they successfully did so<\/a>. In Game 4, it\u2019s going to be about closing the series and putting this young Rockets team to bed. That itself is going to be a different challenge, but perhaps the biggest advantage that Los Angeles now has is that they\u2019ve snatched away Houston\u2019s fighting spirit \u2014 at least that\u2019s what it seems.<\/p>\nOver the last three games, the Lakers have continuously proven that they\u2019re just the better team, even without two of their best players. It\u2019s still extremely weird typing that but that\u2019s what happens when the team has LeBron James, Marcus Smart and experienced role players. The chemistry \u2014 especially during clutch time \u2014 that the team worked so hard to build during the regular season is one of the reasons why they\u2019re on top right now.<\/p>\n
On Sunday, the Lakers are going to need their chemistry and composure to be in full effect more than ever. It\u2019s uncertain how these Rockets will approach this one given that they don\u2019t seem confident that they can get back in the series. But what\u2019s certain is that no team wants to be swept, so there\u2019s a good chance that Houston will go all out in this one, especially since they\u2019re composed of young players all around.<\/p>\n
With Kevin Durant\u2019s status up in the air again, expect Alperen \u015eeng\u00fcn to lead the Rockets\u2019 offense. He did a good job doing so in Game 3, but it obviously wasn\u2019t enough. What\u2019s going unnoticed in this series is how the Lakers have kept up with the Rockets in what the latter does best, which is controlling the paint and outexecuting them on defense. Los Angeles will have to double down on this to close out the series.<\/p>\n
Maybe the Rockets play like a team that knows they\u2019re down 0-3 and doesn\u2019t want to travel to Los Angeles anymore. What we do know is that this Lakers team will be determined to sweep this series<\/a>. Let\u2019s see if the purple and gold book their ticket to the semifinals on Sunday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lakers aim to close out their first round series against the Houston Rockets on Sunday The purple…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":718320,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[3794],"tags":[7,292,194,4066,550,64012,6,211],"class_list":{"0":"post-718319","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-lakers-playoffs","13":"tag-los-angeles-lakers-discussion","14":"tag-nba","15":"tag-rockets"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116469427298764650","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718319","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=718319"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/718319\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/718320"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=718319"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=718319"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=718319"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}