The Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated from the 2025 NBA Playoffs by the Minnesota Timberwolves in just five games, ending what looked like a promising season.
The Lakers entered the series as favorites, but it was clear after Game 1 that the Timberwolves’ collective size and physicality would be too much to overcome.
Los Angeles was forced to play small-ball almost exclusively, and head coach JJ Redick later spoke about the difficulties of playing without a true center on the floor.
Following the team’s elimination, president of basketball operations Rob Pelinka emphasized he and the front office are focused on adding more size to the roster this offseason.
“I think it’s important to recognize this team was able to finish third in an incredibly tough Western Conference and you make a seismic trade at the deadline your roster and the building around it, it’s kind if like trying to build an airplane in the sky,” Pelinka said at his annual end-of-season press conference. “And now we get a chance to sort of land that plane, put it in the hangar and really figure out the parts of it that we need to retrofit and change and that’s what we’ll do. Lots of things to learn.
“I think when you make huge trade at the deadline where you trade your starting center for a point guard, of course that’s gonna create significant issues with the roster and we saw some of those play out. We know this offseason, one of our primary goals is going to be add size in our frontcourt at the center position and that’s gonna just be part of the equation. We have multiple free agents, too, obviously those questions will get answered in July and August. But we know we have a lot of work to do on the roster and it’ll look different next year, for sure.”
Pelinka added that the team was aware of the need at the trade deadline and will have more time to assess options later this offseason.
“There’s NBA rules that prohibit us from speaking to a particular transaction, but I’ll say in general it’s very clear and it was clear then when we spoke to it that this team and this roster needs more size and needs a center position,” he added. “That’s a very clear and obvious by-product of trading potentially the best big in the league to Dallas to get a point guard. Of course that’s going to open up a huge hole and I’ve said before the trade deadline and the moments up to it don’t allow you the requisite time to explore every single unturned stone to add a big to our roster. We just didn’t have the time after the Luka trade, but now we do.
“That’s the good news and clearly we’ll be very diligent, we’ll be very detailed, we’ll work hard. You got the NBA Combine coming up here in a couple weeks in Chicago that’s when a lot of the executives get together and start talks about offseason planning and roster construction. The one thing we know about the NBA is there’s always new and unexpected opportunities around the corner. That’s just the nature of this business and my focus is going to be on that and making sure that next year we have the requisite size to compete for a championship.”
It was blatantly obvious Los Angeles would struggle being so undersized against a team like Minnesota, so it’ll be interesting to see how Pelinka adds to the roster this summer.
Rob Pelinka describes center traits Lakers will target
Rob Pelinka also explained what kind of center the Lakers will prioritize adding in the offseason.
“I think in terms of center traits, it would be great to have a center that was a vertical threat, lob threat and someone that could protect the interior defensively. I think those would be keys,” Pelinka said. “But there’s multiple different types of centers that could be very effective in the league. There’s also spread centers that can protect the rim, we’ll look at those as well. I wouldn’t want to limit the archetype, but we know we need a big man.”
A rim protector to ease the burden on defense would be ideal, but a lob threat would provide Luka Doncic his preferred big man target in pick-and-roll situations.
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