Los Angeles Lakers (42-25, third in the Western Conference) vs. Houston Rockets (41-25, fourth in the Western Conference)<\/p>\n
Houston; Monday, 9:30 p.m. EDT<\/p>\n
BOTTOM LINE: Los Angeles visits the Houston Rockets following the Lakers’ 127-125 overtime win against the Denver Nuggets.<\/p>\n
The Rockets are 23-19 in conference matchups. Houston ranks second in the Western Conference at limiting opponent scoring, giving up only 109.9 points while holding opponents to 45.9% shooting.<\/p>\n
The Lakers are 28-16 in Western Conference play. Los Angeles scores 116.5 points and has outscored opponents by 1.2 points per game.<\/p>\n
The Rockets are shooting 47.4% from the field this season, 1.0 percentage point lower than the 48.4% the Lakers allow to opponents. The Lakers average 12.1 made 3-pointers per game this season, 0.3 fewer makes per game than the Rockets allow.<\/p>\n
The teams square off for the second time this season. The Rockets won 119-96 in the last meeting on Dec. 26. Amen Thompson led the Rockets with 26 points, and Luka Doncic led the Lakers with 25 points.<\/p>\n
TOP PERFORMERS: Thompson is scoring 17.8 points per game and averaging 7.7 rebounds for the Rockets. Kevin Durant is averaging 26.1 points and 6.1 rebounds over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LeBron James is averaging 21.3 points, 5.7 rebounds and seven assists for the Lakers. Doncic is averaging 34.0 points over the last 10 games.<\/p>\n
LAST 10 GAMES: Rockets: 6-4, averaging 112.1 points, 46.9 rebounds, 24.5 assists, 7.7 steals and 5.8 blocks per game while shooting 48.0% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 113.0 points per game.<\/p>\n
Lakers: 8-2, averaging 121.7 points, 42.2 rebounds, 28.0 assists, 8.9 steals and 4.8 blocks per game while shooting 50.6% from the field. Their opponents have averaged 111.4 points.<\/p>\n
INJURIES: Rockets: Jae’Sean Tate: out (knee), Fred VanVleet: out for season (acl), Alperen Sengun: day to day (back), Steven Adams: out for season (ankle).<\/p>\n
Lakers: Maxi Kleber: out (back).<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
The Associated Press created this story using technology provided by Data Skrive<\/a> and data from Sportradar<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Lakers (42-25, third in the Western Conference) vs. Houston Rockets (41-25, fourth in the Western Conference)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[84885,1297,7,292,194,4066,6,446,211,66],"class_list":["post-659586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-houston-rockets","tag-84885","tag-article","tag-basketball","tag-houston","tag-houston-rockets","tag-houstonrockets","tag-nba","tag-nba-basketball","tag-rockets","tag-sports"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116233061426846974","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=659586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/659586\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=659586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=659586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=659586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}