Report Card: Rockets roar, while Kobe and Bynum let the Lakers down

If you guess this was a miss, you have pretty good chances of being right. (Getty Images)

Each night, Eye on Basketball brings you what you need to know about the games of the NBA. From great performances to terrible clock management the report card evaluates and eviscerates the good, the bad, and the ugly from the night that was.

	Houston Rockets	Outscoring the Lakers 34-25 in the fourth, getting 23 from Courtney Lee and Luis Scola and a big 16-13-7 line from Goran Dragic and holding Kobe to a 10-27 night from the floor, the Rockets picked themselves up quite the win at home. It wasn't pretty start to finish, but that's two games in the past week Houston has taken in the last four minutes from Western contenders. And all without Kyle Lowry, too.
	Utah Jazz	The Jazz aren't done fighting for that eight-seed quite yet. They took down the West's top team in Oklahoma City and did it with a bunch of balanced scoring. And a little bit of luck too as Kevin Durant uncharacteristically went 6-for-22 from the floor and 0-for-7 in the fourth quarter.
	Grant Hill	The Suns lost a tough one in Miami, but Hill was tremendous, scoring 19 points on 8-14 shooting while helping to hold LeBron to just 8-18 from the floor. Hill might be 38, but some nights, he sure doesn't look like it.
	Pacers-Clippers	OK, this isn't really a grade, but I wanted to point this out: In Indiana's 102-89 win over the Clippers, the Pacer starters combined for 52 points while the Clips' first five went for 56. Close game. But the Clipper bench combined for 23, while Indiana's added 50. There's your difference.
	Kobe Bryant	After a comical game where he went just 3-20 from the floor, he followed that up by starting the game against Houston 7-23. That means Kobe hit just 10 of 43 shot attempts at one point. He finished out hitting three of his last four and finished with 29, but that kind of inefficiency is going to get the Lakers killed. Especially when Pau Gasol was 10-14 for 21 points.
	Andrew Bynum	After going for 33 points and starting the game against Houston 7-11 for 16 points, Bynum lost his cool and picked up a second technical and was tossed. The Lakers weren't the same team from that point on. And they lost the game as Kobe tried to go hero to finish. Maybe with Bynum on the floor, things would've been different.