This is a lose-lose series for the Houston Rockets.<\/p>\n
If the Rockets win the series, then the narrative will be that the Los Angeles Lakers were hurt and of course the Rockets won. If Houston loses the series, they were frauds all along and will need to make wholesale changes this summer to retool around Kevin Durant.<\/p>\n
Remember, expectations cost people their jobs. And the expectation for Houston is to win this series handily if Luka Doncic doesn\u2019t make an appearance.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, the Lakers are cruising and playing with house money. LeBron James isn\u2019t expected to carry this team far by himself, so just winning a couple of games would be gravy. They can play with no fear and ride the vibes.<\/p>\n
The Lakers are not just LeBron and some scrubs. There\u2019s former Defensive Player of the Year Marcus Smart, \u201cNot Clint Capela\u201d Deandre Ayton, Gonzaga standouts Rui Hachimura and Drew Timme, sharpshooter Luke Kennard, defensive stalwart Jarred Vanderbilt, and a really good Jake LaRavia.<\/p>\n
This is not going to be an easy series. Don\u2019t expect it to be.<\/p>\n
Kevin Durant: questionable<\/p>\n
The Line (as of this post)<\/p>\n
Looking ahead because we can<\/p>\n
Game 2 on Tuesday in Los Angeles<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This is a lose-lose series for the Houston Rockets. If the Rockets win the series, then the narrative…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":712926,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211,2697],"class_list":{"0":"post-712925","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","14":"tag-rockets-game-previews"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116423753332119345","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712925","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=712925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/712925\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/712926"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=712925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=712925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=712925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}