LOS ANGELES — Rob Pelinka, president of basketball operations and general manager for the Los Angeles Lakers, walked past his team’s locker room sad-faced.
The Lakers’ season had just ended after a 103-96 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game 5 of their first-round playoff series. During the game, the TNT cameras caught Pelinka shaking his head in frustration.
A frustration that plagued the third-seeded Lakers in a series it lost to the sixth-seeded Timberwolves 4-1 and will linger into the offseason.
Rudy Gobert, Minnesota’s 7-foot-1 center, crushed the Lakers with 27 points and 24 rebounds while exposing a problem Pelinka and his front office could never solve. Trading Anthony Davis for Luka Doncic stripped the Lakers’ of their only effective rim protector.
The Timberwolves shot a ghastly 7-for-47 from 3-point range. But several times at Crypto. com Arena, Gobert corralled the shots and stuffed them through the hoop or laid it in.
He was 12-of-15 shooting for the floor, and the Lakers helped make it look effortless. The tallest player the Lakers had on the court was LeBron James, the Lakers’ 6-9 superstar.
But even James looked relatively helpless.
‘He seemed to get his hand on every rebound,’ Lakers guard Gabe Vincent said of Gobert. ‘That alone was his impact as well.
‘He finished things at the rim and he made some free throws (3-of-6). They had some guys step up and play big minutes and have a good game and he was one of them.’
One of them? He was the one.
Why did the Lakers not use their 7-footer, Jaxson Hayes? He made appearances in the first four games of the playoff series against the Timberwolves but scored only seven points.
‘You could say, ‘Oh play a center,’ ‘ Lakers coach JJ Redick said after the game. ‘We couldn’t score, so there’s a tradeoff to everything.’
Hayes riding the bench and Gobert dominating served as painful reminders the Lakers have failed to find a replacement for Davis, the 6-10 all-star.
That happened when the Lakers traded for Mark Williams, a 7-foot center with the Charlotte Hornets.
But the Lakers rejected the trade after the team said Williams failed his physical exam; but the deadline had passed. That left the Lakers to play a lot of centerless basketball, something that eventually caught up to them.
After their loss to the Timberwolves on Wednesday night, Williams posted on his account on X, formerly Twitter.
A simple smiley face emoji – a contrast to Pelinka’s sad face.
It was salt in the Lakers’ season-ending wounds.
Said Vincent, ‘We fell short.’
Literally and figuratively.
(This story has been updated to add new video).