Lakers vs Rockets Preview: Final Thoughts
Laker Film Room - Dedicated to the Study of Lakers Basketball
Pete Zayas
4.8 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2026
⏱️ 36 minutes
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Summary
With Game 1 on Saturday, Pete and Darius wrap up their preview of the Lakers first round series vs. the Rockets by diving into LeBron James’ importance as a player and a leader, who they believe is the next most important Laker behind LeBron, role-player X-factors for both teams, what their expectations are for JJ Redick in his 2nd playoffs, and much more.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | What do you think about the Laker team now? |
| 0:03.0 | You follow the box scores of the games every day? |
| 0:06.0 | Just the Lakers. |
| 0:07.0 | You're kidding. |
| 0:08.0 | That is really a compliment. |
| 0:10.0 | I was pleased to see you smile at the top part show because once the game starts, you have a game face. |
| 0:17.0 | You don't smile much out there. |
| 0:20.0 | I don't think you have to do things for money anymore. |
| 0:22.9 | Correct. |
| 0:23.5 | What's up, Laker fans? Welcome to the Laker Film Room podcast. I'm Pete, joined by Darius. |
| 0:28.5 | And today is our final preview of the week of the Lakers versus Rocket series. |
| 0:32.4 | We covered belief in strategy and rotations in the first one, the Lakers on defense in the second one, |
| 0:39.2 | and then yesterday the Lakers on the offensive end. So today is for just somewhat of the |
| 0:44.4 | miscellaneous topics, some of the things that are on our mind. And I want to take a little |
| 0:50.4 | bit of a peek of the forest from the trees that we've been in. And we haven't talked a ton about LeBron, how central he is to this series. It's also possible this is his last series as a Laker, right? We don't know what this summer is going to hold on that front. There was a piece that came out today between Waikie and Amick that said the odds of him coming back have gone up. But with Luca out, with Austin out, |
| 1:12.7 | it's obviously so bittersweet to be in this position. But I feel like the team's in a good |
| 1:16.7 | headspace from a ready for the series. Nobody believes in us had three good days of practice. |
| 1:22.3 | Lots of good messaging coming out of there. Sometimes the cold splash of reality of the actual |
| 1:26.5 | basketball can take you out of that. And so I think we're on the same page in that game one is essential. Lakers got to win and they got to come out punching. And that to me is kind of where I want to land on a more esoteric front, D, is last year we came out not ready for game one. And then we gave up just a disgusting stat line to Rudy Gobert, like |
| 1:45.5 | a Where Is Your Pride type of stat line in Game 5, where I thought they really just didn't compete |
| 1:50.4 | on a lot of fronts. And it's got to be the opposite of that this year. I understand that we're |
| 1:55.7 | undermanned. I understand the circumstances going into the playoffs, but they've got to hit the |
... |
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