The NBA play-in tournament got underway on Tuesday, with the Atlanta Hawks upsetting the Miami Heat on the road in the Eastern Conference 7-8 matchup, and the Los Angeles Lakers grinding out an overtime victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves in the Western Conference 7-8 game.
With the win, Atlanta secured the seventh seed in the East and will face the second-seeded Boston Celtics in the first round. Miami will Friday host the winner of Chicago and Toronto, with the East’s eighth seed on the line.
Similarly, the Lakers secured the seventh seed in the West and will face the second-seeded Memphis Grizzlies in the first round. Minnesota will Friday host the winner of New Orleans and Oklahoma City, with the West’s eighth seed on the line.
Here are FOX Sports NBA reporter Melissa Rohlin’s takeaways from Lakers-Wolves:
It wasn’t pretty, but the Lakers did it.
After opening the season with a 2-10 start. After treading water in 13th place before the trade deadline. After looking like they’d be relegated to their couches by early April for much of the season, the Lakers defied the odds, completing their resurgence Tuesday.
It happened with a 108-102 overtime win over the Minnesota Timberwolves in the play-in tournament in which the Lakers secured the seventh seed and a first round playoff berth against the second-seeded Memphis Grizzlies.
“We went 2-10, the analytics guy said we had a 0.3% chance of making the postseason,” said LeBron James, who finished with 30 points, 10 rebounds and six assists in 45 minutes. “So, all you ask for is a chance, I guess. For us to turn around our season and give ourselves an opportunity to compete for the Larry O’Brien trophy? That’s all you can ask for.”
Like much of the Lakers’ season, Tuesday’s game was a rollercoaster.
It should’ve been breezier considering the Timberwolves were without Rudy Gobert and Jaden McDaniels, after the former threw a punch at teammate Kyle Anderson and the latter threw a punch at a wall in Sunday’s win over New Orleans in their regular season finale.
But still, the shorthanded Timberwolves held control for much of the game. They scored 60 points at halftime. In the third quarter, they led by as much as 15 points.
The Lakers, however, refused to wave the white flag and capitalized on their opportunity as soon as it presented itself.
In the fourth quarter, the Timberwolves turned ice-cold, scoring just 12 points on 3-for-15 shooting. The Lakers clawed their way back, with Dennis Schroder making a 3-pointer with 1.4 seconds left to give the Lakers a 98-95 lead.
Anthony Davis, however, then fouled Mike Conley as he attempted a 3-pointer with 0.1 seconds remaining — and Conley made all three free throws to send the game to overtime. (Immediately afterward, “Trade AD” was trending on Twitter.
After the game, Davis clarified that Karl-Anthony Towns was setting a screen for Conley, and he called “switch,” but then he got worried James didn’t hear him. Davis said he jumped to try to get out of Conley’s way, but Conley got the whistle.
“Obviously, I told [James], ‘My bad,'” said Davis, who had 24 points on 10-for-19 shooting, 15 rebounds and three blocked shots. “I told the team, ‘My fault.’ And it just goes back to our next-play mentality that coach always talks about and that we talk about as a team. Whatever happened, happened. Go finish these last five minutes and get a win.”
The Lakers went on to outscore the Timberwolves 10-4 in overtime to prevent them from having to play a winner-takes-all play-in game Friday for the eighth seed against either Oklahoma City or New Orleans.
In many ways, Tuesday’s game was a microcosm of their season.
They were down. They were counted out. But they somehow persevered.
“You’ve got to look forward and move forward,” Lakers coach Darvin Ham said. “That’s been our mantra, what’s represented us the entire season. Just trying to move forward and not constantly belaboring an issue or a problem or what went wrong. Just constantly trying to find solutions so we don’t make the same mistake twice. We were able to pull ourselves together.”
What’s interesting is not too long ago, the Lakers seemed to be headed toward another embarrassment of a season. On the court, they were disjointed. And off of it, their locker room felt toxic.
They decided to make some major changes.
Ahead of the trade deadline, they dealt away Russell Westbrook and Patrick Beverly, among others, while acquiring six new players. Suddenly they had shooters. They had depth. And their locker room felt lighter.
After the All-Star break, despite James missing 13 straight games, the Lakers won 16 of their final 23 games to finish above .500 (43-39.).
For the Lakers, it was an incredible turnaround.
During All-Streak break, James called that stretch the “23 of the most important games of my career for a regular season.”
It was a strong statement.
James has played 20 seasons, reaching the NBA Finals in 10 of them. This was the most important stretch?
This much is for sure: He did not want to miss a second straight postseason.
Now, anything could happen.
No one wants to go against James and Davis in the playoffs, a duo that won a championship together in 2020. And now they’ll have four days of rest before Game 1 on Sunday in Memphis.
The Lakers have once again proven this season that adversity doesn’t derail them.
And that’s a daunting prospect for their opponents.
“You go through that process and once you get to the end of things to have everyone healthy, to be playing the type of rhythm we’re playing in and at the level we’re defending at going into the most important time of the year, you can’t ask for a better situation,” Ham said.
Here are FOX Sports NBA analyst Ric Bucher’s takeaways from the Hawks’ victory:
With one of the NBA’s most anemic offenses, the Heat could ill afford to miss layups in Tuesday’s play-in matchup against the Hawks. Their strength is an eighth-ranked defense built on forcing turnovers and not giving up offensive rebounds.
Which is why the Heat are feeling rather ill right now. Because they did everything they could not afford to do against the Hawks, resulting in a near wire-to-wire 116-105 loss that now means they must beat the winner of Wednesday’s Chicago-Toronto play-in contest to keep their postseason hopes alive.
Although the Heat closed to within five in the second half, thanks to Kyle Lowry’s game-high 33 points off the bench, their fate may have been sealed in the first quarter when they missed five shots inside the restricted circle and allowed the Hawks to grab eight offensive rebounds — this by a Heat team that conceded a league-low 8.9 offensive boards during the regular season. The Hawks finished with a total of 22 offensive rebounds; the Heat finished missing 7-of-12 shots at the rim.
The worst part: The Heat’s stars, Jimmy Butler and Bam Adebayo, were responsible for most of the self-inflicted damage. Butler went 6-for-19, nine of his 13 misses coming with at least a foot in the paint, five of them at the rim. Adebayo played 41 minutes and had nine rebounds, while Atlanta’s Clint Capela grabbed 21, his eight off the offensive glass including one in which he simply reached over Adebayo to snare the ball.
Then again, the Heat played most of the night with an ultra small-ball starting lineup of 6-foot-7 Butler at power forward next to Adebayo at center and 6-foot-5 Tyler Herro, 6-foot-5 Max Strus and 6-foot-3 Gabe Vincent on the perimeter. Their two primary subs: 6-foot Lowry, who at times was charged with boxing out Capela, and 6-foot-5 Caleb Martin. The Heat’s only other big men, Kevin Love and Cody Zeller, played a combined seven minutes.
Ric Bucher is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. He previously wrote for Bleacher Report, ESPN The Magazine and The Washington Post and has written two books, “Rebound,” on NBA forward Brian Grant’s battle with young onset Parkinson’s, and “Yao: A Life In Two Worlds.” He also has a daily podcast, “On The Ball with Ric Bucher.” Follow him on Twitter @RicBucher.
Melissa Rohlin is an NBA writer for FOX Sports. She previously covered the league for Sports Illustrated, the Los Angeles Times, the Bay Area News Group and the San Antonio Express-News. Follow her on Twitter @melissarohlin.
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