The Los Angeles Lakers will make easy work of the Houston Rockets.
The Los Angeles Lakers are squaring off against the Houston Rockets in the Western Conference Semifinals after the Rockets got past the surprise Oklahoma City Thunder in seven games.
All season this has been viewed as the second-round matchup that the Los Angeles Lakers and Los Angeles Clippers want to avoid. Heck, even I am guilty of lauding how the Clippers facing the Rockets in the second round would benefit the Lakers immensely.
The shoe is now on the other foot but I do not think this argument applies as much anymore. After seeing how the Rockets looked against the Thunder and how the Lakers matchup with the Rockets, I cannot help but think that this is going to be an easy series for the Lakers.
So much so that the Lakers will end up sweeping the Rockets and extend their playoff winning streak to eight games.
Why the Los Angeles Lakers will sweep the Houston Rockets:
When giving my series prediction on the latest episode of the Lake Show Life Podcast, I predicted that the series would only go four games. Why? Give it a listen below.
The general summary of why I think the Lakers will win in four games is two-fold. First, the Lakers got a great warm-up matchup against the Portland Trail Blazers that have a similar playstyle/matchup style with the Lakers.
Those five games against Portland showed the Lakers what works, what doesn’t and how to approach this series against the Rockets.
The other reason is I just do not see how Anthony Davis does not average 40 points a game in this series. We have seen that AD’s success is a great barometer of the team’s success and the Rockets have nobody to stop AD. Plus, based on this mismatch for Houston, I cannot imagine a situation where the Lakers can’t get a basket in crunch time.
Some other segments include:
Purple and Gold Players for the series:
Each series, we pick one purple and gold player each. The purple player is a role player on the Rockets that has to struggle for the Lakers to succeed and the gold player is a role player on the Lakers that has to thrive for the Lakers to succeed.
Staggerin’ Statistics:
Where do the Lakers stand in total point differential among the NBA Playoff teams and where does James Harden stand on the all-time leaderboard for Game 1 three-pointers in the Conference Semifinals?
You can listen to the Lake Show Life Podcast wherever you get your podcasts! Have any segement ideas or talking points you want us to cover? Leave us a review with your suggestions and we will take a look!