LeBron leads Lakers into Western finals

LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — The Lakers are going to the conference finals for the first time in a decade, ending the longest drought in franchise history, and LeBron James is going there for the first time since 2018. For him, that also qualifies as a drought.

James scored 29 points and the Lakers wrapped up their first trip to the Western Conference finals since 2010 by topping the Rockets 11996 on Saturday night in Game 5 at Walt Disney World.

Kyle Kuzma scored 17 points, Markieff Morris had 16, Danny Green added 14 and Anthony Davis finished with 13 for the topseeded Lakers. They will play either the secondseeded Clippers or thirdseeded Nuggets in a series that won’t begin before Wednesday.

James is going to the conference finals for the 11th time — six with Cleveland, four with Miami. It’s his ninth time getting to this round in 10 seasons; the one miss was last season, his first in Los Angeles, when the Lakers fell apart because of injuries and missed the playoffs.

James Harden scored 30 points, Jeff Green added 13 and Russell Westbrook had 10 for Houston.

It was a rough end to a rough week for the Rockets. Westbrook exchanged heated words with a fan in the family section during the fourth quarter; NBA security asked the man, identified by ESPN as a brother of Lakers guard Rajon Rondo, to leave the game. Houston won Game 1 of the series and lost the next four. Saturday’s finale came a day after Houston forward Danuel House — who averaged 11.4 points in nine playoff games — was told to leave the bubble. An NBA investigation showed he had an unauthorized guest in his room earlier in the week, and he missed the last three games of the series.