“Just trying to defend without fouling,” James explained afterward, per ESPN’s Dave McMenamin. “That’s a point of emphasis anytime you play Houston. They got guys that can sell calls really good — Chris [Paul] and James [Harden] — so you got to try to keep your hands out of the cookie jar.”

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Said Lonzo Ball: “You can’t touch them . . . I was just trying not to foul today. They were calling it tight today, so I was just trying to get my hands out of there. . . . It’s very tough staying in front of [Harden] with your hands like that.”

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Going on sheer numbers, it’s hard to say that the Lakers got hosed all that much. The refs actually called more fouls on the Rockets than the Lakers (24-21), though Houston went to the free throw line five more times than Los Angeles did. Plus, the Lakers did not help their own cause by making only 15 of 27 of their own foul shots.

Los Angeles Coach Luke Walton, who was slapped with a technical foul in the third quarter, didn’t seem to approve of his team’s unorthodox hands-free style, though he understood the point they were trying to make.

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“How hard is it to play defense like that? It’s tough,” Walton said. “I think they were just trying to make a point: ‘We’re not using our arms here. Stop calling fouls.’ But we can’t, whether we get frustrated or not, we can’t let that affect us going under screens or us not communicating . . . which I thought we could’ve done a better job of tonight.”

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