LOS ANGELES — The Lakers entered their first-round playoff series against the Minnesota Timberwolves with a specific game plan for how to defend Anthony Edwards.
And it’s worked through the first two games of the best-of-seven series, which is tied 1-1 after the Lakers’ Game 2 win on Tuesday night, with the All-NBA guard admitting that how the Lakers have defended him has been confusing.
“I don’t know – it seemed like every time I caught the ball, [the Lakers] kind of went into a zone in a sense,” Edwards responded when asked about the Timberwolves’ lack of ball and player movement in Game 2. “It was kind of confusing at times, but we’ll watch film and be ready.”
The Timberwolves had 14 assists and 13 turnovers in Game 2, shooting 38% from the floor and 20% from 3-point range, compared to 29 assists and 10 turnovers in Game 1, when they shot 51.2% overall and a blistering 21 for 42 from behind the arc.
Edwards didn’t record an assist and had a pair of turnovers in Game 2 after finishing with nine assists and one turnover in Game 1.
The third-seeded Lakers, who can regain home-court advantage by winning either Game 3 (Friday) or Game 4 (Sunday) in Minnesota, say they didn’t alter anything between the first two games.
“We did the same game plan,” Luka Doncic said of the Lakers’ defensive strategy. “We didn’t really change much. It was just a question of if we were gonna be more physical or not. And we were for 48 minutes. We learned from the last game. And we just stuck to it.”
Similar to their Feb. 27 regular-season matchup, the Lakers have been showing early help on Edwards’ isolations from the wings by bringing a help defender over to the strong-side block to deter his drives – a tactic the Lakers also deployed against fellow All-NBA guards Shai Gilgeous-Alexander (Oklahoma City) and Jalen Brunson (New York).
The general purpose of this help is to ensure Edwards’ driving lanes are clogged with a defender to prevent him from getting to the rim if he drives by his primary defender.
The sixth-seeded Timberwolves sometimes countered the Lakers’ strategy in Game 1 by having Edwards attack from the middle of the floor, making it more difficult to show that early help if a Minnesota player was one pass away from Edwards or in the strong-side corner.
In Game 2, the Lakers did a better job of being in the gaps when Edwards looked to drive from the middle of the floor, in addition to the early help they showed when he operated from the wings.
Through the first two games of the series, Edwards is averaging 23.5 points (40.9% shooting – 35.3% from 3-point range) and 4.5 assists compared to the 27.6 points (44.7% shooting – 39.5% from deep) and 4.5 assists he averaged during the regular season.
“We get to watch film and see so many things that they did – to try to force us into more isos and try to force us into having [a] slower the game,” Minnesota center Rudy Gobert said. “We’ll be better in Game 3. It felt like they weren’t helping on my rolls when I was low in the dunker spot. But sometimes you gotta watch film and see exactly what’s happening.”
