{"id":737680,"date":"2026-04-19T00:12:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-19T00:12:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/737680\/"},"modified":"2026-04-19T00:12:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-19T00:12:14","slug":"rockets-star-kevin-durant-to-miss-game-1-of-lakers-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/737680\/","title":{"rendered":"Rockets star Kevin Durant to miss Game 1 of Lakers series"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Lakers<\/a> aren\u2019t the only team beginning the playoffs with an injured star.<\/p>\n

The Houston Rockets will be without Kevin Durant<\/a> in Game 1 against the Lakers<\/a> on Saturday, Houston coach Ime Udoka said, after Durant bumped knees in practice this week.<\/p>\n

The fifth-seeded Rockets hope Durant\u2019s injury will be a \u201cone-game thing,\u201d Udoka said, but the superstar is struggling with soreness and tenderness. Durant was questionable on the injury report because of a bruised right knee and warmed up on the court at Crypto.com Arena on Saturday but \u201cdidn\u2019t feel good enough,\u201d Udoka said.<\/p>\n

The Lakers are without their own star power with Luka Doncic (hamstring) and Austin Reaves (oblique) both out indefinitely. Doncic returned to the United States on Friday after receiving specialized treatment on his injured left hamstring in Spain. Before the game, Doncic had not yet reunited with his teammates, but the Lakers looked forward to getting him back on the sideline.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s in good spirits and we\u2019re excited to see him today,\u201d Lakers coach JJ Redick said before the game.<\/p>\n

The Rockets expect to start guard Josh Okogie in Durant\u2019s place along with Reed Sheppard, Jabari Smith Jr., Amen Thompson and Alperen Sengun. Udoka expects that the pace will pick up without Durant on the court<\/b>, especially with Sheppard and Thompson leading the offense.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do play faster with those guys,\u201d Udoka said. \u201cAmen obviously pushes the pace but Reed\u2019s a really good kick ahead guy and our wings get out and run, and off ball, obviously less isolation and post ups for Kevin.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Lakers finished the regular season with three consecutive wins to hang onto home-court advantage in the first round. The Rockets won nine of their last 10 games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lakers aren\u2019t the only team beginning the playoffs with an injured star. The Houston Rockets will be…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":737681,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,281,304645,1910,23590,158597,19176,3359,2961,304644,224,5337,3365,38430,9276,304646,5395,8603,34478],"class_list":["post-737680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-los-angeles","tag-ca","tag-california","tag-court","tag-fifth-seeded-rockets","tag-game","tag-guy","tag-hamstring","tag-injury","tag-kevin-durant","tag-la","tag-lakers-series","tag-los-angeles","tag-losangeles","tag-luka-doncic","tag-pace","tag-reed-sheppard","tag-rockets-star-kevin-durant","tag-saturday","tag-thompson","tag-udoka"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=737680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/737680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/737681"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=737680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=737680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=737680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}