Who's Under More Pressure In The Rockets-Lakers Series? For Big Perk, It's This Former Finals MVP

The 2026 playoff matchups are locked in, and in the no. 4 vs. no. 5 series out West, the shorthanded Los Angeles Lakers will square off against a promising Houston Rockets squad.

For ESPN’s Kendrick Perkins, the pressure isn’t on the Tinseltown boys in this series. Rather, it’s on the blockbuster name that grabbed offseason headlines with his move to Texas.

“At this point, the Lakers are playing with house money. Nothing to lose, everything to gain,” Perkins said on “NBA Today” Monday morning. “This is all about the Rockets. This is all about Kevin Durant.”

Big Perk, who played alongside KD for four years in Oklahoma City, argued that there is much more on the line for Durant than the Rockets’ playoff survival.

“We got to think about this for a second: disaster in Brooklyn, disaster in Phoenix…all of a sudden, you get this matchup, which is favorable to the Rockets…KD, you better not let a 41-year-old LeBron James beat you in this series,” Perkins insisted.

With Luka Dončić and Austin Reaves possibly missing the first round, it’s hard to bet on the Lakers putting away the Rockets, who have a young, athletic ensemble surrounding Durant. Prolific big man Alperen Şengün, energizer bunny Amen Thompson, and sweet-shooting forward Jabari Smith Jr. can all hurt the Lakers in various ways.

The expectation, then, is that the Rockets will overcome the Lakers’ homecourt advantage in this series and score the “upset” to advance to the second round. Whether Durant and his crew admit it or not, that’s a different type of pressure: ensuring that they take care of business against a squad that is without its two backcourt stalwarts.

In their three regular-season games, the Lakers had the upper hand, beating the Rockets twice in mid-March. The catch is, Dončić and Reaves suited up in those games, which were both decided by less than 10 points.

Against the Rockets in the first round, the Lakers’ hopes for survival aren’t looking too good. Durant is expected to prevail over James in this series, and on the off chance that he doesn’t, he’ll never hear the end of it.