The Los Angeles Lakers looked primed to make a playoff run with the addition of Luka Doncic this season via trade.
After all, Doncic led the Dallas Mavericks to the NBA Finals a year ago and beat the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference finals to get there. Doncic couldn’t repeat that success with the Lakers as the team bowed out in the quarterfinals 4–1 to the Wolves.
Lakers head coach J.J. Redick doesn’t want to see that again. He laid out a play on Thursday to turn things around for 2025-2026 on the heels of Tuesday’s 103–96 defeat.
Los Angeles went 50–32 and earned the No. 3 seed for the Western Conference playoffs. Minnesota finished close behind at 49–33 and earned the No. 6 seed. The Lakers and Wolves split their regular-season series 2–2.
Minnesota primarily exchanged Karl-Anthony Towns for Julius Randle with the New York Knicks before the season, and the Wolves finished seven games below last season’s regular-season finish. For the five-game series in the playoffs against the Lakers, the Wolves looked more like the team that bounced the Phoenix Suns and Denver Nuggets in last year’s playoffs.
“Maybe this is hard sometimes for a coach or a player to admit this: We lost to a better team,” Redick said. “That’s just the reality. We did.”
Wolves star shooting guard Anthony Edwards averaged 26.8 points, 6.2 assists, and 8.4 rebounds per game for the series as he came up with big plays throughout. Randle caused trouble for his former team with 22.6 points, 5.2 rebounds, and 4.4 assists per game. He played for the Lakers between 2014 and 2018.
In addition, the Wolves owned the fourth quarter against the Lakers. That even included the Wolves’ only loss of the series, 94–85, in Game 2, when the Wolves outscored the Lakers 20–13.
Now, the Lakers head toward a time of uncertainty. LeBron James, 40, could retire after the season or play for a league-record 23rd season. James immediately faced that question after the season-ending loss to the Wolves.
“I don’t know. I don’t have an answer to that,” James told reporters on Wednesday. “Something I’ll sit down with my family, my wife, and my support group and just kind of talk through it and see what happens. Just have a conversation with myself on how long I want to continue to play.”
Lakers general manager Rob Pelinka is fully aware that what the team looks like in 2025–2026 will play a role in James’s decision. James also has to consider his son, Bronny, being in the Lakers organization and the investment of the Doncic trade.
“I think LeBron’s going to have high expectations for the roster,” Pelinka said. “And we’re going to do everything we can to meet those. But I also know that whatever it is, he’s still going to give his 110 percent every night, whether that’s scoring, assisting, defending, rebounding, leading.”
“We know that’s always going to be 100 percent, and that never wavers,” Pelinka added.
One of those offseason priorities could be finding a big man after sending center Anthony Davis to the Mavericks in the Doncic trade. Lakers center Jaxson Hayes came up short against the Wolves with 6.8 points and 4.8 rebounds per game, and neither he nor the rest of the Lakers could slow down Wolves center Rudy Gobert, who averaged a double-double of 12 points and 10.9 rebounds for the series.
“I think when you make a huge trade at the deadline where you trade your starting center for a point guard, of course, that’s going to create significant issues with the roster, and we saw some of those play out,” Pelinka said. “We know this offseason, one of our primary goals is going to be to add size in our frontcourt at the center position.”
