steals) and Clint Capela (18 points on 9-of-12 shooting) look bad — and even they had their moments.

For what it’s worth, things weren’t all bad. Houston put together one of their better two-way quarters of the season in the 3rd. They dropped an efficient 33 points (12-of-22 shooting) behind Harden’s 12-5-5, a 5-for-5 quarter from James Ennis, and eight timely points from Danuel House. It felt like Houston was going to ride that momentum into the 4th, but Dallas promptly responded with a 13-4 surge at the beginning of the quarter.

Trapped by traps

Harden, again, was Houston’s best player. He racked up his first triple-double of the season and looked good doing it — for the most part.

When Harden was able to attack early, he had success as a scorer and passer. He was able to find creases in Dallas’ defense before they could really key in:

Houston loves running Pistol (or 21, whatever you wish to call it) action early in the clock. In the example above, Harden is able to get downhill thanks to the quick pitch back from Eric Gordon, and a strong screen from Capela. The screen forces DeAndre Jordan to step up in containment, leaving a rolling Capela wide-open as he rumbles down the lane. Harden could’ve made that pass with his eyes closed.

Leaving a defender on an island against Harden, even a solid one like Wes Matthews, generally isn’t a good idea. Harden took full advantage with a triple.

Dallas effectively dared Harden to make them pay without getting sloppy. They won that bet handily. Not only did Harden turn the ball over eight times, six of those turnovers came as a result of a double team.

Harden and PJ Tucker make the right read there. Harden senses the trap coming, and Tucker smartly slips it early. However, Harrison Barnes is able to get a hand on the ball, leading to a turnover.

Here’s another:

Again, Harden makes the right read. As he probes to his left for the screen, he feels Dwight Powell coming up for a trap. He knows the rotation Dallas has to pull off — Devin Harris has to “tag” Capela on the roll — and attempts to toss an early pass to Gordon as Harris creeps over. He just … misses it.

Abusing lazy switches (and everything else)

After a brief stint of mixing in “drop” and “ICE” coverage, the Rockets are back to switching everything — even if a switch isn’t fully necessary. The Mavericks knew that, and had no trouble getting mismatches whenever they wanted them.

They spent most of the night forcing Capela to defend on the perimeter. Capela did a fine job on his own, but that wasn’t the point. The goal was to generate some small-on-big mismatches on the inside. Capela hovering around the three-point line meant Jordan got matched up with, say, James Ennis:

The goal was the same when Hartenstein was in the game. Call for some screening action, knowing Houston would switch it, then prosper.

There were fundamental breakdowns all over the place for Houston in this game. Botched switches and poor transition defense (woo, buddy) led to easy buckets in the paint. Dribble penetration from JJ Barea and Dennis Smith Jr led to easy kick-out passes for threes:

It just doesn’t get much easier than that.

Other Notes

• Gary Clark’s three-point shooting is becoming a problem. The Wizards largely ignored him down the stretch on Monday as they focused in on Harden. The Mavericks gave him the same treatment on Wednesday, and he responded by missing all four of his threes. He’s young and will probably look better as he settles into his growing role, but he has to cash in those opportunities.
• Head coach Mike D’Antoni has mentioned it, but you can tell the minute and overall workload is starting to wear on PJ Tucker a little bit. He is now 3-of-15 from three over his last three games, with a large chunk of those looks coming from the corners.
• Though the defense was bad overall, it’s surprising how well Hartenstein has fared in space. He looked like a deer in headlights earlier this season. Now, he looks comfortable sliding his feet and staying connected to guards. He isn’t Capela obviously, but the fact that he isn’t a total liability is a plus.
• We’ll close this thing out with a note on Capela. An underrated subplot to Dallas forcing the ball out of Harden’s hands with traps was betting on Capela not beating them in short-roll opportunities. They were right on that front, too. Capela smartly slipped some screens, but when he did receive a pass, you could tell he was trying to process everyone’s positioning on the floor. It isn’t natural for him, which is okay in a vacuum — it might not matter when Chris Paul is back because teams won’t be able to trap as much — but it certainly stood out. Capela has taken a leap offensively this year, but becoming even a rudimentary playmaker in short-roll would take him to another level.

Photo by Bill Baptist/NBAE via Getty Images