{"id":643534,"date":"2026-05-02T18:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T18:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/643534\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T18:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T18:31:08","slug":"nba-playoffs-2026-odds-lakers-lebron-james-enter-oklahoma-city-thunder-series-as-historic-underdogs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/643534\/","title":{"rendered":"NBA playoffs 2026 odds: Lakers, LeBron James enter Oklahoma City Thunder series as historic underdogs"},"content":{"rendered":"

LeBron James and the short-handed Los Angeles Lakers finished off the Houston Rockets in their 2026 NBA Playoffs<\/a> first-round series on Friday night with a resounding 98-78 win<\/a> in Game 6 to take the series 4-2.<\/p>\n

Without Austin Reaves for part of the series and Luka Don\u010di\u0107 for all the series, the Lakers entered as big +425 underdogs against the Rockets. But Kevin Durant didn\u2019t play in five of the six games due to a variety of injuries, Reaves came back and James carried Los Angeles to the playoff series victory.<\/p>\n

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Unfortunately, the No. 1 seed Oklahoma City Thunder \u2014 after a 4-0 sweep of the No. 8 seed Phoenix Suns \u2014 have been waiting for Los Angeles and oddsmakers have installed James as the biggest playoff underdog he\u2019s even been in his illustrious career.<\/p>\n

The Lakers are currently +950 underdogs in the series against the Thunder, which is the biggest playoff underdog the Lakers have been at this point in the playoffs as a franchise since at least 1988 \u2014 as far back as the Sports Odds History database<\/a> goes.<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s the second-biggest underdog a James-led team has been in a playoff series. The largest was all the way back in 2006 \u2014 James\u2019 first year in the postseason \u2014 when the Cleveland Cavaliers were 12-1 underdogs against the Detroit Pistons in the second round of the playoffs. The Pistons won that series in seven games.<\/p>\n

The Lakers are currently 16-point underdogs at the Thunder in Game 1 at sportsbooks, which would be the biggest underdog LeBron has ever been in a playoff game.<\/p>\n

The previous high was back in Game 1 of the 2018 NBA Finals, when James\u2019 Cavaliers were 12.5-point underdogs and lost 124-114 in overtime to the Golden State Warriors \u2014 also known as the J.R. Smith Game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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It doesn\u2019t help matters that the Thunder beat the Lakers all four times this season, with three of the wins coming by at least 29 points.<\/p>\n

Can Los Angeles pull off a historic upset?<\/p>\n

Game 1<\/a> of the series is Tuesday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LeBron James and the short-handed Los Angeles Lakers finished off the Houston Rockets in their 2026 NBA Playoffs…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":643535,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[434],"tags":[45842,49,48,2357,8028,8217,8223,239786,6695,2327,1522,8231,12887,459,3555,6002,85771,82],"class_list":["post-643534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nba","tag-austin-reaves","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-cleveland-cavaliers","tag-detroit-pistons","tag-golden-state-warriors","tag-houston-rockets","tag-j-r-smith","tag-kevin-durant","tag-lebron-james","tag-los-angeles","tag-los-angeles-lakers","tag-luka-doncic","tag-nba","tag-oklahoma-city-thunder","tag-phoenix-suns","tag-playoff-series","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643534\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/643535"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}