Houston @ Los Angeles picks

The Houston Rockets will be without Alperen Sengun for a second straight game while Amen Thompson and Dillon Brooks rest and Fred VanVleet continues to nurse an injured ankle. That is going to make scoring the ball very difficult, even for a team which ranks fifth offensively in the last two weeks, though the Los Angeles Lakers haven’t exactly done a bang-up job defensively in ranking 16th over that same span. With Houston still commanding the boards, and looking even stronger down low with Jock Landale stepping in for Sengun, it should hold at least two edges over L.A. here despite receiving a ton of points from oddsmakers. This one should be closer than it appears with the injury report, and I trust the depth of the Rockets to come up with a gritty, hard-fought cover.