To the theme of TNT's "E.J.'s Stat of the Night" for tonight:
Post Shaq era, the Lakers are a killer 13 - 5 record against the Rockets with Yao Ming in the line-up. That's a .722 Win Ratio in the Lakers favor. In fact, those rare 5 loses were only by a margin of 4.6 points and were mostly close battles (including overtime) that could've easily gone the Laker's way.
But... the Lakers have a worse 0 - 4 record against the Rockets when Yao Ming is out, trailing by double-digit blowouts (sometimes after blowing their own double-digit lead in the first place) while losing by an average of 10.3 points per game.
With Yao in:
The Lakers win .722 of the time, and could've easily won all those other close games.
With Yao out:
The Lakers have always lost, and they tend to lose BIG.
Lakers better not take this Yao-less team for granted ever, ever again.
Even if the Lakers build a big lead in the start, history has shown that this Yao-less team always makes a comeback and bite us in the butt... blow-out style.
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