By Henry Abbott

The hungry Rockets scored a major victory, on the road in Los Angeles against the defending champion Lakers.

How did they do it? Well, Kobe Bryant had a miserable night, making just five of his 20 shots, to go with four turnovers, just one rebound, an no made 3-pointers to go with three assists and three steals.

Kobe Bryant had a long night, but this time Shane Battier had little to do with it. (Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE/Getty Images)

The Rockets feature a player who was lauded in a New York Times magazine cover story as uniquely prepared to make things difficult for Bryant, so surely Shane Batter gets the game ball, right?

Wrong.

In fact, when Battier was in the game, the Lakers outscored the Rockets by a hearty 16 points. Every other Rocket who played ended with a positive plus/minus. (One game plus/minus doesn't tell you anything useful about a player's overall quality, but it's as useful as any other boxscore stat as a starting point to assess one game.)

Why did Bryant look so bad last night? He was covered ably by Trevor Ariza, and at times rookie Chase Budinger, with help from the likes of David Andersen and even Battier, who was assigned to Shannon Brown late in the game. But watching the video shows that plenty of those misses were not because of the defense. Five times Bryant missed lightly or wholly uncontested shots in the lane. It's no wonder Phil Jackson announced after the game that Bryant is banged up.

Why did Battier's numbers look so bad though?

Mostly because he didn't play much, which means he wasn't on the floor for the bulk of the Rockets' big runs -- one in the first quarter to turn around what looked like a blowout, another that lasted most of the second quarter, and a third run midway through the third quarter after which the Rockets never looked back.

In place of Battier, Houston coach Rick Adelman played Budinger. Along with some missed wide-open jumpers, Budinger brought the kind of youth that causes problems for veterans like Bryant, Lamar Odom and Ron Artest.

One key play occurred with the Lakers clingking lackadaisically to their early lead, up six in the second quarter. As the crowd was still clapping for a Shannon Brown putback, all ten players jogged the length of the court. In transition, the Lakers were pointing at Budinger, who was a step ahead of Bryant as he headed down the left wing. Everyone realized Bryant had to catch up. But he did not. Budinger turned on the jets, Kyle Lowry got him the ball, and before Andrew Bynum could get in position to meet him at the rim, Budinger had swooped to the hoop for a reverse layup, and youth had been served.