Playoff Series Preview: #6 Timberwolves vs. #3 Lakers

Anthony Edwards and the Timberwolves Look to win a Playoff series in two consecutive seasons in a star-studded matchup against Luka Dončić, LeBron James, and the Lakers.

The Minnesota Timberwolves are in the NBA Playoffs for the fourth consecutive season. After making it only once in the previous 17 seasons, the Wolves have now become an annual participant in the postseason.

In this year’s first-round matchup, the Wolves go up against a familiar foe, this time in a new locale, as the sixth-seeded Timberwolves match up against Luka Dončić, LeBron James, Austin Reaves, and the Los Angeles Lakers.

The two teams faced off four times during the regular season, but there isn’t much to take away from any of the matchups. Three of the games happened before the monstrous trade that brought Dončić to LA. In the fourth game, the Timberwolves did not have Julius Randle or Rudy Gobert, and Donte DiVincenzo just returned from an injury of his own.

It is expected to be an incredible playoff series with interesting individual matchups and storylines abound. For the Lakers, it’s an opportunity at playoff success, one that fell into their lap when the Dallas Mavericks decided to trade Dončić to them and only them in early February. For the Wolves, it’s a chance to win at least one playoff series in consecutive seasons as they continue building around their young superstar, Anthony Edwards.

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What to Watch For

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Anthony Edwards vs. Luka Dončić

One year after leading their teams to the Western Conference Finals, Edwards and Dončić face off again. Luka may be wearing a different uniform, but he still presents many of the same issues for the Wolves.

Jaden McDaniels will be the primary defender on Dončić for much of the series, but that has proven to be a matchup Luka has excelled against. Whether it be the weight and strength difference, or McDaniels’s propensity to foul, there is just something about the way Luka plays that doesn’t allow Jaden to bother Dončić like he does to other offensive stars.

For as much as has been made about the Wolves not having an option to guard Dončić, the Lakers have a similar, if not bigger, problem with how to guard Edwards. Traditionally, to slow down Ant, you either need an All-NBA caliber wing defender or a big rim protector at the rim, and the Lakers don’t have either.

As pretty much every team this season has, the Lakers will likely send two to Edwards any chance they get, making the young guard to give up the ball and forcing the rest of the Wolves roster to execute on the back-end of the play.

Edwards spoke on the keys to dealing with the different types of coverages the Lakers will send at him.

“Being ready. Jaxson Hayes may be in a high wall, he may blitz me, he may be in a drop. Just reading and reacting. And then they sub him out, Vando, they may blitz me or be heavy in the gaps. Just being able to trust my teammates. It’s kind of similar to the Phoenix series last year. They was overly doubling me and stuff and I didn’t let it bother me. Just passing the ball, letting the game come to me and finding my spots as I go.”

At the beginning of the season, Edwards did not deal well with this type of defensive coverage, struggling to find the balance between being a playmaker and being aggressive with his own shot. As of late, Ant has found much more success when teams bring two defenders, more often getting off the ball when he needs to and attacking when there is an opening.

Mike Conley gave some insight about what the team needs from Ant heading into the series with the Lakers.

“Yeah, it’s going to be a big series for Ant. He’s got to be able to grow up right in front of us and be able to handle what he’s about to experience. It’s going to be a lot of trying to get the ball out of his hands. They’re going to try to be smarter than us, they’re going to try to outwit us in a lot of different areas. He’s got to be patient, he’s got to be able to be thinking ahead of the game. LeBron does it all the time. Ant, you’ve got to start looking at the second and third layer of things. Doing it for your teammates, doing it for yourself, make the game easier for yourself. And then, as your teammates, we have to make it easier on you by knocking down shots and creating space for you and doing our part of it. If we can connect on those things, I think I’ll be fine.”

This is a series that projects to be all about offense with neither having a great defensive option for the other. Each team will try to slow down the other, but ultimately it’ll come down to which offense can outscore the other. Playoff Ant has shown to be capable of pretty much anything and the Wolves are going to need him starting Saturday in LA.

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Julius Randle Renaissance

In the wake of being traded to Minnesota for Karl-Anthony Towns just a few days before training camp, Julius Randle found himself receiving a large portion of the blame for the Timberwolves starting the season off slow. The integration was slow and inconsitent, the body language was often poor, and at times looked like it was never going to work.

