The Los Angeles Lakers were written off after injuries to Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. They are now moving on.
LeBron James scored 28 points and the Lakers eliminated the Houston Rockets, 98-78, in Game 6 on Saturday to advance to the Western Conference second round for the first time since 2023—doing it without Doncic, who missed the entire series with an injury. The Lakers now face the top-seeded Oklahoma City Thunder, with Game 1 on Monday in Oklahoma City.
“For us to be written off a few weeks ago and win a playoff series is a big deal,” said Lakers coach JJ Redick.
The Lakers Run That Ended It
Houston came into Game 6 with momentum. The fourth-seeded Rockets had won two straight after falling into an 0-3 hole, fighting back without superstar Kevin Durant for all but one game of the series due to knee and ankle injuries. They believed they could take this to a Game 7.
The Lakers had other ideas.
With the game tied early in the first quarter, Los Angeles went on a 27-3 run that turned a tight contest into a statement. Rui Hachimura, Jake LaRavia, and James all connected from three during the surge, pushing the lead to 38-19. By halftime the Lakers led, 49-31, and Houston had managed just one field goal in a lengthy stretch of the second quarter—Rockets guard Reed Sheppard going 0-for-10 from three before finally making a basket with 6:55 left before the break.
Sheppard’s struggles reflected Houston’s night as a whole. After combining for 26 three-pointers over their two previous wins, the Rockets shot just 5-for-28 from deep on Friday. They shot 35% overall. A team that lives beyond the arc cannot survive a night like that in a must-win playoff game.
“Everybody’s disappointed, no doubt,” said Rockets coach Ime Udoka. “Not what we expected coming into the game tonight or the series in general. We all thought that we’d be taking it back for a Game 7.”
LeBron and Hachimura Deliver
James was the tone-setter from the opening tip—not just in what he scored, but in how he framed the defensive assignment that made the rout possible.
“In order for us to win we had to protect the ball, we had to rebound and we had to be physical, make them take tough shots,” he said. “I thought defensively we came in with a great game plan and we executed that thing to a T.”
Redick could not say enough about what James means to this group—in this game and across the entire season.
“He just has this ability to set the tone for the entire group and he did that again tonight and our guys responded,” Redick said.
Hachimura was the game’s other standout, finishing with 21 points on five 3-pointers—providing the kind of spacing and shot-making that gave Los Angeles’s offense a dimension Houston could not contain. Austin Reaves added 15 points in his second game back after missing more than three weeks with an oblique injury, and Deandre Ayton contributed seven points and 16 rebounds.
Houston got 18 points from Amen Thompson and 17 from Alperen Sengun, but neither could generate anything consistently. The Rockets went home after a first-round exit for the second consecutive season.
What Comes Next
The Lakers move on to face the Oklahoma City Thunder—the defending NBA champions, the top seed in the West, and the team that handed Los Angeles a 139-96 blowout loss in March. That was the game in which both Doncic and Reaves suffered their injuries.
This is a different Lakers team than the one that got embarrassed that night. It is also still a team without its best player going into the toughest possible opponent in the West.
“For us to be written off a few weeks ago and win a playoff series is a big deal,” Redick said.
Now they find out how big a deal they can actually become.
