LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers won three games in a row to end the regular season, holding onto the No. 4 seed in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n
So, L.A. will have home court in the No. 5 vs. No. 4 matchup in the first round of the playoffs, where it\u2019ll take on Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets.<\/p>\n
Houston closed out the regular season strong, ranking fifth in the NBA in net rating over its last 15 games, going 11-4 during that stretch. Houston has struggled in clutch-time offense (20th in offensive rating) this season, but it finished sixth in the NBA in net rating during the regular season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Lakers are down Luka Doncic (hamstring) and Austin Reaves (oblique) pushing them down to +25000 to win the NBA Finals<\/a>. James has turned back the clock in recent games with Doncic and Reaves out, but can he carry a short-handed Lakers team to a first-round series win?<\/p>\n The odds suggest that he can\u2019t.\u00a0<\/p>\n The Lakers are +550 underdogs against Houston, and the most-likely outcome for this series is for the Rockets to pull off a sweep (+240). L.A. won the season series with the Rockets, but this team simply isn\u2019t close to what it would be if Doncic and Reaves were healthy.\u00a0<\/p>\n There is a chance they could return to the lineup at some point in the playoffs, but both players were given at least four-week timelines after going down in early April.\u00a0<\/p>\n The SI Betting team will have predictions for each first-round matchup later in the week, equipped with a series winner and the number of games.\u00a0<\/p>\n For now, let\u2019s take a dive into several series odds markets to help bettors understand how Vegas feels about these teams, and where there may be betting value ahead of Saturday\u2019s Game 1 matchup.\u00a0<\/p>\n Odds via DraftKings Sportsbook<\/a><\/p>\n Rockets vs. Lakers Series OddsRockets: -750Lakers: +550Rockets vs. Lakers Series SpreadRockets -2.5 (-115)Lakers +2.5 (-105)Rockets vs. Lakers Series Correct ScoreRockets in 4: +240Rockets in 6: +250Rockets in 5: +265Rockets in 7: +800Lakers in 7: +950Lakers in 6: +2500Lakers in 5: +2500Lakers in 4: +6000Rockets vs. Lakers Series Total Games5.5 (Over +105\/Under -130)<\/p>\n Odds refresh periodically and are subject to change.<\/p>\n If you or someone you know has a gambling problem and wants help, call 1-800-GAMBLER.<\/p>\n Claim the latest\u00a0DraftKings promo code<\/a>\u00a0offer today. Sign up and get\u00a0$300 in bonus bets instantly when you make your first $5 bet<\/a>\u00a0and that bet wins.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeBron James and the Los Angeles Lakers won three games in a row to end the regular season,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":709695,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-709694","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-nba","13":"tag-rockets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116397944484912671","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709694","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=709694"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/709694\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/709695"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=709694"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=709694"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=709694"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}