{"id":608355,"date":"2026-04-27T00:36:11","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T00:36:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/608355\/"},"modified":"2026-04-27T00:36:11","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T00:36:11","slug":"kevin-durant-sits-again-as-rockets-face-elimination-entering-game-4-against-lakers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/608355\/","title":{"rendered":"Kevin Durant sits again as Rockets face elimination entering Game 4 against Lakers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>HOUSTON \u2014 Houston&#8217;s Kevin Durant won&#8217;t play Sunday night in Game 4 against the Los Angeles Lakers as the Rockets try to avoid being swept in the first-round Western Conference playoff series.<\/p>\n<p>Durant missed Game 3 with a sprained left ankle on Friday night, when the Rockets <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/article\/rockets-playoffs-lakers-6305597835df1ad49cfbdc2ba5cdf719\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">blew a six-point lead with less than 30 seconds to go<\/a> in regulation of an eventual 112-108 overtime loss to fall to 0-3 in the first-round series.<\/p>\n<p>This will be the third game of the series that Durant has missed after he sat out the opener with a bruised right knee. He returned for Game 2, scoring 23 points in 41 minutes of the 101-94 loss, during which he injured his ankle late in the game.<\/p>\n<p>His injury problems this postseason came after the 37-year-old ranked second in the league in the regular season by playing 2,840 minutes.<\/p>\n<p>Durant, who is in his first season in Houston after an offseason trade from Phoenix, is the fifth-leading scorer in NBA history.<\/p>\n<p>___<\/p>\n<p>AP NBA: <a href=\"https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/nba\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/NBA<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"HOUSTON \u2014 Houston&#8217;s Kevin Durant won&#8217;t play Sunday night in Game 4 against the Los Angeles Lakers as&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":608356,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64],"tags":[1302,3811,3812,134,3729,355,3,3813,3814,99,1505,2987,3324,2986],"class_list":{"0":"post-608355","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nba","8":"tag-cars","9":"tag-classifieds","10":"tag-homes","11":"tag-jobs","12":"tag-local","13":"tag-nba","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-radio","16":"tag-salt-lake","17":"tag-sports","18":"tag-television","19":"tag-traffic","20":"tag-utah","21":"tag-weather"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608355","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=608355"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/608355\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/608356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=608355"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=608355"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=608355"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}