The Los Angeles Lakers had their season ended by the Minnesota Timberwolves on Wednesday night, suffering a humbling 103–96 defeat on their home court in Game 5 of their first-round playoff series.
Needless to say, fans were disappointed with the team’s performance, and one area in particular stood out to most. Bill Simmons, who was in attendance at the game, succinctly summed up the Lakers’ deficiencies in a postgame tweet, indicating it was the lack of effort, particularly on the glass, that was L.A.’s undoing.
akers couldn’t get rebounds was b/c nobody on the Lakers was actually trying to get rebounds. Usually when you can’t get rebounds, you move under the basket where the rebounds are. Or you box people out and then try to get the rebounds,” wrote Simmons on X in the aftermath of the loss.
The reality of the situation is that the Lakers simply did not have an answer for Rudy Gobert, who had arguably the greatest playoff outing of his career in Wednesday’s Game 5. The Frenchman was a force in the paint, racking up a career playoff-high of 27 points to go with 24 rebounds. Los Angeles as a team had fewer offensive rebounds (8) than Gobert (9) in the game.
Despite their ineffective strategy on the glass, the Lakers opted to continue rolling with a smaller lineup consisting of Austin Reaves, Luka Doncic, LeBron James, Rui Hachimura and Dorian Finney-Smith throughout the night. Max Kleber and Jarred Vanderbilt played just five and 19 minutes, respectively, while other big men such as Jaxson Hayes and Alex Len didn’t see the floor at all. Whether or not they’d be a better matchup against Gobert remains to be seen, but J.J. Redick didn’t make any adjustments when it came to solving their woes in the paint.
Simmons made clear that it wasn’t just a matchup issue, however, pointing out how nobody on the team seemed interested in competing for rebounds or even boxing out their opponents.
