LOS ANGELES — Don’t count the Lakers out.
If Game 1 could have been chalked up to Kevin Durant’s absence due to injury – the Lakers taking advantage of the Houston Rockets being without their generational scorer – then Game 2 might flip the narrative.
LeBron James had 28 points, eight rebounds and seven assists, and the short-handed Lakers outlasted the Rockets for a 101-94 victory on Tuesday night and a stunning 2-0 lead in their first-round playoff series.
“We just executed it, the game plan offensively and defensively, shored up some of our mistakes in Game 1, and turned it into a dogfight,” James said.
Marcus Smart had 25 points (his most in the playoffs since 2020) and seven assists for the Lakers, who have twice overcome the absences of Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves with a team effort led by the 41-year-old James. They did it again in Game 2 despite the return of Durant, who scored just three of his 23 points in the second half against the Lakers’ tenacious defense.
Luke Kennard added 23 points for the Lakers, who nursed a small lead throughout the fourth quarter of Game 2. Smart found James streaking down the lane for a theatrical dunk with 55 seconds to play, and Kennard added two late free throws to ice it.
Game 3 is Friday night in Houston.
“The regular season is not a means of punishment,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “It’s a means of building resiliency. I think our group in aggregate has been an incredibly resilient group. That’s why we have the confidence and belief and certainly the collective competitive spirit to be on this stage going against a great basketball team in Houston.”
One third-quarter play summed up James’ night. James fought his way around a screen from teammate Deandre Ayton, then collected a pass from Smart. He didn’t need any build up. As Durant set himself defensively, James burst to Durant’s right, freezing the fellow future Hall of Famer in his path, breaking free to the rim to throw down a reverse-windmill dunk.
James wasn’t just turning back the clock against an old playoff foe to start a new chapter of their shared lore. He was showing the NBA what a James-led playoff team looks like in 2026, proving that he can still create paths to victory when the odds are stacked against him.
“I don’t even know,” James said of his dunk, a display that alone may have won the 2026 Slam Dunk contest during All-Star weekend. “I don’t know what that was about. I got to sit down somewhere. I got tp sit the hell down somewhere.”
“He’s literally a Mack truck,” Redick added.
The Lakers are the only Western Conference team with a 2-0 series lead, with the Cleveland Cavaliers the only other team to start 2-0 (two of the eight series had yet to play their Game 2 through Tuesday).
And James’ newly promoted counterparts showed up again.
Smart built the Lakers’ early offense through four 3-pointers and finished 5 for 7 from behind the arc, while coming up with five of the Lakers’ 11 steals, leading to 15 Houston turnovers. The veteran guard played cornerback with just over a minute remaining, forcing a steal on an errant pass from Durant and leading a transition effort that ended with him finding James for the dunk that gave them a 99-92 lead with 55.3 seconds left.
“We trust one another,” Smart said. “The word is ‘elevate’ for us and that’s all we’ve been trying to do, is elevate our play on both ends.”
The Game 1 hero had his fair share of flair too. Kennard continued to help lead the Lakers as Doncic and Reaves remain “out indefinitely” with injuries, adding six rebounds and three steals to his point total.
When the goings are that good, even Kennard receives “M-V-P” chants from the Crypto.com Arena faithful when he made his late free throws to close out the win.
“Obviously we’re missing big-time scoring with (Doncic and Reaves) and guys needed to step up,” Kennard said. “But we lost a couple of games. I know we just kind of flipped the switch. We told each other this is what we got right now. We got to believe in what we have.”
Kennard continued: “I thought we figured some things out in the regular season and it kind of lead into the playoffs for us and it’s been well for us.”
With the fourth-seeded Lakers ahead 2-0 in the best-of-seven series, the road for Doncic and Reaves become more clear. Game 6 is now guaranteed, and four weeks of the 4-to-6-week timetable for Grade 2 strains would have passed by the time a potential sixth game takes place on May 1.
The Lakers stifled the fifth-seeded Rockets in the second half after squandering a double-digit first-half lead when they went up by as much as 15 points. Durant, who missed Game 1 with a right knee contusion and was cleared before Tuesday’s game, made just one shot after halftime in the face of constant double-team pressure from the Lakers.
“None,” James said when asked if he took any gratification from the defensive effort against Durant. “That just makes him even madder going into Game 3. “No satisfaction. You know, we did our job. We did that. But the guy’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer and he’s going to make way more great plays than not. So, we don’t have no satisfaction.”
Rockets star center Alperen Sengun found his fight in the second half, scoring 14 points to finish with 20 points and 11 rebounds, while Jabari Smith Jr. scored 18 points and Amen Thompson had 16. The Rockets won on the offensive glass again (17-9) and outrebounded the Lakers 42-37 overall, but they shot just 40% from the field and 24% from 3-point range (7 for 29) compared to 46% overall and 46% from long range (13 for 28) for the Lakers.
The Lakers couldn’t match their 60% shooting in Game 1, but Smart and Kennard combined for 24 points in an impressive first quarter in Game 2. Both Smart and Kennard shot 8 for 13 from the field for the night.
Midway through his postgame presser, a television reporter asked Redick about analysts saying that the Lakers have “what it takes to win.”
Redick verbally jabbed back, hardly a second of air between the question and his answer.
“I don’t know anybody who said we have what it takes to win,” Redick said.
But these Lakers believed they can.
And just two games into the first round, these Lakers have sent two uppercuts through the Rockets, stumbling into knockout-blow territory as the series moves to Houston.