{"id":714657,"date":"2026-04-20T15:35:01","date_gmt":"2026-04-20T15:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/714657\/"},"modified":"2026-04-20T15:35:01","modified_gmt":"2026-04-20T15:35:01","slug":"tari-eason-was-rockets-lone-bright-spot-in-game-1-loss-vs-lakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/714657\/","title":{"rendered":"Tari Eason was Rockets’ Lone Bright Spot in Game 1 Loss vs Lakers"},"content":{"rendered":"

The stage was set for the Houston Rockets’ young guns to show up and show out in Game 1 of the Western Conference Quarterfinals matchup against the Los Angeles Lakers. Especially when news surfaced that Kevin Durant was going to miss the game, due to a knee contusion, which was a bit of a stunning development.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Granted, Durant held a questionable tag heading into the game, so it shouldn’t have been a shock that he missed the game. But it was always assumed that he was going to play.\u00a0<\/p>\n

His absence meant that the basketball world was going to be able to see what Houston’s young prospects were made of, on a national stage. And the Rockets had the prime time slot on ABC\/ESPN.<\/p>\n

Alperen Sengun had 19 points, but still turned in a rather disappointing performance. Jabari Smith Jr. had 16 points on 14 shots.<\/p>\n

Reed Sheppard had 17 points on 20 shots, and had a team-high of four turnovers. Amen Thompson had 17 points on 18 shots (and likely would’ve had more points, were it not for non foul calls).<\/p>\n

Tari Eason, however, had a rather masterful performance. Eason had 16 points and a team-leading 10 rebounds.<\/p>\n

Eason also went a perfect 7-for-7 from the line and had three steals, which also tied for the team lead, alongside Amen Thompson. Eason also went 2-for-2 from three-point range, which surely felt great for him, when considering his shooting struggles inconsistencies throughout the season.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Eason shot 20 percent from deep in March, on 3.4 attempts. He also shot 24.1 percent from deep in April, on 4.1 attempts.<\/p>\n

At one point, Eason went scoreless from long-range for seven games in totality, during the month of March. Eason’s cold shooting stretch understandably garnered a significant amount of bad press from the local media, which surely affected him.<\/p>\n

And he’s been in and out of the starting lineup all season, for one reason or another. Mostly due to injury, which has been a major issue for him throughout his career (although he played all 82 games as a rookie).<\/p>\n

Eason has been playing with a mountain of pressure on his shoulders all season, after turning down a $100 million contract offer from the Rockets in the offseason, due to the Rockets wanting injury guarantees in the deal.<\/p>\n

If Game 1 was any indicator of how he’s going to fare during the postseason, he may have been wise to bet on himself, after all.<\/p>\n

\"\"Add us as a preferred source on GoogleFollow<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The stage was set for the Houston Rockets’ young guns to show up and show out in Game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":714658,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-714657","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\/116437774925675943","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714657","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=714657"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/714657\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/714658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=714657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=714657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=714657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}