Lakers not overreacting to Game 1 blowout loss to Timberwolves
LOS ANGELES — Even by his standards, Lakers coach JJ Redick’s pregame news conference ahead of his team’s Game 1 matchup of their best-of-seven first-round playoff series against the Minnesota Timberwolves carried an even more serious tone than usual.
The typically loquacious Redick wasn’t nearly as long-winded with his answers to media members. His responses weren’t as detailed. He sometimes spoke in fragmented sentences. His leg shaking seemed even more intense than usual as he fielded questions.
Whether it was pregame jitters ahead of his first playoff game as a coach, or simply an eagerness for Saturday’s matchup to tip off after a week-long build-up, Redick’s pregame presser carried a different feeling than most.
But even in the immediate aftermath of the Lakers’ Game 1 blowout loss to the Timberwolves, the postgame tenor shifted significantly from pregame.
Redick’s answers were more thorough and detailed. He even acknowledged that the Lakers expected the Timberwolves to trap and blitz Luka Doncic (37 points) more, which didn’t come to fruition, limiting four-on-three opportunities for the Lakers and a factor in Doncic only recording one assist.
His demeanor was seemingly more settled despite the obvious disappointment – a reflection of how his team digested the Timberwolves taking homecourt advantage away from the Lakers in the series, with Game 2 scheduled for Tuesday night in L.A.
“The mood (in the locker room) was you don’t win or lose (a playoff series in) one game,” Austin Reaves said. “We have an opportunity to even up the series on our homecourt and then go compete for two games on their homecourt.
“You never lose the (series) after the first game, second game, third game, to be honest. You’ve gotta get beat four times, you’ve gotta win four times. So, that’s the outlook. We know we didn’t play very well. We didn’t play to our standards. And we’ll get better.”
LeBron James added: “They took homecourt from us as far as the series. But we have an opportunity to even the series on Tuesday. And we have to play a much better game than we did (on Saturday). Control the controllables, and if we do that, we’re gonna give ourselves a much better chance to win than we did.”
There were several factors the Lakers mentioned for why the Timberwolves controlled most of Saturday’s matchup, including outscoring the Lakers 76-41 from late in the first quarter to late in the third to turn an early Lakers’ 20-12 lead into an 88-61 lead for Minnesota.
There were the Timberwolves’ franchise playoff-record 21 3-pointers.
Minnesota also scored 23 second-chance points and had 25 fastbreak points.
But a common talking point was that the Lakers did not match the Timberwolves’ physicality during significant stretches of the game.
“This Minnesota team, they’re gonna be physical,” James said. “That’s what they bring to the table. Maybe it took us one playoff game to now get a feel for it and know what type of intensity, the type of physicality, is gonna be brought to the game. But that’s just the way they play. So we should be more than prepared for that on Tuesday night.”
A point of encouragement for the Lakers: them trimming their deficit to 12 multiple times once they picked up their physicality.
“Sometimes it takes a quarter, two quarters, full game to get used to playoff basketball once again,” James said. “So it shouldn’t be no surprise (on) Tuesday.”