2025 NBA PLAYOFFS West First Round: #3 LA Lakers vs #6 Minnesota Timberwolves (MIN leads 3-1)

[cgf]

At this time I’d like to circle back to that myth of “playoff Randle” so many people tricked themselves into believing. Because so many of you obsess over stats without context you thought you could Randle off two playoff runs. One where he was literally carrying a team solo and was heavily game planned against, and another run where he missed end of season with a bad ankle injury, re-aggravated that ankle in the first round, and eventually needed surgery on it after elimination.

Had to hear for a whole week about how playoff Randle will be timberwolves demise. Now we’re 5 games in and he’s averaging 22/5/4 on 50/50/80 but I haven’t seen many people admit their stat watching malpractice.

Forget his scoring, thing that has been shocking is his defense. And I’m not gonna buy it that even any Wolves fan thought he would be this good of a defender against LeBron and Luka. I don’t even think he knew that he’d be able to defend both star players this well in this series.

That's also not a complete shock. Randle has always been a good on ball defender...it's his help decisions that have always been, let's say "questionable" ...and in 2021 he was just straight up a difference maker defensively, no caveats.

[thinktank]

1. Ant
2. Lebron
3. Randle (guarding Doncic, pouring in buckets)
4. Doncic (zero defense, Wolves attacking him)
5. McDaniels
6. Reid
7. Gobert
8. Reeves

One could argue McDaniels has also been better than Doncic.

So many argued Reeves was top 3. Super false.

[NO-KG-AI]

Is LeBron the oldest player to ever seal a game by throwing away an inbound pass and commit a foul with no time left on the shot clock?

[TinmanZBoy]

I am still all in Lakers… LeBron and Luka will carry the Lakers to finish it

[Sealab2024]

There are different ways to look at it, but 2 of the next 3 are homecourt games for LAL, and they only have to win one on the road. It seems likely that happens since they haven't won on the road yet, so it's bound to happen.

if a team has a to win a game on the road to extend they series then they no longer have HCA. Lakers lost HCA when they lost in LA and never got it back when they lost both games in Minny

Which team has more home games left? LAL. Also by not having won any road games yet, they put themselves in position to win the last road game, because you almost never see a higher seed lose every road game. So the Lakers have 2 home games and a road game they should be heavily favored in.

This is stupendous.

[cgf]

I am still all in Lakers… LeBron and Luka will carry the Lakers to finish it

How are they gunna stop Ant, Juju, McD, Naz, etc.? Cause it's not like they're containing Minny and those two just need to be great for them to win. They're getting a level out of lebron that many didn't think he still had, and they're still losing because their defense just can't handle all of Minnesota's weapons.

[thinktank]

The TRAVEL on Luka should have been called. I wasn't exactly sure about that when it happened until they showed the replay which was a clear trip. Luka fell down and had to use a crucial timeout instead. Rough.

FTFY

You can’t trip someone by having them step on your foot. Luka fell and traveled. Thats what should have been called. A turnover. Not a timeout.

He fell because McDaniels was guarding him illegally. He's been doing that the whole series - it's a good strategy because the ref can't call a foul every time.

The ref can do whatever the ref wants.