3 ways the Lakers can improve their offense against the Wolves

The Lakers have not yet fully cracked the code of the Timberwolves defense through two games. Here are three things they can do that can help them break through.

Before the Lakers first round series against the Wolves started, head coach JJ Redick qualified how good their opponent would be by noting that Minnesota was one of just four teams this season who boasted a top-10 ranking in both offensive and defensive efficiency.

This is the sort of team that can cause a multitude of problems by tilting you on both sides of the ball, stressing you to the extent where, in a pursuit of beating back too many things, you spread yourself too thin and ultimately do nothing effectively enough to actually beat them.

If you put a gun to Redick’s head, however, I’d guess JJ would have told you his biggest concerns were with Minnesota’s sixth-ranked defense.

And for good reason.

The Wolves are uniquely qualified to go toe-to-toe defensively with the Lakers three best offensive players, with Julius Randle (LeBron), Jayden McDaniels (Luka) and Anthony Edwards (Austin Reaves) presenting specific physical challenges to bother and negatively impact their direct matchup.

Further, Minnesota’s team-wide combination of mentality, size, length, physicality, athleticism, range, and rim protection is a difficult nut to crack. While there are ways to make them work, their collective cohesiveness and ability to both hold up individually and cover for each other is the type of formula that can wear you down over the course of a series.

And through two games, we’ve seen exactly how formidable the Wolves’ defense can be. They’ve held the Lakers to 189 total points through two games, leveraging all of those aforementioned physical tools and attack mentality to make the Lakers’ lives difficult on that end of the floor.

So, even though the Lakers were able to snare a win in Game 2 to even the series, they did so while scoring just 94 points. If they’re going to seize back home court, they’ll need to be better on offense and give their own defense a bit more breathing room vs. a team returning to the comforts of their own arena.

The good news is that there are inroads for the Lakers to make. It won’t be easy, and the Wolves will fight them for every inch of real estate, but there’s a reason the Lakers were favored coming into this series despite some of the athletic advantages Minnesota possesses — the Lakers have some advantages of their own to work towards.

With that, here are three things the Lakers can look to improve upon offensively heading into Game 3 and beyond...

Get into the offense faster

One way to slow an offense down is to literally make the play at a slower pace and force possessions deeper into the shot clock. This creates urgency and puts the offense in situations where they’re not taking as good a shot as they’d like.

Through two games, the Lakers are playing deeper into the shot clock more frequently than they did during the regular season, with 13.3% of their shots being taken with 7-4 seconds left on the shot clock and 12.7% of their shots coming with 4-0 seconds remaining. Compare these numbers to 10.9% and 10.3%, respectively, and that’s roughly 5% more possessions going into the final seven seconds of the shot clock.

This may not seem like a lot, but with fewer possessions happening per game to begin the series, that sort of increase is a larger piece of the possessions pie.

The Lakers, then, must sort out ways to get into their offense faster, giving themselves more opportunities to go deeper into their offensive progressions on set plays or a chance to execute multiple screen actions in order to cycle into the best possible matchups against Minnesota’s switching schemes.

The Lakers also must move with more pace and urgency at the beginning of possessions, running harder to get into their proper spacing, filling the corners and/or getting into their proper alignments. That starts with pushing the ball off misses and hunting transition chances as much as possible.

But even when inbounding the ball off Minnesota makes, they must be diligent against the Wolves’ ball pressure and not be so intent on walking the ball up.

Target the right matchups (in the right ways)

Minnesota does not have a lot of weak links defensively and in some of their lineups, there may not be a single defender looked upon as a poor individual defender. This has too often led to them taking broad strategies when attacking switches, mostly looking to isolate the Wolves’ bigger defenders with attacks off the dribble.

While that’s a reasonable strategy, I think the team would be better off being more selective in who they target and, even more so, in how they attack those players when they do get the switch.

