After the Wolves knocked them off in five games, the Lakers didn’t shy away from the fact that they lost to a better team.
Before the Lakers-Wolves series even began, JJ Redick said Minnesota would provide problems for L.A. and that turned out to be true.
The Lakers were eliminated in five games despite being the No. 3 seed and having homecourt advantage for the majority of those contests.
Redick did everything he could, and perhaps more than he should have, to help the Lakers beat the Wolves in this playoff matchup. He mixed up coverages on Anthony Edwards, kept one five-man lineup on the court for an entire half and even went to Maxi Kleber in desperation in Game 5.
Ultimately, it wasn’t enough and Minnesota won with relative ease.
Often, when teams lose, they focus on what they could’ve done differently to win. However, sometimes, the uncomfortable truth is that your opponent is just better.
“I think it’s hard sometimes to admit this and maybe this is hard sometimes for a coach or a player to admit this: we lost to a better team,” Redick said in his exit interview. “That’s just the reality. We did. We put ourselves in a position to win Games 3, 4 and 5 and we weren’t able to do that in the fourth quarter…Minnesota’s a great basketball team. They really are. I said that before the series. I knew that coming into this.”
Ewards did superstar things, but his supporting cast was fantastic all series long. Rudy Gobert had a monster closeout performance, Julius Randle shot 39% from 3-point range on the series and a handful of great Jaden McDaniels performances made beating the Wolves an impossibility for the Lakers.
There was no perfect balance of skill, luck and rotation optimization that would bridge the gap between the Wolves and Lakers.
Minnesota repeatedly closed out Los Angeles because they are better. We have two weeks of film now to back that up, regardless of the changing variables game to game.
It also didn’t help that the Lakers’ star players performed poorly. Luka Dončić battled through a stomach bug in Game 3 and a back injury in Game 5, but he never took control or dominated in any of these games.
“I think I didn’t play the way I should,” Luka said. “I think as a team, we didn’t play the way we could. But I think congratulations to Minnesota. They played a hell of a series. They were the better team, honestly.”
While Luka was rough, Austin Reaves was worse. He was a shell of his regular season self, averaging 16.2 points on 41.1% shooting with 5.4 rebounds and 3.6 assists, all numbers well below his normal production.
Reaves credited the Wolves for outplaying the Lakers during his exit interview and acknowledged his shortcomings.
“I really just don’t think we played good,” Reaves said. “Give credit to Minnesota. They played a really good series, but I think it came down to just us not being us. Obviously, I didn’t have the series that I wanted to have. So you can point the finger at me. I really don’t care.
“I wasn’t good enough to help us be successful and I wish I could have did more but I didn’t. I struggled, but you live and you learn and I can guarantee that I’ll get back to work this offseason and be better.”
This doesn’t take away from the Lakers regular season in which they won 50 games while navigating a franchise-altering trade with a first-year head coach at the helm.
But the better team clearly won this series and, unfortunately for the Lakers, that squad was the Wolves.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.