SO MUCH WENT wrong for the Los Angeles Lakers in their playoff-opening 117-95 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves that there was no obvious top-line issue to fix.
The Wolves lit them up from the perimeter, setting a franchise postseason record with 21 3-pointers. They dominated L.A. in transition points 25-6. And the Lakers' offense, which ranked a respectable 11th during the regular season, sputtered down the stretch. It mustered just 17 points in the fourth quarter, with Luka Doncic recording just one assist for the game -- more than six below his season average -- and LeBron James totaling 19 points, more than five below his.
Just a few minutes into Tuesday's Game 2, the Lakers began to course-correct, with the help of a single patented play between their two stars.
The sequence began when Minnesota forward Jaden McDaniels missed a corner 3, with Austin Reaves using an all-out sprint to close out on him and contest. Lakers forward Rui Hachimura hauled in the rebound and advanced the ball forward to Doncic on the right wing. By the time he received the pass in the backcourt, just beyond the 3-point line, James had already burst into the frontcourt, with only Wolves point guard Mike Conley in position to defend him as he beelined toward the hoop.
Doncic took one dribble and turned upcourt when he spotted James. Seizing the opportunity, Doncic immediately uncorked a 50-foot outlet pass that sailed over Conley's head, landing softly into James' hands to set up a point-blank shot that he deposited into the rim.
"It's easy," Doncic told ESPN after the game. "I know what he's going to do. He's going to beat his defender and I just throw it up there. It's not hard."
The score put L.A. up 7-4 with 8:45 remaining in the first quarter and served as a sample of the Lakers' adjustments that were about to come. Doncic finished with nine assists; the Lakers flipped the fast-break scoring battle 13-6; and L.A. won the game 94-85 to even the series 1-1.
As the series shifts to Minneapolis for Game 3 on Friday (9:30 p.m. ET, ESPN), and the Wolves' No. 6-ranked defense stiffens at home, the Luka-LeBron connection will serve not only as an advantageous wrinkle to the Lakers' offense, but an example of the dangerous alliance the pair have already established on what they hope is a long championship run.
"One thing about Luka," James told ESPN, "you got to be at the right spot at the right time or you got to make the connection, or he won't pass you the ball like that. So, I think he trusts me."
Luka Doncic throws a long pass to LeBron James, who lays it for the Lakers.
DONCIC AND JAMES flashed their fast-break telepathy in their first game together with the Lakers, a 132-113 win over the Utah Jazz on Feb. 10.
With the Lakers already up by 20 late in the second quarter, James ran to contest a Lauri Markkanen 3 on the wing and kept running past the Jazz forward to the other basket. After the miss, Doncic grabbed the rebound in the paint, took one dribble up the court and guided a pass some 65 feet to find James in stride for a layup.
After the score, James raised his left hand and pointed his index finger toward his new teammate as he got back on defense, acknowledging the masterful play.
"I think instantly you saw just the ability to feed off each other in transition, particularly with Luka as an outlet passer, LeBron running or getting down the court and creating an early cross match and getting that early seal," Lakers coach JJ Redick said when asked about the early signs of chemistry between the two. "We saw that sort of right away."
Such plays -- and chemistry -- have long been part of the playbook for the 22-year veteran.
"If you watch Bron's career, whenever he had great passers who can make that pass -- Kevin Love, Dwyane Wade -- it was always effective," Lakers forward Dorian Finney-Smith told ESPN. "Bron does a good job of reading those [passes]. ... I think that's definitely an advantage and gives us easy points. It's hard to get easy points in the league."
Lakers guard Gabe Vincent agreed: "Great players got to get easy buckets too. Sometimes, that's the easiest shot that he's going to get [all game]."
In 21 games together before the playoffs, Doncic found James for five assists off passes that traveled 60-plus feet, according to GeniusIQ tracking. It was the most by any two players in the league to link up for such longball feeds in the last two months of the regular season.
James has defied every established NBA norm for an aging player, but he isn't approaching a game in 2025 like he did when he was in his 20s. His first step off the dribble isn't as devastating as it used to be. He can't simply outleap his defender to finish over him like before. Through the first two games of the Minnesota series, Julius Randle and Rudy Gobert have done a serviceable job containing him in the half court.
But James' mental grasp of the game is as strong as ever. In 2018, he admitted to saving "pockets of energy" throughout a game by figuring out which possessions he can rest while a teammate orchestrates the offense, so he can expend more energy on defense.
Playing wide receiver to Doncic's quarterback is just his latest update to the software.
When asked before the start of the playoffs what has been key to his chemistry with Doncic, James deferred to his 26-year-old counterpart.
"Offensively? Give Luka the ball. If we stay ready," James said, "we never got to get ready."
Lakers stars team up as Luka Doncic dishes a long pass to LeBron James for a basket.
WHEN THE WOLVES were readying themselves to play the Lakers on Feb. 27 for the first time after L.A. had acquired Doncic, Minnesota coach Chris Finch's mind darted from place to place, contemplating how much of a handful James would still be without the ball in his hands as much.
"If you're overhelping in the gaps, you're going to open massive runways for him to get downhill. That's not going to end well for a defense, generally," Finch said before that game. "We spent a lot of our coaches' meeting talking about LeBron [playing] off ball and what that does to a defense. ... It's a whole 'nother threat level."
The Lakers won that night, with James scoring 33 points on 11-for-21 shooting with six assists. Doncic added 21 points on 6-for-20 shooting with five assists, while Reaves tallied 23 points and five assists.
When Minnesota secured the No. 6 seed and locked in a first-round matchup with L.A., one of the specific aims of the Wolves' game plan, sources told ESPN, was to limit James in transition, believing that if they force him to work in half-court sets, he could tire over the course of a long series.
Through two games, it has been a successful effort. That outlet feed from Doncic accounts for James' only two transition points of the series. He averaged 6.0 transition points per game in the regular season -- sixth best in the NBA.
The Wolves' strategy is comparable to a mix of man and zone coverage on the football field, sources said. After a Minnesota miss, two of its players are supposed to get back, with one defender attaching himself to James man-to-man. Meanwhile, the Wolves players who crash the offensive glass are asked to pressure Doncic if he gets the ball and not give him a clean pocket to unfurl any passes to pay dirt.
But it's hardly time for Finch to rest easy. The Lakers haven't tried James at QB and Doncic as the receiver yet this series, after all.
"Passing to each other, them two motherf---ers? It sounds crazy to even be saying that," Finney-Smith said. "Two years ago, that s--- would have sounded fake. What am I saying -- two years ago? Two months ago it would have sounded fake."