There wasn’t much to cheer about in Los Angeles after Game 4 of the first round of the playoffs. The team Lakers lost 96:115 in Houston, and after the defeat they were also punished by the league. It is the NBA Marcus Smart fined $35,000 for “questioning the integrity of judges,” Luke Kennard and with 25,000 dollars for “inappropriate vocabulary towards officials”. The league handed down the punishment a day after a game that featured plenty of nerves, technical fouls and ejections.
With the win, Houston extended its season and hit back for the first time in the series, but the situation is still challenging for them. The Lakers lead 3-1, the fifth game will be on Thursday night CET in Los Angeles, where they will have the first final ball to advance to the second round.
The series is constantly haunted by the question of when he will return Luka Dončić. The Slovenian star is still missing due to a hamstring injury, and according to the latest publicly available data, he is not available for the fifth match either. Reuters already reported last week that the team did not count on his return in the first round, even the ESPN injury review still lists him as absent for the showdown with Houston.
That’s why the reactions of Smart and Kennard after the fourth faceoff were even more telling. The Lakers team is without Dončić in this series and Austin Reaves won three times mainly with energy, discipline and a lot of improvisation, in Houston this rhythm fell apart for the first time. The loss was big, nerves were tense, and the league quickly resorted to fines after the game.