In mid-Januray all of that changed. Randle started becoming more comfortable in his role. There were fewer terrible isolation possessions that ended in turnovers and more bully-ball possessions that ended with a layup or wide-open shots for others. Even despite missing the entire month of February, Randle kept the solid play going upon return, often putting up near triple-double stat lines.

After practice this week, Timberwolves head coach Chris Finch talked about how Randle and DiVincenzo have started to fit in with this team after the trade.

“I give [Randle and Divincenzo] a lot of credit for really helping turn our season around in different ways. Donte, when he finally became comfortable and locked in here into his role, gave us the shot in the arm that we really needed. He started to make shots. He played with a ton of energy, made hustle plays, momentum plays, and was like an X-factor off the bench. Julius, we’ve talked about many times, like leaning into being that playmaker role, doing a bunch of everything. So those two guys really got it kick tarted in different ways, and both of them came back from their injury playing at such a high level. It really propelled us down the stretch.

Finch went on to say he probably underestimated what those two had to deal with, especially off the floor, given the timing of the trade and how seamlessly the two fit in during the preseason.

Most importantly though, the team started winning. The Timberwolves won 22 of the last 26 games in which Randle played starting in late-January. Randle quickly went from a player that appeared to be holding the Wolves back, to one of the main drivers in turning the season around.

Julius gave some insight into his mindset heading into the playoffs after missing the end of last season with the New York Knicks.

“I’m excited. This is one of the few times, probably really the only time in my career I feel like I have a chance to really play for something. I’m excited in just my comfort level with coach, the coaching staff, with the team, with everybody. It’s special there so I’m excited.”

With Randle likely matched up with LeBron for much of the series, the Wolves are going to need far more of the second-half Julius to be successful. Going head-to-head with the greatest player of the 21st century is no small task, but Randle has shown himself to be up to the task since settling into his role in Minnesota.

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Mike Conley on Defense

Despite the up-and-down season that had many fans feeling like he was on the tail-end of his career, Mike Conley was still an integral part of this Timberwolves, starting 64 games while providing a much-needed veteran presence for a team that often struggled with volatility on the court.

While never truly regaining the pick-and-roll dominance with Gobert from a season ago, Conley still found a way to provide great value on the offensive end by being able to get the Wolves into their offense as well as fantastic outside shooting, finishing the season at 41 percent from beyond the arc while making over 47 percent since the beginning of March.

When the minutes for Conley have not been successful, it has been when there has not been a good matchup for him defensively. Conley isn’t a bad defender at this point, but he is clearly the weak point in the Timberwolves’ defense.

The Lakers specifically do not provide an easy matchup for Mike to guard. The two Laker guards, Dončić and Reaves, both have a significant size advantage over Conley and would relish the opportunity of being guarded by a smaller defender. Minnesota could try to hide Conley on Rui Hachimura and dare Los Angeles to go at that mismatch, taking the ball out of the hands of their best players in the process.

When the bench comes in, Gabe Vincent becomes the obvious player for Mike to guard, but there many not be many minutes for Vincent either with rotations shortening in the Playoffs, especially with the extra days off that come in a first-round series.

This may be a series where the 17-year veteran’s minutes will have to be limited and utilized at specific times. There may still be room to start Conley like they have most of the year, but one lever the Wolves could pull is moving DiVincenzo into the starting lineup.

Conley provides so much of what this Timberwolves team needs so finding spots for him to be successful. Throughout the season, Finch has shown immense confidence in Conley, the question now is, will he be able to rely on others if this series calls for it.

Clutch Time Efficiency

The Timberwolves’ Achilles heal this season, and really this entire era with Edwards, has been their quality of play late in close games. Despite finishing the season fourth in net rating, behind the three teams with more than 60 wins, the Wolves ranked 23rd in clutch time net rating with only the Detroit Pistons below them among top-six playoff teams.

Using Basketball Reference’s Pythagorean Wins formula, the Wolves should have been expected to win closer to 53 games instead of the 49 they ended up with. This discrepency is almost entirely due to the Wolves poor play late in close games, which obviously has an outsized impact in determining the winner of games.

The Lakers conversely outperformed their net rating where they ranked 14th on the season and 13th after Dončić joined the lineup. They are one of only two teams to win 50 or more games with a net rating of 1.5 or less with the other team being the 2018 Cleveland Cavaliers who made the NBA Finals before losing to Kevin Durant, Steph Curry, and the Golden State Warriors in what ended up being James’s final season before moving to LA.

