The Los Angeles Lakers entered last season’s playoffs with fringe championship aspirations after pulling off one of the most shocking trades in NBA history at the trade deadline. The dream came crashing to an end quickly with a five-game defeat to the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round.
Both teams re-grouped over the offseason and will now face off for the first time in 2025-26 when the Timberwolves travel to Crypto.com Arena for a 10 p.m. ET date against the Lakers.
Minnesota is a 2.5-point favorite at DraftKings Sportsbook (-130 on the Moneyline), and the point total is set to 225.5. Los Angeles is +110 on the Moneyline. Below, I’ll break down this playoff rematch and offer a prediction.
Minnesota Timberwolves at Los Angeles Lakers preview, prediction
The Timberwolves are 1-0 after a thrilling win over the Portland Trail Blazers in their season opener. Anthony Edwards scored 41 points, including a go-ahead three with just over a minute left and a long two in the waning seconds to ice the game. In general, Minnesota’s shooters were on, going 15-for-30 (50.0%) from long range, but they also lost the turnover battle and allowed Trail Blazers wing Jerami Grant to drop 29 points on 10-for-14 shooting, so it wasn’t a perfect performance, especially against a team that didn’t make the playoffs last season.
Regardless, the Timberwolves should feel a lot more confident entering tonight’s game than the Lakers, whose 10-point defeat to the Golden State Warriors really wasn’t as close as the final score made it seem. Los Angeles got all it could ask for from Luka Dončić — 43 points, 12 rebounds, and nine assists — and Austin Reaves chipped in with a 26-point, nine-assist, two-steal line, but the moves the Lakers made to shore up their depth in the offseason didn’t seem to make a huge difference in the season opener. Worse still, Dončić and Reaves both appeared banged up after the game, though neither is on the injury report for tonight’s contest.
Timberwolves at Lakers pick, best bet
Minnesota’s first round win last May ultimately came down to interior play. In the series, Los Angeles center Jaxson Hayes was so unplayable that J.J. Redick turned to Rui Hachimura at center for the entirety of Game 5, and throughout the series, the Timberwolves averaged 4.8 more rebounds per game and 15.2 more points in the paint than the Lakers did. While Los Angeles actually shot a higher percentage at the rim than Minnesota in that series, the Timberwolves attempted the most restricted area shots of any first round participant and also launched the third-most corner threes, while the Lakers had among the fewest rim tries. Jaden McDaniels and Rudy Gobert proved to be a devastating defensive tandem.
Los Angeles sought to remedy some of that weakness in the offseason, signing former Portland center Deandre Ayton once he unexpectedly became available on the buyout market and also adding Jake LaRavia in free agency after a season in which he was worth 1.5 defensive win shares across stints with the Memphis Grizzlies and Sacramento Kings. The results didn’t look great in the first game, though: Golden State out-rebounded the Lakers, and Ayton only managed to contest three shots at the rim. They did score 26 more points in the paint than the Warriors, but Golden State scored more second-chance points.
Minnesota’s strategy should be to stop everyone except Dončić: in the playoff series, he averaged 30.2 points, 7.0 rebounds, and 5.8 assists per game on respectable 45-35-89 shooting splits, but the rest of his team didn’t show up and he was clearly labored on defense because of it. After slimming down over the summer, his defense looked good against Golden State, but he has a long way to go after allowing McDaniels to score 35 points on 15-for-24 shooting and Edwards to add 39 on 15-for-31 accuracy. If other Los Angeles players — such as Rui Hachimura, who attempted just six shots, and Jarred Vanderbilt, who missed all four of his shots last night — chip in, Dončić will be able to conserve some of his energy on offense. Hachimura and Marcus Smart are particularly important in helping deter drives, since Ayton has never been an elite rim protector. It might be tricky — Smart is 31 and has played just 54 games across his last two seasons because of a slew of injuries, and Julius Randle out-weighs Hachimura by 20 pounds.
In their season-opening win, the Timberwolves used Randle as a jumbo playmaker, as he dished out a team-high six assists. It was a strategy that worked in the postseason, when he averaged 8.7 potential assists per game, the second-most on the team, the 24th-most among all playoff participants, and a slight uptick from his 8.3 mark during the regular season. On Tuesday, the Lakers struggled to contain Draymond Green, who dished out a team-high nine assists and tied with Jimmy Butler III for a game-leading +20 plus-minus, and while Minnesota doesn’t have Stephen Curry to pass it to like Green does, Edwards and Donte DiVincenzo do a pretty good impression. The Timberwolves might not make half of their threes again, but they’re still a bad matchup for this Los Angeles team that desperately needs LeBron James’ size and playmaking.
