(My Sportsbook) - The banged-up Houston Rockets will be playing with house money this afternoon when they meet the top-seeded Los Angeles Lakers in the deciding Game 7 of their Western Conference semifinals series.

The surprising Rockets forced the do-or-die contest with an emphatic 95-80 win in Houston on Thursday. Luis Scola stepped up with a playoff career- high 24 points alongside 12 rebounds and Aaron Brooks dropped 26 in that one, as the Rockets staved off elimination.

The series has featured back-and-forth lopsided losses with the Rockets shaking off a brutal 118-78 Game 5 blowout that tied the worst playoff loss in team history to force Game 7 back in LA on Sunday.

"For the last two days all I've heard is that we weren't going back to LA and guys in our locker room didn't believe that," Rockets head coach Rick Adelman said after the Game 6 win. "I didn't know if we were going to win the game but I knew we were going to come out and play with intensity and lay it all out there and that's what we did."

Carl Landry had 15 points and Ron Artest 14 for Houston, which despite the loss of center Yao Ming to a broken foot, continue to defy the pundits and stacked odds of knocking off the Lakers to reach the conference finals.

The Rockets have also been without star swingman Tracy McGrady since February and lost backup center Dikembe Mutombo to a career-ending injury in the first round of the playoffs.

"I think we approached the game the way we should have. We played with a lot of energy, played team basketball and did the right things and followed a game plan," said Scola. "You're going to win most of the time playing that way. Now we have to go back to LA and play the same way."

Kobe Bryant netted 32 points on 11-of-27 shooting but the Lakers started the game by missing their first eight field goals and were facing a 17-1 deficit nearly midway through the first quarter.

"We didn't start the game off the way we should have. We didn't execute right. They jumped on top and made shots like they did in Game 4 and jumped out to the big lead. They just made big plays and big shots," said Bryant.

Pau Gasol had 14 points and 11 boards while Jordan Farmar chipped in 13 points despite battling with tendinitis in his right pinky toe. LA got within two at 5:58 of the third but was never able to grab the lead, finishing 35.7 percent shooting from the floor which included a 5- for-23 showing from three-point range.

The Rockets opened the game with a furious 17-1 start with 10 points from Scola before Bryant sank a jumper for LA's first field goal with 6:21 left on the clock.

"Nobody stepped up and got a score," said Lakers head coach Phil Jackson of the team's rough start. "They were able to convert early and we made some turnovers to give them easy run-outs...and set ourselves right back on our heels again."

The Lakers are a gaudy 12-1 in home Game 7s and have won their last eight. The last and only time LA lost in a Game 7 on its home floor was in the 1969 NBA Finals, a 108-106 setback to the Boston Celtics.

"The key right now is just to win by any means necessary," Bryant. "Just win the series, get out of this one and be ready for the next one."

The Rockets, meanwhile, are 5-3 in Game 7 situations and 2-2 on the road. Since the 1977 postseason, Houston and the Indiana Pacers stand as the only two NBA teams to win a pair of Game 7s on the road.

The Lakers and Rockets have quite the playoff history, meeting seven times since 1981. LA has won four of the seven series, including the last two but Houston won the only time the teams matched up in the Western Conference finals, a 4-1 triumph in 1986.

Today's winner will move on to play the Denver Nuggets, who finished off Dallas on Wednesday night, in the Western Conference finals.