2026 Playoffs: (4) Lakers Vs (5) Rockets - Discussion

Playoff basketball gets a life of its own. Huge underdog but I think it is just in the cards.

 

JJ is doing an awesome job, as is our new big 4 of Lebron, Smart, Luke and Kleber.

 

i think there's no way this defensive strategy works against basically any non-houston team, but jj definitely has found something that really bothers them.

i thought it was strange udoka went away from sheppard when he made 5 threes in game 1. yes, he shot poorly overall, but we just weren't respecting a lot of their guys on the perimeter.

it seems their plan was just to ratchet up the physicality, but...we've kind of seen that, and our guys appear to be all for it (lebron, smart, vando, and laravia in particular).

on our side the second quarter swoons have been weird. during each one, we had a string of semi-forced turnovers that gave houston opportunities in transition that haven't been there for the other 45 minutes of the game.

anyway, will be interesting to see what, if any, changes houston makes. i can imagine them just saying: kennard and smart won't keep basically replacing luka and reaves on offense (lol), but it's happened twice now.

they even did some of the stuff i expected (hounded kennard, got us to make lebron make catches further from the hoop, used durant's midrange to break the quasi-zone early), but didn't win. just another game of full-effort team defense and some serious shot-making from the starting backcourt. i hope luka and reaves are watching this, btw. if you can defend like this with kennard and rui playing 43 minutes, you can keep doing it with luka and reaves.