Through two games against a rugged Minnesota Timberwolves squad that finished sixth in the NBA in defensive efficiency, the Los Angeles Lakers have scored 109.7 points per 100 possessions with Luka Dončić on the floor — an offensive rating that would’ve tied the woeful New Orleans Pelicans for 25th in the NBA during the regular season.
That sounds bad! Until, of course, you look at what the Lakers have managed without Luka on the floor: just 90.9 points-per-100.
That is a sub-lockout-season Bobcats and mid-Process Sixers-level of woof …. and, as the Lakers and Timberwolves get set for Game 3 of a physical, fascinating and tied series back in Minneapolis on Friday, it’s something worth keeping an eye on for a Los Angeles team that has come to be awfully reliant on Luka Magic to generate offense.
While the mere fact of Dončić’s presence in a Laker uniform remains somewhat stunning, what’s far less shocking is how he has started his playoff career in L.A. It’s looked pretty similar to the way he spent his playoff career in Dallas: as one of the most brilliant offensive engines in the sport.
Dončić averaged 34 points per game on 50/39/95 shooting splits across the Lakers’ first two games against the Wolves. As my colleague Tom Haberstroh noted on this week’s episode of The Big Number, that’s more than any other teammate of LeBron James has ever scored through the first two games of a postseason, and it runs Luka’s career postseason scoring average up to 31 points per game — second all-time, behind only Michael Jordan.
With the Lakers in need of a bounce-back performance after getting smoked in Game 1, Dončić stormed out of the gate with a tone-setting first quarter in which he outscored the visitors by himself, 16-15, en route to a game-high 31 points to go with 12 rebounds and nine assists:
As noted by Justin Kubatko of Statitudes, Tuesday night marked the 14th straight playoff game in which Dončić has scored at least 25 points. That’s tied for the ninth-longest such streak in NBA history, with only immortals like Jordan, Elgin Baylor, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Wilt Chamberlain … and Luka’s new teammate, LeBron James, who had three separate 15-plus-game runs of 25-or-more points during his years in Cleveland and Miami.
In this series, though — as has been the case since the trade that brought Dončić to L.A. — James has taken something of a backseat offensively, scoring 19 in Game 1 and 21 in Game 2, on a usage rate that would rank as the third-lowest of his postseason career.
As Haberstroh noted, Dončić has the NBA’s fifth-highest average time of possession in the postseason thus far, at 7.7 minutes per game — an increase of nearly a full minute from his regular-season average after arriving in L.A. James, on the other hand, has had the ball in his hands for just 4.1 minutes per game, 30th among all postseason players — a decrease of more than a minute from the regular season, and nearly half as much as he dominated possessions during the Lakers’ 2020 run to the NBA championship.
Some of that rebalancing has to do with Dončić’s sheer brilliance and production; when you’ve got a guy like that, feeding him as many touches and playmaking opportunities as he can handle seems like a pretty good idea. Some of it also stems from needing James to conserve his energy for the defensive end — a must on this version of the Lakers, and specifically in this physical matchup with Minnesota.
With defensive anchor Anthony Davis shipped out in the Dončić trade, and after L.A.’s pursuit of Hornets center Mark Williams fell through, the only center-sized option in the cupboard for head coach JJ Redick is Jaxson Hayes — a springy 7-footer who’s useful as a screen-and-roll lob threat, but who’s also proven to be a limited defensive player throughout his career. Hayes averaged 21.8 minutes per game as a starter after the trade deadline; Redick’s rolled with him for just 18 minutes total through two games against Anthony Edwards, Rudy Gobert and the Timberwolves.
That means that the Lakers have spent about 80% of their minutes against Minnesota playing small-ball lineups, where James shares defensive responsibilities up front with Dorian Finney-Smith, Rui Hachimura, Jarred Vanderbilt … and even Dončić, who’s built like a tank at 6-foot-6 and 230 pounds, and whose size has long been an asset on the glass; since entering the NBA in 2018, Luka has the highest defensive rebounding rate of any non-power forward/center.
As helpful as he is on that front, though, you do wonder if prolonged wrestling matches under the glass with a ravenous offensive rebounder like Gobert — bouts like the ones highlighted by Iztok Franko at Digginbasketball — will start to add up and take their toll on Dončić over the course of a long series …
… especially if Redick continues to lean on Dončić to create to the tune of the fourth-highest usage rate in the playoffs for nearly 90% of every game. Dončić sat down for just 13 of the 96 minutes the Lakers and Wolves played in L.A.; while Luka’s certainly no stranger to heavy postseason workloads, 41.5 minutes a night would be more than he’s ever logged in the playoffs.
It’s not like Redick’s just riding Luka for fun, though. While the Lakers and Wolves have played dead even through Dončić’s 83 minutes, Minnesota’s plus-13 in those scant 13 minutes of Luka’s rest. And while small-sample-size caveats apply to every number we can glean from two measly games in a series, we do have a bit more data to support the notion that L.A.’s offense plunges when Dončić sits: After the trade deadline, the Lakers scored like the Cavs with Luka on the floor and like the Nets with him off of it, even with Redick making a point of staggering his rotation to keep James and Austin Reaves in the game when Dončić checked out.
In the playoffs, even a couple of minutes of scuffling can come back to bite you — especially when the margins are as slim as they are in this 3-vs.-6 matchup, and especially against a defense as good as the Wolves, who are allowing just 99 points-per-100 with Gobert in the middle, even amid all of Luka’s hunting.
Even with Dončić hanging 30-plus, the Lakers scored fewer than 100 points in both games in L.A. — the first time they’ve been held under 100 in consecutive games since December, before Dončić’s arrival. And as hot as the Lakers started on Tuesday, the Wolves cooled them down, with L.A. managing just 36 points after halftime in Game 2 (and only 13 in the fourth) — and, for what it’s worth, with Luka missing seven of his 10 shots after intermission. Heavy minutes can beget heavy legs … which, in turn, can beget front-rimmed stepbacks, late-game miscues and squandered opportunities.
Dončić is the brand of brilliant that can tilt the outcome even when he’s tired, that can carry a team while shouldering an outsized burden. The challenge facing Redick? Finding a way to lighten it so that he can carry the Lakers even farther — and doing it without leaving them vulnerable to a Wolves team eminently capable of ending their postseason journey before it even really gets started.
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