The Los Angeles Lakers hosted the Minnesota Timberwolves in the first game of the Play-In Tournament on Tuesday night, looking to advance to the postseason as the Western Conference’s No. 7 seed.
The Timberwolves were shorthanded in this one, playing without injured players Jaden McDaniels and Naz Reid as well as the suspended Rudy Gobert. Although it wasn’t pretty, the Lakers eventually took care of business with a 108-102 overtime victory to set up a first-round matchup with the Memphis Grizzlies starting on Sunday.
L.A. began the game with some rough shooting, although they were dominating the offensive glass to earn some extra possessions. Still though, Kyle Anderson and Karl-Anthony Towns knocked down early 3-pointers to give the Timberwolves a 7-2 lead.
After starting off 0-for-4 from deep as a team, Rui Hachimura finally hit one for the Lakers. He then drove for a layup to cut their deficit to 18-17.
Taurean Prince responded with a pair of 3-pointers to keep Minnesota hot early, and they eventually led 28-22 at the end of the first quarter.
The Lakers faced their first double-digit deficit early in the second before LeBron James finally got going with a pair of buckets.
Austin Reaves then brought the Lakers some energy with a three-point play and then a layup in transition to cut the deficit back to just one.
It was not a great close to the half for the Lakers though with Mike Conley getting hot from deep to give his team a 60-49 lead.
The Lakers started the third quarter strong with James and Reaves knocking down triples to get it back to single digits.
Outside of that though, the Lakers struggled to take care of the ball while Minnesota stayed hot from deep. After back-to-back triples, the Lakers’ deficit was the largest it had been all night at 15.
Dennis Schroder did what he could to inject some much-needed life into the Lakers with seven straight points, but L.A. had a difficult time getting stops to really cut into the deficit.
Towns picked up his fourth foul late in the third quarter, which loomed large considering how well he was playing. The Lakers then proceeded to close the quarter strong, going into the fourth trailing 86-79.
After Towns got his fifth foul early in the fourth, Davis started to go to work down low. He had a three-point play and then a layup in transition to cut it to three.
As was the case basically all night, Conley responded with a big 3 before things got out of hand for Minnesota.
With the Lakers trailing by three with three minutes to play, it was now or never. And of course it was James hitting a big 3 to tie things up.
After some sloppy play by both teams, the game remained tied going into the final possession when Schroder buried a 3 with 1.4 seconds to play. Davis then inexplicably fouled Conley on a 3, sending the game to overtime with him making all of them.
Hachimura hit a big triple to begin the overtime period and then Schroder scored on a give-and-go to give the Lakers a five-point lead. Meanwhile, the Timberwolves continued to struggled offensively with Anthony Edwards leading the way in that department.
Edwards finally drove in for a layup to cut the Lakers’ lead to three with 19 seconds to play. Schroder knocked down a pair of free throws to seal the victory though, ending what was a wild game.
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