With the regular season wrapping up on Sunday, the Los Angeles Lakers now know they will be hosting the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first round of the 2025 NBA Playoffs.
The Lakers clinched the third seed on Friday so were able to sit back and enjoy the madness across the league in the final game, which resulted in the Timberwolves landing the No. 6 seed.
Lakers head coach JJ Redick stuck around after the loss to the Portland Trail Blazers and gave his initial thoughts on the matchup with Minnesota, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Very difficult opponent. They’ve played as well as anyone lately. I believe they’re one of four teams in the top 10 in offense and defense, so they present a lot of problems.”
The Lakers and Timberwolves split their four regular season matchups with the home team winning all four of those games. The first three were before the Lakers acquired Luka Doncic though, and then in the fourth meeting, Minnesota was without Rudy Gobert and Anthony Edwards got ejected.
With all of that being said, Redick discussed how his team and staff will approach preparing for this matchup:
“We’ve had games in the last six or seven weeks where we hadn’t played the team since AD was on the team when we didn’t have Luka. So we have a way of prepping based on previous games, previous games against Luka. We have a general idea of what their roles are, just like they have a general idea of what our roles are. It doesn’t necessarily matter that we don’t have anything on tape with both teams at full strength.”
The Lakers and Timberwolves will both get a week off before Game 1 at Crypto.com Arena, which should give them both plenty of time for preparation.
JJ Redick not satisfied with Lakers’ regular season success
Even though the Lakers won 50 games for the first time since 2020, JJ Redick is not satisfied and knows the real season begins now.
“Uh, it’s not done,” he said of his first season. “And I spent all of three and a half minutes on the flight back from Dallas just thinking about making the playoffs and thinking about the coaching profession. And I think as a coach, you’re obviously judged on regular season wins and losses and your ability to get to the playoffs. But I think the other two things that you’re really judged on are the way you’re able to handle the pressure of the playoffs, the adjustments, the in-game stuff.
“There’s still so much work that we have to do, myself, our staff. And then I think you’re also judged on the culture you create and whether or not your players and everybody in the building like coming to work.”
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