The Wolves had no answer for Luka in the WCF last season. Luka put up 32.4ppg 9.6rpg 8.2apg 2.2spg on 47.3% FG% 43.4% 3PT% 84.6% FT% on 39 FTA against 112 FGA. 62.7% TS%.
Jalen McDaniels lacked the strength necessary to bother Luka. Jalen is a finesse defender. He struggles with Luka's bulk and physicality. The Wolves other wing defenders are Ant & DiVincenzo. Both advantageous matchups for Luka.
That said, I am more worried about Minny's offense than their defense.
I don't think they can score enough to keep up with Luka, LeBron and A Reaves. Ant is awesome but beyond him they lack a reliable 2nd option & 3rd option. Randle is all they got and he is inconsistent. The rest of the guys are 10-14ppg scorers. I don't think Ant can overcome Luka, LeBron and A Reaves by himself.
I don't think I have ever seen someone take parts of players from two completely different teams to try and make a prediction. That is a bit interesting to me. So, the Wolves had no answer for Luka when he was playing next to one of the best penetrating guards of all time in Irving.. He also had 4 people that could at least pose a threat from 3 next to him at just about all times. (Lively was the only rotation player that did not shoot 3's) Does that mean he is as effective in lineups that are usually going to feature at least one non-shooter a significant amount of the time (Hayes, Vanderbilt). Also, when the Wolves couldn't guard Luka they had two bigs that they Mavericks constantly tried to switch I am not sure if Randle is better at keeping up with smaller players but the decline of the Knicks defense with towns suggest that he might be. I obviously don't think any team is shutting down Luka, but I wouldn't take anything away from how he performed on a completely different team against a completely different team.
It is definitely an interesting matchup. The Lakers will certainly be trying to play Gobert off the floor on switches, but it would be easier to do that with a player that has some semblance of an offensive game which Vanderbilt and Hayes both completely lack. I could also see Randle and Gobert completely dominating the offensive glass and if Gobert is really being ineffective they have one of the best backup bigs in Reid. The lakers present a mismatch for every team with three great scorers. However, if those three are on the floor together, who is going to guard Edwards or even slightly bother him? I do think there is a pretty decent chance the Lakers win the series, especially with homecourt advantage but they are only -170 to win with homecourt which means these teams are viewed as exactly even without homecourt.
While there has been talk of the of the Lakers improvement especially adding Luka, the Wolves have been one of the best teams in the NBA the last 3 months. After being 21-20 on January 20th they finished 49--33 (28-13 to close the season). It makes sense they would start slow after completely changing their team (and Randle and Vincenzo had horrible starts but have been much better during this stretch). I think the matchup will be really interesting and would not be surprised if Minnesota did end up winning.
I'll also add that one of the things I am most interested in seeing through all of the playoffs is how the Lakers hold up without playing anyone bigger than 6'9 besides Hayes who is very physically weak and quite likely to get in foul trouble (he averages 4.5pf per 36 and a lot of that was when he was guarding backup bigs or had Davis next to him. I don't see how Jokic, Gobert, Zubac or Hartenstein/Holmgram don't completely wear him out. It is one thing to play small for a game and throw some gimmick double teams like the Lakers did against Jokic but I think there is a big cumulative effect in a 7 game series.