How much this will impact the series is unclear, but there is a case to be made that the Timberwolves on paper are the better team. Until this Wolves team can prove they can make quality plays late in games, it is understandable why most experts are picking the Lakers.

Last season, the Timberwolves were able to limit the number of close games in the playoffs, often pulling away from the opponent before the final minutes of the game. That is certainly something they have the capability to do again, but against the Lakers, and their two all-time greats, the Wolves will almost certainly need to fix their clutch-time issues fast if they hope to advance to the second round.

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X-Factor

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Rudy Gobert vs. Lakers’ Smaller Lineups

The extent to which Gobert gets “played off the floor” in the playoffs has always been overstated. During his time in Minnesota, Gobert has rarely had an issue staying on the floor against spread-out teams, with any issues coming during the regular season, never in the playoffs.

Many people remember Gobert struggling to close out to Terrence Mann as he scored 39 points, including seven 3-pointers in Game 6 of a 2021 second-round series against the Utah Jazz, but forget that it was Utah’s poor perimeter defense that put Gobert in the impossible position of guarding both the paint and the corner three.

The other notable example of people believing Gobert is not a valuable postseason defender came in Game 2 of last year’s Western Conference Finals when Dončić hit the game-winning step back over an isolated Gobert. What people forget is that Rudy was great at defending in space that entire playoff run, including the possession immediately before Luka’s infamous shot.

Rudy has been invaluable for the Wolves down the stretch of the season, averaging 15.4 points and 12.5 rebounds per game in the 17 games he played after returning from injury. Minnesota went 13-4 in those games, needing every single win to clinch a spot in the playoffs.

All season, the Wolves have relied on Gobert’s rim protection as without him on the court, their defense has not been as potent. With Rudy on the court, Minnesota has a defensive rating of 109.7, which would rank second in the NBA. With him off the court, their defensive rating of 114.6, a well below average mark.

The Lakers starting center for the past few months has been Jaxson Hayes, a player type that Gobert often has success against. Hayes does not shoot from the outside and does not present the same type of lob threat that Derrick Lively III and Daniel Gafford did last year in the playoffs. If the Lakers go with a large diet of Hayes at center, that will present an outstanding opportunity for Gobert to dominate, primarily in the paint on the defensive end of the floor.

One Laker lineup that could give Gobert more issues would be their slightly smaller five-out lineup, one that replaces Hayes for Dorian Finney-Smth, who has made 36.2 percent of his 3-point attempts for his career and just shy of 40 percent this season with the Lakers.

While Rudy has shown the ability to close out to shooters and guard on the perimeter, taking him away from the rim does take away some of the value he provides on the court. Gobert could still roam off of Finney-Smith, or the other Laker big Rui Hachimura, but if Rudy is late getting back, or the Wolves’ rotations are slow, their 3-point shooting ability could become an issue for Minnesota.

Gobert talked after practice about the importance of the Timberwolves staying big when the Lakers go to their smaller lineups.

“I mean the whole point I think in the playoffs and basketball and anything is to try to force the other team to adapt to you and not the other way around. So they are obviously a very unique team, a very very good team and you know they’re very good when they play small but we’re also a big team and we also have opportunities to punish teams when they go small on both ends of the floor. So it’s going to be up to us as a team and myself to be able to allow us to play our best basketball either way.”

The best way for Rudy to combat this will come on the offensive end, specifically with offensive rebounding. Gobert has averaged 4.2 offensive rebounds per game since returning to the lineup, largely feasting on smaller lineups. The Lakers do not have the size to keep Gobert off the glass, especially if they take Hayes off the floor.

Chris Finch spoke about what he expects from Gobert in this series.

“I think we’ve been a team that traditionally leans into being big. We have to do those types of things too, the big things too. Rudy’s been dominating for a number of games now. So I feel like it’s going to continue in form for him. Yeah, absolutely, we need to have a big Rudy series for sure. No doubt about it.”

The other place for Gobert to provide offensive value is in the pick-and-roll. The Lakers will likely blitz Edwards any chance they can get, sending Rudy’s defender to double-team. When Edwards makes the “short roll” pass to Gobert, he needs to make the correct play, whether it be attacking a vacant paint or passing it out to open shooters.

If the Lakers can spread the floor, keep Gobert out of the paint, and Edwards’ effectiveness using his limited offensive game, this series may play out similarly to the Dallas series last year. If Gobert can dominate smaller lineups with his size, guard out on the perimeter when needed, and be a useful part of the Timberwolves’ offense will likely be heading to the second round.