Despite the return of star Austin Reaves, the LA Lakers were defeated by Houston Rockets in Game 5 of their series.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Published On 30 Apr 2026<\/span>30 Apr 2026<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Jabari Smith Jr scored 22 points and Tari Eason added 18 \u200cas the Houston Rockets fought off elimination for a second consecutive game and crawled back into their first-round, Western Conference playoff series with a 99-93 \u2060road victory over the Los Angeles \u2060Lakers in Game 5 on Wednesday.<\/p>\n Alperen Sengun scored 14 points with nine rebounds and eight assists while Amen Thompson added 15 points for the Rockets, who now trail 3-2 in the best-of-seven series after falling into a 3-0 hole. No NBA \u2060team has rallied back from a 3-0 deficit to win a playoff series.<\/p>\n list of 3 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n \u201cEverybody feels amazing,\u201d Sengun said of his team. \u201cNobody is tired and today everybody showed it. Now, we\u2019re going in front of our families, our fans, we\u2019re gonna protect our home and come back here for Game 7.\u201d<\/p>\n The consecutive Rockets victories \u2060have come without star Kevin Durant (ankle), who has only played in Game 2.<\/p>\n Star guard Austin Reaves scored 22 points off the bench in his return from an oblique injury and LeBron James added 25 points for the Lakers. \u200cDeandre Ayton scored 18 points and grabbed 17 rebounds for Los Angeles, which will get a third chance to clinch the series on Friday at Houston.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have to give them credit,\u201d Lakers coach JJ Redick said of the Rockets. \u201cThey made shots tonight, including some guys who don\u2019t normally make threes. I think our defence, you hope 99 (points allowed) is enough to win, and we just couldn\u2019t make shots. Missed some layups, certainly had some good looks from 3 that didn\u2019t go down.\u201d<\/p>\n The Lakers continue to be without All-Star Luka Doncic (hamstring), who was injured along with Reaves in an April 2 game at Oklahoma City. Both players missed the last five regular-season games and the first four playoff games.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was nice to get back \u2060out there, obviously,\u201d Reaves said. \u201cI wish I would have played a little better. I wish I would have made \u2060a couple more shots, but at the end of the day, I had fun out there and it was good to compete.\u201d<\/p>\n The Lakers appeared determined to close out the series by taking an 11-point lead with a minute remaining in the first quarter and leading 28-21 after the opening period.<\/p>\n The Rockets stormed back to produce a 30-19 advantage in the second quarter and \u2060led 51-47 at halftime. Houston shot 6 of 12 from 3-point range in the second period and forced five turnovers.<\/p>\n The Rockets extended their advantage to 76-67 through three quarters.<\/p>\n Los Angeles used an 11-1 run to pull within \u206088-85 on a James layup with 2:59 left in the game.<\/p>\n A steal and two baskets from \u2060Reed Sheppard pushed the Rockets\u2019 advantage back to 92-85 with 2:20 left, and Houston turned four consecutive free throws into a 96-87 advantage with 1:32 remaining.<\/p>\n James and Reaves combined to miss three 3-point attempts over the final 28 seconds with James unable to pull the Lakers within two points when he was off target from long range with 12 seconds left.<\/p>\n \u201cI missed a lot of \u200ceasy looks, and we didn\u2019t shoot it great as a team,\u201d Reaves said. \u201cWe\u2019ll watch film, try to get better and try to win a game Friday.\u201d<\/p>\n Udoka said of his side, \u201cBig-time performances by everybody across the board. You\u2019re starting a really young lineup and they are somewhat battle-tested now. \u2026 You want \u200cto \u200cshow growth, and I think we did that tonight when they trapped late, handled it with poise, got the shots we wanted and made our free throws.\u201d<\/p>\n After he averaged 25 points over the first two games of the series and 17.8 through the first four contests, Lakers sharpshooter Luke Kennard was held to one point on 0-of-4 shooting.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n Despite the return of star Austin Reaves, the LA Lakers were defeated by Houston Rockets in Game 5 of their series. Published On 30 Apr 202630 Apr 2026 Jabari Smith Jr scored 22 points and Tari Eason added 18 \u200cas the Houston Rockets fought off elimination for a second consecutive game and crawled back into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20982","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-us-canada-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20982","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=20982"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20982\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/20983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=20982"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=20982"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=20982"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"Jabari](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/AFP__20260430__2273183474__v1__HighRes__HoustonRocketsVLosAngelesLakersGameFive-1777534269.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018Didn\u2019t shoot it great\u2019<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"