{"id":726378,"date":"2026-05-05T14:39:20","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:39:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/726378\/"},"modified":"2026-05-05T14:39:20","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T14:39:20","slug":"nba-playoffs-2026-lebron-james-is-biggest-underdog-of-his-career-in-game-1-at-thunder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/726378\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA playoffs 2026: LeBron James is biggest underdog of his career in Game 1 at Thunder"},"content":{"rendered":"

LeBron James<\/a> has played over 1,900 games in the regular season and postseason combined over his illustrious 23-year career, and has seen just about everything. But he\u2019ll be in unfamiliar territory in Game 1 tonight at the Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a>, as his Los Angeles Lakers<\/a> enter as a 15.5-point underdog.<\/p>\n

It will be the biggest underdog that James has ever been in a game in his career \u2014 regular season or postseason.<\/p>\n

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The short-handed Los Angeles Lakers finished off the Houston Rockets<\/a> in their 2026 NBA Playoffs<\/a> first-round series on Friday night with a resounding 98-78 win<\/a> in Game 6 to take the series 4-2.<\/p>\n

Without Austin Reaves<\/a> for part of the series and Luka Don\u010di\u0107<\/a> for all the series, the Lakers entered as big +425 underdogs against the Rockets. But Kevin Durant<\/a> didn\u2019t play in five of the six games due to a variety of injuries, Reaves came back and James carried Los Angeles<\/a> to the playoff series victory.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, the No. 1 seed Thunder \u2014 after a 4-0 sweep of the No. 8 seed Phoenix Suns<\/a> \u2014 have been waiting for Los Angeles.<\/p>\n

The Lakers are currently +950 underdogs in the series against the Thunder, which is the biggest playoff underdog the Lakers have been at this point in the playoffs as a franchise since at least 1988 \u2014 as far back as the Sports Odds History database<\/a> goes.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s the second-biggest underdog a James-led team has been in a playoff series. The largest was all the way back in 2006 \u2014 James\u2019 first year in the postseason \u2014 when the Cleveland Cavaliers<\/a> were 12-1 underdogs against the Detroit Pistons<\/a> in the second round of the playoffs. The Pistons won that series in seven games.<\/p>\n

The previous biggest underdog a James-led team had been was back in Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals, when James\u2019 Cavaliers were 12.5-point underdogs and lost 124-114 in overtime to the Golden State Warriors<\/a> \u2014 also known as the J.R. Smith Game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t help matters that the Thunder beat the Lakers all four times this season, with three of the wins coming by at least 29 points.<\/p>\n

Can Los Angeles pull off a historic upset?<\/p>\n

We\u2019ll get some answers when Game 1<\/a> of the series tips off at 8:30 p.m. ET tonight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeBron James has played over 1,900 games in the regular season and postseason combined over his illustrious 23-year…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723901,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1013,7,193,188,164,194,17575,938,185,251,150,368,6,179,472,1165,90144],"class_list":["post-726378","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-austin-reaves","tag-basketball","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-houston-rockets","tag-j-r-smith","tag-kevin-durant","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-luka-doncic","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-phoenix-suns","tag-playoff-series","tag-unfamiliar-territory"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nba\/116522487869277120","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726378","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=726378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723901"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nba\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}