After 1,230 regular-season games, one championship game for the Emirates NBA Cup, and six Play-In Tournament games, the NBA playoffs are here. Some things — like the Boston Celtics’ position as one of the best teams in the Eastern Conference — remain the same. Others — like the franchise Luka Dončić represents — have changed.
Surely, Dončić wants to get his redemption against the Celtics after losing to them in the NBA Finals last June. But before he can get there, his Los Angeles Lakers are going to have to go through the Minnesota Timberwolves, either the Houston Rockets or Golden State Warriors, and, likely, the 68-win Oklahoma City Thunder, who posted the best point differential in NBA history. And, of course, Boston has to take care of business in the East, although I personally favor the Cleveland Cavaliers there.
Los Angeles (50-32) is a -190 favorite to oust Minnesota (49-33) at DraftKings Sportsbook, and the series is expected to be decided in more than 5.5 games (-175). In this preview, I’ll take a deep dive into both teams and give a series prediction at the end.
Lakers vs. Timberwolves preview, prediction
Early on, I thought that the Lakers were in trouble, both for this season and beyond, to the point where it was a real question whether it would be worth exploring a trade for James. Partway through December, when I penned that article, Los Angeles was just 13-11, with the league’s fifth-worst defensive rating, and LeBron James was posting some of the worst on-off numbers of his career. Things turned around a little bit in January, with Los Angeles going 9-5 and having the seventh-best defensive rating in basketball. A 128-112 win over the New York Knicks at Madison Square Garden on February 1 seemed a nice bonus for a team that suddenly found itself kind of competitive. Then came the Dončić trade.
It hasn’t been entirely smooth since the five-time All-NBA First Team honoree made his debut on February 10. Since he joined the team, the Lakers have gone 19-13 with a fairly average mark on both offense and defense. Dončić took a few games to find his groove in the purple and gold, and James missed two weeks with a groin strain. But now Dončić’s averages in Los Angeles are 28.2 points, 8.1 boards, 7.5 assists, and 1.6 steals per game on 37.9% accuracy from deep, a combination of production and efficiency that is the norm for Dončić and exceptional for virtually everyone else. The highs — including a 126-99 win over Oklahoma City on April 6 — have been incredible, and first-time head coach JJ Redick should get some Coach of the Year votes.
Timberwolves fans have bad memories of dealing with Dončić after last season’s Western Conference Finals, in which he averaged 32.4 points, 9.6 boards, 8.2 assists, and 2.2 steals per game on ludicrous 47-43-85 shooting splits as his Dallas Mavericks won in five games. This Minnesota roster looks different — Anthony Edwards is a decidedly better player than he was a season ago and Karl-Anthony Towns was dealt to the New York Knicks for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo — so it’ll hope for better results against Dončić. Any expectation of winning the series is reasonable; the Timberwolves improved nearly every month of the season, and after March 2, they posted a 17-4 record and the league’s fourth-best net rating. Edwards became the youngest player to lead the NBA in made three-pointers.
Minnesota has some decisions to make moving forward as pieces of its core age. Center Rudy Gobert, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year, is 32 years old and has taken some steps back on both sides of the ball, although he’s been excellent in the last month. Point guard Mike Conley, an instrumental piece of the run last season and a four-time Sportsmanship Award winner, saw his minutes take a hit late in the season as he bounced in and out of the starting lineup. And Randle, who’s yet to translate his impressive regular-season performance to the playoffs, has a player option that he’s likely to decline. But for now, the Timberwolves have a real shot at making it back to the conference finals for the second straight season.
Lakers vs. Timberwolves pick, best bet
The mantra in the playoffs is that the series doesn’t start until the road team wins a game. Unfortunately for Minnesota, Los Angeles posted a 31-10 record at Crypto.com Arena, the third-best mark in basketball, including a 13-4 record at home since Dončić joined the roster. The Lakers were also 21-19 against teams with better than a .500 record, two games better than the Timberwolves’ mark, and with Dončić on the team, they only lost one home game against a team that made the Western Conference postseason, a 123-116 loss to the Golden State Warriors on April 3 in which Dončić posted his 12th-worst game of the season by game score.
Of course, there’s a chance the Timberwolves steal a game in Los Angeles — they did post a 24-17 record on the road, including the league’s fifth-best net rating in such games — but I’d posit that it’s more likely the Lakers win one in Target Center first. Los Angeles’ poor road record against contenders offers confusing signals, but overall, the trend is favorable for the Lakers: several of their road losses, including both to Minnesota, came before the trade, and in back-to-back losses to the Milwaukee Bucks and Denver Nuggets in mid-March, Los Angeles was without the services of James in both games and Dončić in the latter. Now that both are healthy, the Lakers will have the best player on the floor during the series and arguably the second-best, too.
It’s not just those two, though. Jarred Vanderbilt is a defensive ace, and Los Angeles has been 2.7 points per 100 possessions better with him on the floor. Rui Hachimura is shooting 41.3% from deep. Dorian Finney-Smith is a 40-plus-percent three-point shooter and one of Dončić’s best friends. That’s not to mention Austin Reaves, who’s likely to garner Most Improved Player votes for the second time in his career.
The Timberwolves are deeper: Nickeil Alexander-Walker and Jaden McDaniels are excellent three-and-D wings, reigning Sixth Man of the Year Naz Reid flashed some scoring and playmaking chops during Gobert’s absence, and DiVincenzo and Randle found their shooting strokes late in the season. The X-factor will be whether or not Gobert can stay on the floor when the Lakers bench Jaxson Hayes and go small.
McDaniels is probably Minnesota’s best perimeter defender and he’ll likely be put on James for most of the series. In three regular-season matchups against James, McDaniels allowed him to score 13 points on five-for-nine shooting from the field and can all three of his three-point attempts, but to be fair, James’ production came in just eight minutes. In a 15-minute sample, McDaniels was somewhat more effective against Dončić. Edwards has also been an effective defender against both James and Dončić, although he’s only guarded Dončić for 14 possessions all season. Los Angeles’ most frequent defender against Edwards this season was Hachimura, but he wasn’t very good in that role, so he’d be better off against Randle or Reid, both of whom he’s stifled in larger volume.
The case for the Timberwolves is this: nobody on the Lakers is capable of stopping Edwards, and Gobert and Randle can theoretically overpower Hayes inside. But Los Angeles also has several matchup advantages: Conley is too small to guard anyone on the Lakers roster, and Gobert can be chased out to the perimeter, where he’s susceptible to the sort of back-door cut that James and Hachimura both excel at. If McDaniels guards James and Edwards marks Dončić, who does that leave on Reaves? And is there enough spacing for McDaniels, Randle, and Gobert — three relative non-shooters — to play together when Los Angeles’ small-ball five of Dončić, Reaves, James, Hachimura, and Finney-Smith takes the floor?
Both teams have questions, which is why the series will be close. But Los Angeles has just a few more answers.
