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Thanks for coming, Rocket men.

Happy days aren’t necessarily here again in Lakerdom, although local fans are definitely relieved to learn there will be more days.

Overwhelming Houston without Yao Ming in Staples Center, as the Lakers did Sunday, spares them the biggest embarrassment/learning experience of all, going down as the patsies in the biggest upset in NBA history.

Of course, one win doesn’t mean they’re back. And even they may now understand they won’t stroll through the West finals, even if they’re 10-1 against Denver over two seasons (they were 5-2 against Houston over two seasons).

And if the Lakers do make the NBA Finals against Cleveland, they’ll be the underdogs.

On the other hand, this turned out to be a great series for the Lakers, in terms of self-knowledge.

As Kobe Bryant put it when he was asked what they learned about themselves:

“We’re bipolar.”

There were also important lessons in the game, like:

Trying is really important.

“The big thing is just the energy you bring,” said Coach Phil Jackson, who kept his cool while watching his team go belly-up every other game for a week, even if some people suspected he might be in suspended animation.

“There are no off-nights in the playoffs,” Jackson said. “Every night you want to compete. . . .

“We just didn’t do that in this series. We weren’t prepared from the first game.”

That was a refreshing admission after a week of denial. Before the Lakers rolled over in Game 4, they didn’t put up much of a fight in Game 1.

By Game 7, the Lakers’ world had been rocked to the point that you had to wait to see who they were, every time they went onto the floor.

A lot of good things happened for them Sunday:

* They raised their game.

It couldn’t have come at a better time -- actually it could, on April 19 when the playoffs started -- because their game needed raising.

After winning in Boston and Cleveland on Feb. 5 and 8, the Lakers came home with a big lead in the West, eased through the rest of the season and carried their lack of urgency into the Utah series, which turned out to be a warmup for their no-show in Houston in Game 4.

Showing up for Game 6 in Houston and getting their rear ends kicked anyway was another valuable experience, introducing the notion of humility, at least until they win something.

“In Game 6, at halftime [when the Lakers trailed by 16 points], we made a decision to get more aggressive, get up in passing lanes,” Bryant said.

“After that game, even though we lost that game, we understood there’s another level we can go to defensively. And that’s something we carried with us. I think because of that, you get better as a team.”

Lakers fans serenaded the Rockets with the “Na, na, na, na, hey, hey, goodbye” song.

They should have given them a standing ovation, for waking up their sleepwalking team.

* Andrew Bynum became Andrew Bynum again, or at least close.

Bynum’s 14-point, six-rebound, two-block performance was by far his best of the postseason, in which he’s twice lost his starting job.

For fans who can remember that far back, Bynum was averaging 14 and eight when he went out in February, so this shouldn’t be a total surprise.

The surprise was seeing how little support Bynum got here in recent games, but he left Sunday to a big ovation, a fan favorite once more.

“At the end of the day, he’s 7 feet tall and 300 pounds,” said Houston’s Shane Battier. “When you don’t have energy, the way we didn’t today, that’s a lot to deal with.

“He’s a young player. He’s taken a lot of grief, but he’s trying to figure it out like everybody else.”

* The Lakers showed they can, too, play that defense!

If their funneling/helping scheme doesn’t look so good when they’re funneling without helping, it was gangbusters Sunday when they held the Rockets to 37% from the floor and blocked 10 of their shots.

So, things could be a lot worse for the Lakers, and were very recently.

“In a perfect-case scenario, everybody just kind of sweeps through each playoff series and you go on and win the NBA championship,” Bryant said.

“But that’s not the reality. Last year at this time everybody was pegging us as unbeatable and we got mopped up in the Finals.

“I’d much rather be a team that’s there at the end of the Finals, not now.”

They’re halfway home, literally and figuratively.

They have eight of the 16 wins they need. And, at last, even they don’t think they’re unbeatable.

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mark.heisler@latimes.com