Lakers guard Bronny James drives to the basket under pressure from Trail Blazers forward Kris Murray during Sunday’s game in Portland, Ore. (Howard Lao / Associated Press)
The Lakers sat in their locker room long after their loss to Portland on Sunday afternoon, their eyes glued to the television mounted on the wall.
They’d done what they could, put themselves in a position through 81 games to have given themselves the No. 3 seed in the West playoffs.
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And on the 82nd game, they rested.
The Lakers wrapped their regular season Sunday in Portland with not much more to do than sit and wait, and boy, did the Lakers sit and did they wait.
And as the Clippers pulled away in the final moments of their win against the Warriors in Golden State, they finally knew where their road to their championship goal would begin.
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In Minnesota.
“Better pack a coat,” Jordan Goodwin said.
On Sunday, LeBron James and Luka Doncic didn’t travel with the team to Portland. Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura, Jaxson Hayes, Dorian Finney-Smith, Gabe Vincent and Jared Vanderbilt didn’t play. The rest of the roster fell to Portland 109-81, while the team waited for games around the NBA to determine who they’d play in the first round of the playoffs.
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Postgame, they found it was the Timberwolves.
“It’s a very difficult opponent,” coach JJ Redick said. “They’ve played as well as anyone lately and believe they’re one of four teams in the top 10 in offense and defense [rating]. So they present a lot of problems.”
The teams last met in the postseason during the 2004 Western Conference Finals.
For the Lakers, it’s uncharted territory in James’ tenure with the team, the Lakers entering the playoffs with Game 1 at Crypto.com Arena for the first time since the 2012 playoffs. It gave the team the luxury to prioritize rest and recovery for most of its lineup, with Goodwin being the only regular rotation player to play against the Trail Blazers.
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Read more: LeBron James’ health briefly a concern as Lakers beat Rockets to clinch No. 3 seed
Dalton Knecht led the Lakers with 27 points in the final regular-season game of his rookie season.
In addition to the rest, the time locked into their postseason slot gave the Lakers a chance to map out their playoff plans.
“We spent more time on it yesterday, finalizing it. And that’s a conversation with players. That’s a conversation with our coaching staff. That’s a conversation with our performance staff. … We factored in all of those things,” Redick said pregame. “And it is about getting guys recovery, it is about getting guys rest, but it also is about conditioning and staying sharp and having enough exposure to live action. So there’s physical days, there’s mental days. When do you introduce your opponent? All of that stuff. So we’ve talked through that for the last four days now.”
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The plan is for the Lakers to return to the practice court late Tuesday afternoon, with workouts scheduled for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday.
“It’s not necessarily gonna be everything at once this week,” Redick said. “We’ll have to slow drip, and I think that’s the approach that I think is gonna work best for our group.”
The Lakers will enter the postseason without converting either Trey Jemison III or Christian Koloko to standard contracts, making the centers ineligible for the playoffs.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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