Lights, camera … freeze?
What was that?
Seriously, what was that?
After a blockbuster trade that changed the trajectory of the entire league, after a 50-win regular season that restored the faith of their despondent fan base, the Lakers were outmuscled, outshot and pretty much out-everythinged in a 117-95 defeat to the underdog Timberwolves on Saturday in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series.
Goodbye, momentum.
Goodbye, home-court advantage.
The Lakers trailed by as many as 27 points, their performance at Crypto.com Arena so shameful that even one of the worst coaches in franchise history felt emboldened enough to criticize their current sideline leader.
“Coach JJ Redick did a great job all season but he didn’t do a good job for Game 1,” Magic Johnson posted on X. “The Lakers stood around on offense, played too much one-on-one basketball, and he didn’t make any necessary adjustments.”
Johnson knows something about the inability to make necessary adjustments, as he was just 5-11 when he received his shot on the bench.
Redick looked as if he might stiffen under the postseason spotlight, the rookie coach uncharacteristically a man of few words and no smiles in his pregame news conference. And in the critical moments of the game, there was nothing Redick could do to counter the Timberwolves. The visitors opened the second quarter with a 26-6 run to take control of the game and scored the first 11 points of the second half to move the game out of the Lakers’ reach.
“We were mentally ready,” Redick said. “I thought our spirit was right. I thought even when they made runs, our huddle was great. The communication was great. I’m not sure physically we were ready, if that makes sense. And, really, when they started playing with a lot of thrust and physicality, we just didn’t respond to meet that.”
In other words, his team wasn’t ready.
The Lakers weren’t ready even though they knew about the Timberwolves’ size and the matchup problems it could produce.
They scored fewer than 100 points in only eight games in the regular season, and two of those games were against the Timberwolves, against whom they were 2-2 before Saturday.
“You know this Minnesota team, they’re gonna be physical,” forward LeBron James said. “That’s what they bring to the table.”
The Timberwolves finished with a 25-6 edge in fast-break points and a 44-32 edge in points in the paint, with forward Jaden McDaniels scoring a team-high 25 points and center Naz Reid adding 23.
“They just played a lot better than us, a lot harder than us, and they did all the things that we wanted to do,” Lakers guard Austin Reaves said.
Forward Jarred Vanderbilt called the deflating loss “a wake-up call,” but shouldn’t the Lakers have known what was coming, especially in a competitive Western Conference in which only two victories separated the third seed from the eighth seed?
The 40-year-old James was predictably calm.
“Sometimes it takes a quarter, two quarters, a full game to get used to playoff basketball once again,” said James, who finished with 19 points after being shut out in the first quarter.
Nonetheless, James acknowledged a chance in the dynamics of the best-of-seven series.
“They took home court from us tonight, as far as the series,” he said. “But we have an opportunity to even the series on Tuesday [in Game 2]. We have to play a much better game than we did today. We have to control the controlables, and if we do that, we’re gonna give ourselves a much better chance than we did.”
The Lakers can, and should, still win this series. The Timberwolves won’t make half of their threes in every game, as they did on Saturday. Reid won’t make six of his nine shots from behind the arc in every game, as he did on Saturday.
But the road to the Western Conference finals suddenly doesn’t look as wide open as it once did, and the Lakers’ negligence in Game 1 is threatening to waste one of only a handful of remaining chances to take advantage of having James on the team.