For example, it has been very clear that Luka has tried to get Rudy Gobert into isolation so he can drive at him to either get himself a good shot going downhill, draw a foul or attract enough help to create a kickout pass to a teammate for an open three. Luka has done this decently, but Gobert has also begun to play Luka for the drive and has ended up doing a fairly decent job of staying attached in ways that has not led to enough consistently efficient offense for the Lakers.

I am by no means suggesting that Luka abandon trying to get Gobert on switches — I believe there are benefits to having the Wolves’ best shot blocker on an island 25 feet away from the basket while the rest of their team goes into high alert as helpers.

That said, I do think Luka can continue to vary his switch-hunting, including targeting Naz Reid and Julius Randle. In Game 2, Dončić had multiple good drives vs. Randle in space after switches, getting to the rim to finish on more than one occasion.

For LeBron, while targeting Gobert, Julius Randle or Naz Reid are okay options, I think he should be mixing in jumpers in those situations, a shot he did well to take and make early in Game 2.

But, ultimately, I’d much rather see LeBron get the majority of his attacks against smaller players via post-ups from the mid and low block, using his strength and variety of fadeaway jumpers, drop steps and quick spins to the rim to try to generate offense for his team. Even if these post-ups come against Edwards, there’s a benefit of potentially drawing fouls or simply using this approach to help sap his legs and potentially impact Ant’s offense.

And when it comes to Austin, I think the approach is two-fold. First, I think the Lakers should be actively trying to get Edwards off him as frequently as possible. They should look to force a switch as frequently as possible, with nearly every other defender on the court being a better option for Austin to play against.

Second, I think Austin needs to understand that he should be looking drive first, leveraging his big-guard power drive game against Nickeil Alexander-Walker, his shifty attacking style against Donte DiVincenzo and his speed dribble attack against Gobert and Reid.

Austin has not yet found his rhythm as a jump shooter but he can use the drive to find a flow into the game, draw fouls and, ultimately, get the defense sagging off him some to better set up his jumper for when it does start to fall.

More three-man actions

The Lakers, though, cannot simply rely on beating switches to generate advantages, particularly when it is clear that Minnesota will fight to avoid switches that can expose them to mismatches that can allow the Lakers to dictate the terms of engagement.

So, the Lakers must find functional ways to create good looks and that means using more of their three-man actions within their offensive sets. These plays get the Wolves into motion more often and allow the Lakers to use their smarts, ball movement, and floor spacing to create the types of open shots that can lead to efficient scoring.

For example, here is a pet action the Lakers run out of their Horns alignment with Austin, Luka and LeBron in the middle of the frame:

Those familiar with the Lakers recognize this as one of their pet plays. An Austin entry to Luka leads to a back-cut by Austin off a LeBron screen at the elbow. As both Bron and Austin’s defenders sag into the paint to protect against the cut, LeBron pops out above the arc where Luka hits him for a quick catch-and-shoot three that Bron buries.

Here’s another three-man action, this time with an Austin entry to Luka with Austin then clearing to the right wing to set up a wide pin-down screen for LeBron from DFS. When DFS goes to set the screen for LeBron, however, he slips it and Luka promptly hits him on the dive.

DFS then swings to the corner to Gabe, who moves it up to the hash to Austin, who swings it again back to Luka for the open three that he knocks down.

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In the race to four wins, NBA playoff basketball is a war of attrition. Teams grind away at both real and perceived weaknesses, poking and prodding their way to advantages that their opponent hopes they can respond to. Teams try to exhaust the things that work and eliminate the things that don’t.

Each subsequent game, then, offers a chance to reinforce and rebuke all at the same time, a constant attempt to wrong-foot your opponent into a haze of confusion and mis-execution that costs them time. There’s a maximum of seven of these games, and the longer your opponent is in the dark, the more chance you have of finding the light of advancement first.

As the Lakers head to Minneapolis for Game 3, they will need to lean into some of the things that they have shown can work in order to give themselves more cushion offensively. And if they do that successfully, they may just retake control in this series.

You can follow Darius on BlueSky at @forumbluegold.