Game 1 for LeBron James and his teams, especially against a team and a coach whom he has little playoff experience with, is often an experiment in trying to soak up all of the finer points and accents to a team’s defensive gameplan. It has been over eight years since LeBron James last played a series against James Harden and Russell Westbrook in a playoff series. LeBron James has also never played against a team coached by Mike D’Antoni in the playoffs.

And so while LeBron focused on the speed of the Rockets in his postgame comments, he was probably marinating his brain in the mindset of D’Antoni and the Rockets. The speed was certainly an overwhelming part of the game plan that James is trying to upload to his legendary basketball brain before Game 2. Now James knows he’s got to see things even faster than his supercomputer basketball brain does normally.

James was scoreless in the 4th quarter but he has a track record of bouncing back from a poor Game 1. Anthony Davis was efficient himself on Friday but not against PJ Tucker. The Lakers as a whole need to play better but with LeBron coming out of Feel Out Mode, the rest of the Lakers should fall in line if their leader steps up.

How To Watch

Time: 5:30 p.m. Pacific/8:30 Eastern

Channel: ABC

Spread via BetMGM: Lakers -5.5

Another subplot of this game is what will the Lakers do with their starting lineup? Will they stick with their big lineups and continue giving big minutes to their centers or will they try to match up with the Rockets by giving more minutes to perimeter-oriented players like Kyle Kuzma, Rajon Rondo, or even Dion Waiters and J.R. Smith?

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