The Los Angeles Lakers fell mightily to the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 1 of their first-round playoff series on Saturday night, but Lakers forward LeBron James isn't sulking about it. In fact, he's keeping a pretty level head about the fact that it was only the first game of the series.
Playoff basketball is a different beast—more intensity, more physicality, more everything. And in LeBron's view, maybe L.A. just needed a second to get to grips with their Anthony Edwards-led opponent and better acclimate themselves to the new game environment.
Asked if he had any ideas for countering Minnesota's physicality going into Game 2, James replied, "You know when you're playing a Minnesota team, you gotta be physical. That's what they bring to the table. So maybe it took us one playoff game to now get a feel for it and now what type of intensity, the type of physicality, that's going to be brought to the game. But that's just the way they play. So we should be more than prepared for that on Tuesday night."
Take a peek at that answer, starting around the 1:04 mark, below;
LBJ: "Maybe it took us one playoff game to now get a feel for it." pic.twitter.com/N3Fm9Y9eTL
— Spectrum SportsNet (@SpectrumSN) April 20, 2025
Lakers head coach JJ Redick also mentioned in his post-game comments that the Lakers were clearly not ready for such a bruising contest, so it's clear some readjustments need to be made. But to James's point, at least now they know and have the rest of the series to get right.
Otherwise, LeBron was up front about the team's flaws in his comments.
"Obviously, we've got to do a better job of controlling the controllables, and I don't think we did a good enough job after the first quarter," he said. "Once they blitzed us in that second quarter, 38-20, giving up 21 threes, giving up 20+ fastbreak points, second-chance points, those are some of the things that we can control. ... We'll get back in the film room tomorrow, look at the things that we did well and some of the things that we didn't do so well and continue the game plan for Game 2."
Tip-off there is slated for Tuesday, April 22, at 10 p.m. ET.
More NBA on Sports Illustrated
This article was originally published on www.si.com as LeBron James Shares Level-Headed Take on Lakers' Game 1 Loss to Timberwolves.
