LOS ANGELES — For the second straight game, we saw the vision of how the Lakers want to play around Luka Doncic starting to manifest.
There is Austin Reaves as the secondary playmaker, putting up 31 points on Tuesday night and getting downhill (plus having two four-point plays). Then, with LeBron James out again, the Lakers start Marcus Smart and Rui Hachimura as defense-first players who can space the floor — and they were dialed in on the defensive end. Then the Lakers got an engaged Deandre Ayton for a night.
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And, for the second straight game, the Lakers beat a quality team, knocking off Minnesota 120-106.
The win moved the Lakers into fourth in the tight Western Conference, technically tied with the Timberwolves at 40-25, but the Lakers take the tiebreaker by sweeping the season series from Minnesota.
The way the Lakers looked against the Timberwolves, and how they played against the Knicks on Sunday, is the kind of team the Lakers want around Luka Doncic — the kind they need around him to be a threat in the playoffs. Why is it not always that smooth with LeBron on the court?
“It’s what they’re comfortable doing as basketball players…” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “For one of those guys, having scored the most points in NBA history and doing it for 23 years, is to have the ball in his hands. For another guy who’s had five First Team All NBAs — should make another First Team All NBA this year — it’s having the ball in his hands… [Austin Reaves] ascending to an All-Star level. But the human struggle to want what you want while also having the emotional maturity and recognition that you got somebody next to you, it hasn’t been as clean.”
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It was clean on Tuesday night, although it wasn’t always pretty.
Having Luka Doncic put up a 31-point triple-double — 11 rebounds and assists — helps.
It also helped that the Timberwolves were just ice cold shooting the ball — give the Lakers defense some credit, but the Timberwolves also just missed shots they normally knock down. For the night, Anthony Edwards was 2-of-15, and made his first 3-pointer with 4:18 left in the third quarter, after missing his first nine.
But this is the second straight game in which a team with a good offense and an elite shot creator running the show has struggled against the Lakers.
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“You can talk about schemes and rotation and low man, all that stuff, our guys have been a lot better just guarding the basketball…” Redick said of the last couple of games. “And when we were in rotation, we did a really good job. I thought, our attention to detail on the [Julius] Randle and Edwards coverage was really good. DA (Deandre Ayton) was fantastic tonight on that end.”
This game was not pretty early.
The Lakers started 0-of-8 from the floor and that theme continued for the first 12 minutes — Luka Doncic and Anthony Edwards were 3-of-18 combined. It led to a low-scoring first quarter — 21-16 Timberwolves — in which Minnesota shot better at just 34.8%. The Lakers didn’t hit a 3-pointer until Luka Doncic did with six minutes left in the first half.
“I think I think we started the game slow and sluggish,” Timberwolves coach Chris Finch said. “That was my concern against the defense that they load so heavily. Wanted more pace early, wanted more quicker decision making early. And we just fell into a lot of iso basketball and then just everything was a beat late. We’re very out of rhythm right now offensively, and we’ve gotta fix that.”
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Both teams shooting improved to decent in the second half, but neither side got hot or created much separation. A Rui Hachimura 3-pointer in the final five seconds tied the game up at 45-45 at the half.
That dynamic started to change in the third, when the Lakers started 6-of-10 and the Timberwolves remained ice cold, not hitting a bucket for the first six minutes of the half. Suddenly, the Lakers were up double digits, and that stretched to 19 on an uncontested Luke Kennard driving layup.
From there, Minnesota could never hit enough shots in a row to make it a game.
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