Lakers Will Face Durant, Rockets in 1st Round

Written by Malcolm Xavier of The Lakers Room

LA took care of business on the last night of the regular season in the NBA vs the Jazz in a blowout where LeBron was resting by halftime. The Lakers were in play for a rematch with Minnesota, but Denver took care of business to secure the third seed in the Western Conference leaving the Lakeshow fourth and pitted against the #5 Houston Rockets led by longtime veteran Kevin Durant. First narrative though has to be Luka if and will he return and how healthy? That to meet is what will decide the series. Second will be LeBron vs KD who meet in their first postseason matchup since the 2018 finals - eight whole years ago.

The Lakers have a lot of questions to answer how they will attack Durant and what will be the defensive gameplan to hold down one of the leagues purest scorers in history that can still score 40 any given night. Second will be how will they deal with Houston's size and physicality? The Lakers undoing in the first round vs Minnesota in 2025 surely can be attributed to a lack of size and physicality. Let's see how much we've progressed - or regressed in the last calendar year when it matters most. Will the Lakers offseason buyouts in Marcus Smart and Deandre Ayton show up and make a difference? I believe Smart will, but Ayton's impact will be just as important, or we will see alot of Jaxson Hayes. Houston has a massive team with Thompson, Jabari Smith Jr, Sengun and Josh Okogie joining KD in the starting lineup that the Lakers will have to match with rebounding and points in the paint all series long so let's hope both of them show up big. The Rockets do lack a pure point guard, causing the offense to stagnate at times, I believe the Lakers zone should thrive at times.

I came into today surely thinking we'd face Minnesota, Denver was a MASSIVE underdog to San Antonio so I really believe we'd get the third seed. I haven't got to do alot of thinking on this series. I will be doing a breakdown of the series Wednesday. However, my surface level prediction says Luka is back by Game 3 and the Lakers win this in six.