The Los Angeles Lakers put out another ugly showing against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night, finishing with a 97-87 final score in a game that was out of L.A.’s control for nearly the entirety of the night. Anthony Davis was the only Laker to put together a standout performance, but it wasn’t enough to overcome LeBron James’ absence and a host of other issues.
The biggest of these issues for the Lakers was the turnover battle. L.A. coughed up possession 22 times throughout the game, compared to only 14 for the Timberwolves. The Lakers scored 12 points off of Minnesota’s mistakes, while the Timberwolves scored a whopping 27 points. And that 15-point swing more than covers the final outcome.
Davis gave his thoughts on the turnover margin and the Lakers’ carelessness with the ball, emphasizing that wins are not going to come easy with that type of performance, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“We had 22 turnovers. You can’t expect to win the game like that. We obviously need to take care of the basketball, that’s 22 plays where we didn’t get a shot on goal. I think we did enough defensively, just didn’t do enough offensively. Turnovers played a big factor. Their a team who wants to pressure and create turnovers and we had 11 in the first quarter. We were able to combat that and give ourselves a chance to win, cut it to six and five. But overall, it’s tough to win a basketball game when you have 22 turnovers.”
However, Davis doesn’t see this as a long-term issue, more one that seems to plague them on individual games:
“I don’t think it’s a concern. We’ve been really good taking care of the basketball. Just turned it over tonight.”
Turnovers are actually one of the few areas the Lakers have been strong in this season. They rank sixth in the NBA in fewest turnovers per game and rank 12th in opponent points off of turnovers. So they know full well that even when they don’t turn the ball over, they aren’t winning games with any regularity.
That means that a 22-turnover night is a death sentence for them when it comes to wins and losses. And another outing scoring less than 95 points should show exactly how detrimental turnovers can be.
JJ Redick: Lakers killed by turnovers
Lakers head coach JJ Redick was afforded a rare break to help reset the team and get them ready for another tough stretch of games.
The Lakers got several days off due to the Emirates NBA Cup, though Redick opted to use the time to let his players heal as several of them are banged up. While the extra rest certainly had to do some good, it didn’t help Los Angeles offensively as they were defeated by the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night.
Both teams weren’t particularly sharp and some of that can probably be attributed to the extended layoff, though the Lakers arguably had their best defensive game of the 2024-25 season. However, they were extremely careless with the basketball as they committed 22 turnovers compared to just 14 for Minnesota.
After the loss, Redick admitted that the turnovers ruined the team’s chances of winning the game.
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