https://www.theringer.com/2026/04/20/nba/nba-playoffs-first-round-takeaways-game-1. Maybe Kevin Durant should have won MVP. The ugliest offense on Saturday was puked up by the Houston Rockets, who lost to a Los Angeles Lakers team that they probably should have beaten, even without Durant, a last-minute scratch due to a knee injury. Watching Houston scrounge together a paltry 83.7 points per 100 half-court plays was painful. The Rockets were inelegance personified, somehow managing to shoot 43.5 percent in the restricted area. For any team looking to enjoy its playoff experience, one key ingredient is the ability to space the floor. The Rockets, by contrast, spent most of Game 1 inside an outhouse. This possession below pretty much sums up what that looks like, with lineups in which zero out of five players need to be guarded on the perimeter: The fairest conclusion to draw is that Houston simply isn’t used to life without Durant—an invaluable 37-year-old who had missed only two games since Thanksgiving. It’s understandable that the Rockets would struggle without him. And not just KD; the Rockets were constructed with the expectation that Fred VanVleet and Steven Adams—both of whom are out with long-term injuries—would streamline everyone else’s nightly assignments in the playoffs. But without them, Alperen Sengun, Amen Thompson, and everybody else have been forced to bite off more than they can chew against a Lakers defense that had decent success switching most screens and then aggressively helping behind the play. That’s the bad news. The good news is that over the course of 59 possessions with Sengun and Thompson on the court together, Houston’s offensive rating was 120.3. Now, this was a gnarly 120.3, primarily due to the fact that the Rockets grabbed half of their own missed shots—and they missed a ton of shots—but that level of efficiency is still more than enough to beat the less-than-whole Lakers, who drilled over half of their 3s and over 60 percent of their midrange shots in Game 1. Sans Durant, the simplest course correction for Houston would be to make the open shots Los Angeles is willing to surrender and make better reads on drives into the paint. Thompson spent Game 1 swimming upstream, forcing tough shots at the basket that were well-contested. This photo—captured near the end of a drive into traffic that ended in a turnover—illustrates that. Thompson sees Jaxson Hayes switch out onto Reed Sheppard and thinks the coast is clear. It’s … not: There are ways for the Rockets to loosen things up a bit. They can (and absolutely should) target Luke Kennard in more actions with either Thompson or Sengun as the ball handler. To get ahead of L.A.’s switching, they can slip to the basket or drive toward the pick after it’s set. Anything to create 4-on-3 or 3-on-2 advantages. Easier said than done. I get it. But how about applying even more ball pressure against a Lakers offense that’s down its top two scorers? The Rockets need to be forcing turnovers, running off misses, and speeding up a game that they should absolutely not want to play in the mud. Maybe none of this will matter if Durant returns to rescue an offense that suffered a disastrous shooting night from both Sheppard and Sengun, who combined to go 12-for-39 from the field. But if the Rockets are left to fend for themselves without their All-NBA Hall of Famer, it’d be nice to see them find ways to deal with the predictable spacing issues that are more creative than “crash the offensive glass and hope for the best.”
On a hindsight, it would have been better if Durant had missed some games in regular season to force Ime to adapt.
We lost to a team that has exactly one guy that can create offense - best one in the game. We had the next 3 best playmakers in the game. Durant, Adams and FVV are not more important than Luka and Reaves. The Lakers would never trade those 2 guys for our 3 guys. Do you understand that? If we swapped coaches, we would have won. That’s the bottom line. Hopefully Durant is back and we can overcome Udoka.
What if our young core "the future" are just not them guys and not having KD gives a glimpse of the future... Would you pay Amen the MAX? Jabari Smith Jr overrated? What potential superstar can you get in return for Sengun? Is Reed our future point guard or his best fit is 6th man? Honestly, we should let KD rest game 2 to get the above questions/concerns answered... As a fan, I want to beat the Lakers and get KD back ASAP...however, we aren't making a deep playoff run this year so just let the young guns play and see how we should approach our off-season.
IMHO I would be on board to rest KD 1 more game if the management is willing to make hard decisions from this that includes coaching change first and foremost. I don’t think a meaningful potential star is going to be on market who is under 30 so we have no choice but to commit to this core for next few years. Ime raised the floor for the team but he is not maximizing the current core’s talent.
