The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the most storied franchises in NBA history and accustomed to winning championships and advancing far into the postseason.<\/p>\n
They\u2019re not used to being an underdog \u2014 especially a big one \u2014 in the first round of the playoffs.<\/p>\n
Advertisement<\/p>\n
But with Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves both sidelined for at least the first portion of Los Angeles\u2019 Round 1 matchup with Kevin Durant and the Houston Rockets, that\u2019s exactly where the Lakers find themselves.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles opened as a +550 underdog against Houston in Round 1 at BetMGM<\/a> sportsbooks, with the Rockets a massive -800 favorite. It\u2019s the fifth-biggest underdog the Lakers have been in a first-round series since 1988 \u2014 per Sports Odds History<\/a> \u2014 and the biggest since they were +650 against the San Antonio Spurs back in 2013.<\/p>\n The Spurs swept the Lakers 4-0 in that series.<\/p>\n Los Angeles has been an underdog of +550 or worse four other times in that time span, and hasn\u2019t won one of the series. Of course, in three of them, the Lakers were at least a 10-1 underdog (implied probability of 9%), including a 20-1 underdog against the Phoenix Suns in 1993.<\/p>\n Advertisement<\/p>\n Can LeBron pull off some more postseason magic and at least extend the series until either Reaves or Doncic can return?<\/p>\n The Rockets are 4.5-point road favorites in Game 1 on Saturday (8:30 p.m. ET, ABC).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Lakers are one of the most storied franchises in NBA history and accustomed to winning…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":711438,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[1013,7,292,194,4066,938,516,251,150,368,6,472,211,474,1101,7831],"class_list":{"0":"post-711437","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-houston-rockets","8":"tag-austin-reaves","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-houston","11":"tag-houston-rockets","12":"tag-houstonrockets","13":"tag-kevin-durant","14":"tag-lebron","15":"tag-los-angeles","16":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","17":"tag-luka-doncic","18":"tag-nba","19":"tag-phoenix-suns","20":"tag-rockets","21":"tag-san-antonio-spurs","22":"tag-the-rockets","23":"tag-underdog"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116411708171337217","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711437","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=711437"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/711437\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/711438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=711437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=711437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=711437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}