Houston Rockets: Ty Lawson Suspended Three Games Without Pay

The hits keep coming for Ty Lawson and the Houston Rockets. Lawson will begin a three-game suspension on Thursday night against the Utah Jazz for driving under the influence in the state of California.

Ty Lawson’s awful year got worse on Thursday with the announcement (via e-mail release) that he will be suspended without pay for the next three games by the NBA for driving under the influence in the state of California.

Lawson was considered a high-upside, low-cost acquisition for the Houston Rockets this past offseason, but his time in Texas has been nothing short of a disaster. He is having his worst year ever by a wide margin, averaging 6.4 points and 4.3 assists per game on shooting splits of .371/.313/.702, and is a minus player by virtually every metric that matters so far this season.

This will be the second DUI-related suspension for Lawson in as many months, having been suspended by the NBA for games against the Los Angeles Clippers on December 19th and the Charlotte Hornets on December 21st.

Things could get worse for the embattled point guard in the near future, as he has a sentencing hearing on January 14th. He faces up to 180 days in jail for his DUI charges.

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Lawson hasn’t started for the Rockets since an ugly 111-95 blowout loss to the Boston Celtics on December 16th, a game which dropped the Rockets to 4-7 on the season at the time and was the final straw that led to the firing of then-head coach Kevin McHale, who was then replaced by interim coach J.B. Bickerstaff.

As it happens, the suspension may not matter on the court. As of yesterday, the best that Bickerstaff could give reporters was a terse “We’ll see” regarding Lawson’s status for Thursday’s game against the Utah Jazz, so it’s very possible he wasn’t going to see much action regardless.

To call the Ty Lawson experiment a travesty would be an understatement, and the shocking performance of the Rockets so far this season may have implications that reach even farther than the dismissal of McHale just 11 games into the 2015-16 season, following an offseason in which he had just signed an extension.

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There are rumblings that Dwight Howard plans on opting out of his contract after the season, and if the Rockets fail to get it together and make a playoff run, their hopes of signing Kevin Durant in the coming offseason will surely be scuttled.