Lakers/Rockets

Lakers/Rockets

This Lakers team is crazy. On Friday, they closed out the Rockets in Houston behind a performance that was half fantastic defense and half Houston shooting woes. The Rockets' offense had stagnated without KD, but it looked like they'd found something running through Sengun in their Game 4 and Game 5 wins to extend the series. It helped that guys like Tari Eason and Jabari Smith Jr. found their shooting touches as well, but in the end they just didn't have the consistency, shooting 5-28 from three and putting up just 78 points as a team.

A 20-point win with the team not shooting particularly efficiently was a beautiful thing to see, but heading into a series vs. OKC, LA needs to step it up. 10 missed free throws and the team shooting 40% from the field isn't going to cut it against a well-oiled machine like the Thunder.

Gobble's Take: The win was convincing, but LA's free throw and shooting inefficiencies are real concerns heading into round two against OKC.

Source: Read Hoops

Pistons/Magic

What do you mean the Magic reverted back to the disappointing team we’d seen during the regular season when they were just minutes away from advancing to the next round? That’s the weird little horror show of this series. Franz Wagner’s injury certainly didn’t help, especially with his defense against Cade Cunningham making a huge difference.

Gobble's Take: This is the kind of playoff turn that makes “almost” feel way more painful than an outright loss.

Source: Perplexity Search

In Case You Missed It

Yesterday's top stories:

• Lynx vs. Valkyries opens with history, and Minnesota has already been rude about it