Lakers Could Offer a Great Postseason Matchup for the Rockets

On Thursday night, the Houston Rockets clinched a postseason berth for the second consecutive season, in spite of Houston’s injuries and pitfalls. Houston is on pace for another 50 win season, as well.

Well, right at 51. They've won 61.8% of their games, which technically puts them on pace for 50.7 wins on the year.

Last season, they won 52 games with a largely fully healthy roster. Even coming that close to replicating and duplicating is a major victory, it itself, when considering the fact that two of the Rockets' most important players have been sidelined.

In the case of Fred VanVleet, the Rockets have been without their floor general and vocal leader for the entirety of the season. And in the case of Steven Adams, he's been out of commission since January 18th. Currently, Houston holds the fifth seed in the Western Conference.

But they're only one game ahead of the Minnesota Timberwolves with six games remaining. It's well within the realm of possibility that the Rockets could drop to the sixth seed, which would set a first-round match with the Los Angeles Lakers.

Houston's brass is reportedly most confident about facing the Lakers in the first round and we could see the matchup come to fruition. It's also possible that the Lakers, who are currently fourth in the West, drop to the fifth seed, as they are also just one game ahead of the Denver Nuggets.

In which case, Houston and the Lakers would also square off, if Houston maintains their current spot and/or seeding. On Thursday night, we saw Luka Doncic suffer what appeared to be a serious hamstring injury.

Doncic was even brought to tears. Hopefully his injury isn't a major one and he's able to dodge a bullet.

As it pertains to a potential postseason matchup between the two teams, Houston hasn't fared well against the Lakers of late, having lost both back-to-back games last month at home. However, they did beat the Lakers on Christmas Day, in a game that proved to be a massacre.

What's been made clear about the Lakers this season is that they are not a great defensive ball club. The Lakers rank 20th in defensive rating.

They can easily be attacked, especially with the Rockets' youth. Speaking of youth, the Lakers also don't have much of that, especially not as it pertains to their core players.

The Lakers also don't have an answer for Alperen Sengun. Through two games against the Lakers this season, Sengun is averaging 20.5 points, 8 rebounds, 7 assists, 68.2 percent from the field and even a perfect 100 percent from the foul line. Sengun posted true shooting marks of 79.9 percent and 76.5 percent.

And again, we don't yet know the status of Doncic and whether his injury will be a long-term one. Either way, the matchup would be a good one.

If it happens.