huge win on Monday<\/a> against the Rockets, which sets up an exciting rematch. It may have been an ugly victory but it was one they needed in order to get the chance to claim the season series.<\/p>\nThe tiebreaker could play a huge role, especially for these two teams, because they\u2019re currently two games apart in the competitive Western Conference standings. Remember, if the Lakers and Rockets end up having the same record at the end of the season \u2014 which is in the realm of possibility \u2014 then the team that won the season series, the first tiebreaker, gets the higher seeding.<\/p>\n
So yes, this game is yet another crucial one for the Lakers, who have been rising to the occasion as of late. Not only will the Rockets look to take revenge for Monday\u2019s loss, but it\u2019s hard to defeat a competitive team twice in a row. So L.A. will most likely see a more aggressive Rockets team, prepared with adjustments.<\/p>\n
The key for the Lakers is to once again make sure that they don\u2019t get dominated inside the paint. On Monday, LA did a slightly better job of matching the Rockets\u2019 production in the paint (56-48). They still lost the rebounding battle (44-32) by a lot, but the Lakers bounced back in transition where they outscored the Rockets 16-4.<\/p>\n
Obviously, Luka Don\u010di\u0107\u2019s superb 36-point performance led the way, but so did the team\u2019s overall effort on both ends of the floor. The Lakers may have shot poorly, but they grinded out a victory thanks to their defense as well. Blitzing Kevin Durant and forcing him to be a playmaker down the stretch was a brilliant strategy by head coach JJ Redick as it was what led to the Rockets just scoring a total of four points in the last six minutes of the game.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s no doubt that KD and the Rockets will be better, especially since Alperen \u015eeng\u00fcn \u2014 who is no longer listed on the injury report \u2014 suits up for this one. The Lakers will have to be prepared. Hopefully their shots fall this time and they once again out-execute the Rockets. It\u2019s going to be tough to win this one but not impossible, especially given that the Lakers are playing very good basketball right now.<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s see if the purple and gold leave Houston with the tie-breaker advantage on Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The streaking Lakers (43-25) will be back in Toyota Center on Wednesday when they will take on the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":664173,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,64012,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-664172","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-houston","10":"tag-houston-rockets","11":"tag-houstonrockets","12":"tag-los-angeles-lakers-discussion","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-rockets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116248164821639546","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664172","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=664172"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/664172\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664173"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=664172"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=664172"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=664172"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}