The Los Angeles Lakers will have a pair of home games against the Houston Rockets in the next two weeks, as part of a pretty brutal slate to end the 2024-25 regular season.
Elsewhere among their final eight games of the year, the Lakers will also face off against three other Western Conference postseason contenders in the 42-31 Golden State Warriors, the 62-12 Oklahoma City Thunder (twice), and the 37-38 Dallas Mavericks.
Los Angeles will have a bit of a reprieve, with a pair of “gimme” games against the 32-42 New Orleans Pelicans and the 20-54 Portland Trail Blazers.
As Jovan Buha of The Athletic observes, L.A.’s games against the Rockets could have major implications for the club’s fate as the playoffs loom.
The Lakers host the Rockets twice, with a chance to win the tiebreaker and push for the No. 2 or 3 seed if they can beat the Rockets both times (if the Rockets win one or both games, Houston wins the tiebreaker),” Buha writes.
As of this writing, a young, big Houston squad is 48-26 on the year and currently occupies the No. 2 seed in the conference.
The No. 4-seeded Lakers have a 45-29 record so far, just three games behind Houston and 1.5 contests behind the 47-28 Denver Nuggets.
Were the playoffs to tip off right now, the Lakers would host the 44-30 Memphis Grizzlies, whom they narrowly defeated on Saturday, in a first-round matchup.
Led by All-Star center Alperen Sengun, rising All-Defensive Team candidate Amen Thompson, shooting guard Jalen Green, vets Fred VanVleet and Dillon Brooks, and young power forwards Jabbari Smith Jr. and Tari Eason, Houston appears primed for its first playoff action since the James Harden era.
Head coach Ime Udoka has helped turbocharge the Rockets’ rebuild, and against a Lakers club struggling through health challenges of late (although most L.A. mainstays are healthy now), Houston could singlehandedly knock them out of the bidding for homecourt advantage in the playoffs.
