Los Angeles Lakers: 3 Lessons from loss to Minnesota Timberwolves
By Ronald Agers
Here are three lessons from the Los Angeles Lakers loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
If you are a Los Angeles Lakers fan, you are probably feeling frustrated and angry. You feel tricked, bamboozled, led astray, cheated. Hard to blame you at this point. There are major issues with this team and the just wait until Rajon Rondo, LeBron James and Lonzo Ball gets back into the lineup together line (also read excuse…) is getting real old.
The Lakers suffered another bad loss at home losing to the Minnesota Timberwolves 120-105 despite the return of Rajon Rondo, who had been out since Christmas Day. We’ll get back to Rondo in a second. Let’s talk Lakers reality.
The Lakers lost another season series to a Western Conference opponent. With the loss, the Lakers lost the series 3-1 to a Minnesota team that is tied in the loss column with 24.
You will hear a lot of chatter speaking with “When LeBron James gets back, the Lakers will be all right!” You know, the same narrative that was used at the beginning of the season.
Here’s why that narrative makes no sense.
The Lakers have now lost the season series to the Houston Rockets, San Antonio Spurs and now Minnesota. Teams that the Lakers will fighting for playoff position at the end of the year. If these teams are all tied in the loss column at the end of the season seeds six through nine, guess who is out?
If you say the Los Angeles Lakers…gold star for you!
This is not about a team that got run out of the gym by a Golden State Warriors team that no one in the NBA can match right now. Klay Thompson being on his game, the offense rolling, no shame in this.
This game is a little different…this was a bully game! Lunch money got taken.
This game was about the Lakers getting destroyed on the backboard especially of the offensive rebound variety. The Minnesota Timberwolves had wait for it…22 rebounds. Those second chance opportunities amounted to 34 second chance points. Karl Anthony Towns basically teamed up with Taj Gibson and manhandled the Lakers over…
The Lakers were also in a giving mood, turning the ball over 20 times leading to 34 Minnesota points. Game over.
The Los Angeles Lakers never found the right combination of players to handle the physicality of the Timberwolves. It was a smaller sample size of the domination they suffered in Minneapolis a few games back. They were allowed free access at times driving to the basket with little resistance from Zubac or McGee at times.
Either Minnesota scored, got the offensive rebound and reset or just decided to dunk on people.
The Los Angeles Lakers got beat by a team very short on players. Minnesota played without Jeff Teague and Derrick Rose had to leave the game with a sore ankle. That left Jerryd Bayless a rarely used backup who lit the Lakers up for 16 points and 8 assists.
To add insult to injury, Luol Deng made an appearance in the game and produced!
Let me say that one more time…Luol Deng made a major contribution in this game. In 11 minutes, Deng scored 7 points and grabbed 3 rebounds helping the Wolves pull away.
This is a bad loss for the Los Angeles Lakers…real bad. Losses like these are the topic of conversation around game 75 when the playoffs come around. Bookmark this game. This one will be one of them.
Let’s get to it…
Lake Show Life lessons!