Dick Motta, coach of the Dallas Mavericks,...

Dick Motta, coach of the Dallas Mavericks, said the Houston Rockets are so anxious to avoid playing the Lakers in the early round of the NBA playoffs, they seem to be playing less than their best.

“Houston looks like they’re messing around,” Motta said of the Mavericks’ Western Conference rival in an interview with the Dallas Morning News. “They look like they’re manipulating. . . . It’s a good thing he (Houston Coach Bill Fitch) has a two-year contract. Thirty-seven (victories) isn’t enough for most people to hold a job.”

The Rockets have lost six of their last seven games and have fallen to sixth place. If they finish the season there, the Rockets would play a first-round series with Portland, and the winner would meet the Dallas-Seattle winner.

The Lakers, as the first-place team in the conference, would meet the winner of the series between the fourth- and fifth-place teams if they win in the first round

“They don’t want to be up against (the Lakers in the playoffs), so they’re coming down to our bracket and they’ve already succeeded in doing that,” Motta said.

Said Fitch: “I don’t think in terms of who we’re going to play, period, because it doesn’t make a damn bit of difference to me.”