LA: Lebron out for Lakers again

🏀NBA: The Lakers unveiled their championship banner (in front of fans!) in last night’s victory over the floundering Houston Rockets. Unfortunately we didn’t see the return of the King, with LeBron missing his 26th game in the last 28, and Anthony Davis also sat out with groin tightness. Put everyone in bubble wrap, please.

• The Lakers have two regular season games left to climb out of the unlucky number 7-seed and avoid the play-in tournament, but they’ll need assistance from the Portland Trail Blazers or Dallas Mavericks. Uh, a little help here.

• Meanwhile, the Clippers already secured home-court advantage for the first round of the playoffs and will likely face one of the three teams above: the Lakers, Blazers or Mavs.

🎓🏀WBB: Are the Trojans' glory days back? Lindsay Gottlieb was announced on Monday as the new head coach of USC women’s basketball, leaving her post as assistant coach of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers. From 2012-2019 as a college coach, she led Cal to seven March Madness appearances. In that same time frame, USC only qualified for one.

🔢Box Scores:

• ⚾️The Dodgers swept the Seattle Mariners with yesterday’s 7–1 win (LFG!), hopefully marking a turning point in the defending champs thus far ho-hum season.

• ⚾️The Angels lost their three-game series with the Houston Astros last night, even with Shohei Ohtani doing it all. Sigh.

• 🏒The Kings wrap up their NHL season tonight at 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT against the Colorado Avalanche. Closing time.