{"id":616614,"date":"2026-04-19T07:00:09","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T07:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/616614\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T07:00:09","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T07:00:09","slug":"lakers-make-winning-start-as-nba-play-offs-begin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/616614\/","title":{"rendered":"Lakers make winning start as NBA play-offs begin"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Los Angeles Lakers shrugged off their injury worries to make a winning start to the NBA play-offs.<\/p>\n<p>The 18-time champions were without key players Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves and Maxi Kleber but 41-year-old LeBron James produced another fine display in a 107-98 win over the Houston Rockets.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>The Cleveland Cavaliers, Denver Nuggets and New York Knicks were the other winners on day one of the play-offs, while the Phoenix Suns and Orlando Magic won the play-in tournament to book their places.<\/p>\n<p>James controlled the floor while racking up 19 points, 13 assists and eight rebounds against a Houston side who lost key man Kevin Durant to injury just before play started.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s just our play-off mentality,&#8221; Lakers coach JJ Redick said.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;You can&#8217;t worry about who&#8217;s in or out of the line-up. It&#8217;s our gameplan. It&#8217;s our standards. It&#8217;s how we play, and we&#8217;ve built towards that.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I thought our guys just responded well and met the moment. That&#8217;s the biggest thing. You&#8217;ve got to meet the moment in every game, and we were able to do that.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Luke Kennard continued to step up as a starter with a career play-off high 27 points as the Lakers took the opening game in the best-of-seven series.<\/p>\n<p>Advertisement<\/p>\n<p>Durant, 37, has a bruised knee and could return for game two on Tuesday night.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/basketball\/articles\/cn0z0gn2n0lo?xtor=AL-72-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Byahoo.north.america%5D-%5Blink%5D-%5Bsport%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\" data-ylk=\"slk:Defending champions Oklahoma City Thunder;elm:context_link;itc:0;sec:content-canvas\" data-yga=\"{&quot;yLinkElement&quot;:&quot;context_link&quot;,&quot;yModuleName&quot;:&quot;content-canvas&quot;,&quot;yLinkText&quot;:&quot;Defending champions Oklahoma City Thunder&quot;}\" class=\"link \">Defending champions Oklahoma City Thunder<\/a> begin their campaign on Sunday night against the Suns.<\/p>\n<p>NBA results<\/p>\n<p>Playoff Round 1 (Game 1)<\/p>\n<p>Houston Rockets 98-107 LA Lakers<\/p>\n<p>Toronto Raptors 113-126 Cleveland Cavaliers<\/p>\n<p>Minnesota Timberwolves 105-116 Denver Nuggets<\/p>\n<p>Atlanta Hawks 102-113 New York Knicks<\/p>\n<p>Play-In Tournament Final<\/p>\n<p>Golden State Warriors 96-111 Phoenix Suns<\/p>\n<p>Charlotte Hornets 90-121 Orlando Magic<\/p>\n<p><img alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" width=\"1\" height=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" data-nimg=\"1\" style=\"color:transparent\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1776582009_401_.gif\"\/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Los Angeles Lakers shrugged off their injury worries to make a winning start to the NBA play-offs.&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616615,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[7218,64,30097,63,5670,17603,1662,5552,7220,63857,7216,7896,7232,11473,12843,49141,5665,590,1666,5548,12985,7185,85,17602],"class_list":{"0":"post-616614","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-atlanta-hawks","9":"tag-au","10":"tag-austin-reaves","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-charlotte-hornets","13":"tag-cleveland-cavaliers","14":"tag-denver-nuggets","15":"tag-golden-state-warriors","16":"tag-houston-rockets","17":"tag-jj-redick","18":"tag-kevin-durant","19":"tag-lebron-james","20":"tag-los-angeles-lakers","21":"tag-luka-doncic","22":"tag-luke-kennard","23":"tag-maxi-kleber","24":"tag-minnesota-timberwolves","25":"tag-nba","26":"tag-new-york-knicks","27":"tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","28":"tag-orlando-magic","29":"tag-phoenix-suns","30":"tag-sports","31":"tag-toronto-raptors"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616614","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=616614"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/616614\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616615"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=616614"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=616614"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=616614"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}