Somehow, the Lakers concealed the shortcoming in plain sight for months, enough to where the situation looked manageable.
That was then.
Now, in a postseason series against an athletic team with size, their lack of a big man has become a major problem. Now, as the Lakers find themselves with a two-games-to-one deficit in their first-round series against the Minnesota Timberwolves, the absence of a reliable center could be why their season comes to a premature end.
Luka Doncic was said to be feeling awful Friday night, and his play reflected it. However, an equal, if not greater, factor in the Lakers’ 116-104 loss to the Timberwolves in Game 3 was the team’s complete inability to protect the rim.
Considering how Jaden McDaniels and Anthony Edwards practically skipped to their basket Saturday night at Target Center, the Lakers might as well have replaced their free-throw lane with a red carpet.
The Timberwolves knew the Lakers couldn’t stop them, and the numbers reflected their lack of respect. They attempted 45 shots in the paint, compared with 28 for the Lakers. They scored 56 points in the paint, compared with 26 for the Lakers.
McDaniels scored 30 points, including 24 in the paint. Edwards finished with 29 points and a team-high eight assists.
“The fact is we don’t have rim protection,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “So if you give up blow-bys, we’re gonna give up something.”
The Lakers technically have a center in 7-footer Jaxson Hayes, but Redick clearly doesn’t want to play him, evidenced by how Hayes has logged nine or fewer minutes in each of the three games of this series. The nine minutes Hayes played Friday were particularly destructive, as he registered a plus/minus of minus-13.
Hayes was a backup before the Lakers sent Anthony Davis to the Dallas Mavericks as part of the trade for Doncic, and Davis’ departure shouldn’t have changed that. Hayes is who he is.
The Lakers knew this could be a problem, which is why they had a deal in place to acquire center Mark Williams from the Charlotte Hornets before the trade deadline. But Williams underwent a physical examination, the Lakers were concerned with what they saw, and the trade was rescinded.
Perhaps general manager Rob Pelinka should have gambled on the 7-foot Williams, who was healthy for the remainder of the regular season. Or perhaps Pelinka should have lined up contingencies in case the trade for Williams didn’t work out. Or perhaps he should have gathered more accurate information on the injury-prone Williams beforehand, which could have saved the Lakers time and afforded them the luxury of redirecting their efforts elsewhere. Or perhaps there was nothing he could have done, given the shortage of available big men.
None of that matters now. What’s done is done, and the season autopsy can wait until the summer. The Lakers have a series to win.
Figuring out how to do that is the job of Redick, who said he believed his team could overcome its size deficit.
“We’ve done it all year,” he said. “When we’ve been at our best, we’ve been able to be physical on the ball and not allow blow-bys and also have sort of a cover mentality, multiple effort and it was there at times tonight.”
Forward Dorian Finney-Smith shared a similar view.
“Just gotta do a better job of standing in front of the ball,” Finney-Smith said. “I feel like we were just giving up too many blow-bys, and it really ain’t had nothing to do with our size. It was just on-base defense and rotations outside of when we gotta scramble. I feel like we didn’t have the sense of urgency the whole game, and they did.”
Redick pointed to some of the other mistakes made by his team.
“I think we had two [plays] where we collected a rebound, we get backtapped, we give up a point,” he said. “Those things really, really accumulate, especially when you’re turning the ball over.”
Provided Doncic recovers from whatever made him vomit over and over in the hours leading up to the Game 3, the Lakers have two of the best players in the league in him and James. They have a dangerous No. 3 option in Austin Reaves. They have solid defenders in Finney-Smith and Jarred Vanderbilt. But they don’t have a big man, and at this moment, what they don’t have feels as important as what they do.
