LOS ANGELES – Midway through the second quarter of Game 2 of the Lakers-Timberwolves series, Rudy Gobert found himself in his least favorite position: isolated against Luka Doncic, again. There’s no play—in Dallas or Los Angeles—that Doncic likes more than a center screen and no center, whether with the Mavericks or Lakers, that he loves to hunt more than Gobert. Among the lasting images of last year’s playoffs was Doncic putting Gobert on skates before burying a three to win Game 2 of the conference finals. Doncic loves humiliating Gobert, a primal flex from one of greatest offensive players of this generation over one of its best defenders.

Doncic turned to that play often in the Lakers 94-85 win on Tuesday. Perhaps too often. Doncic scored 22 points in the first half, on 60% shooting. In the second half, it was just nine on 30% from the floor. In the first half he hit floaters, found teammates and got to the free throw line. In the second, he missed jumpers, committed turnovers and at times stalled an L.A. offense that scored just 13 points in the fourth quarter.

The Lakers will take the win, because make no mistake: a loss would have been catastrophic. Los Angeles was punk’d in the series opener, manhandled on its home floor. They were blitzed from the three-point line (Minnesota shot 50% in Game 1) and battered on the glass. The Lakers had momentum going into the postseason, climbing all the way to the third seed down the stretch. The Wolves, who used their own surge to escape the play-in tournament, stopped that momentum in its tracks.

The NBA likes to let the first round breathe, and the Lakers took advantage. Two days off meant two practices. They fine-tuned the offense on Sunday. They dug into the defensive issues on Monday. Lakers coach JJ Redick, an obsessive film watcher, admitted he went down some rabbit holes he didn’t need to.

“Diving into Utah’s offense against Minnesota,” said Redick. “Like, why am I watching this?”

The results were immediate. The Lakers scored 34 points in the first quarter. They held Minnesota to 15. They pushed around Mike Conley, hounded Anthony Edwards and bottled up Naz Reid. They limited the Wolves to 20% from beyond the three-point line in the first half. Doncic was unstoppable, scoring, dishing, rebounding, finishing the game one assist shy of a triple-double. The lead was 15 at halftime and the Timberwolves wouldn’t have been blamed for taking their split back to Minnesota.

“I can’t even really remember what happened in the first quarter, for real,” said Edwards. “But we just couldn’t get enough stops. We couldn’t get no stops.”

In the second half, the Wolves closed the gap. In the third quarter, Redick called an abrupt timeout when Minnesota cut the lead to 11. “Getting the urgency button switched back on,” Redick explained. In the fourth, the Timberwolves briefly slashed it to nine. “They play hard as [expletive],” said Austin Reaves. “And if you do not meet that physicality with physicality, you seen the result. So that was the emphasis going into the night, was to play hard.”

It wasn’t that Minnesota was playing well. Jaden McDaniels shot 3-of-11 from the floor. Reid, one of the heroes of Game 1, was 3-of-8. Edwards and Julius Randle combined for 52 points. No other Wolves player scored more than nine. The Lakers, though, were nearly worse. They went 1-for-12 from three-point range in the second half. In the fourth, L.A. shot 26.3%. Redick said he could live with the looks his team was getting. Noting the Lakers defensive effort, Doncic said L.A. “responded well.”

“A rock fight,” was what Redick called it.

Said LeBron James, “We’ve got to match their intensity. It’s going to be like this all series.”

Doncic has been as advertised with Los Angeles but in this series we are reminded of Gobert’s ability to trigger him. Doncic was complimentary of Gobert beforehand, calling the 7-footer “a great defender,” but the disdain on the floor is palpable. He didn’t just hit the game winner over Gobert last season, he hit it and directed some expletive-filled trash talk at him on the way back down the floor. He says he loves squaring off against centers and the pivots don’t come more pure than Gobert, a four-time Defensive Player of the Year. As much as Doncic wants to beat Minnesota, he appears just as motivated to to embarrass Gobert again doing it.

That’s fine with the Wolves. For all the bellyaching about Gobert’s ability to defend small ball lineups, the numbers tell a different story. Gobert isn’t getting played off the floor by center-less lineups. The 24 minutes he played in Game 1 was about Reid’s outstanding shooting night, not Gobert as a liability. He was plus-14 in the opener. He was a -2 in Game 2 but that was the best of any Minnesota starter. If Doncic wants to make this a personal battle with Gobert, chances are the ‘Wolves will let him.

One by one, Minnesota players addressed reporters on Tuesday and none of them sounded discouraged. “Dug ourselves into too deep a hole,” lamented Randle. Said Gobert, “I thought we did a lot of great things tonight, but it just wasn’t enough to catch them.” The three-point shots didn’t fall, but they will. The bench struggled in Game 2, but it will be better. The Wolves will head home now, to a raucous crowd in Minneapolis, with an even series and a strategy they know is good enough to win.

The Lakers need Doncic focused. The margin for error is wafer thin. James is still James, and his fourth quarter heroics—six points, two assists—is the reason the Lakers are not down 0–2. Rui Hachimura battled through a face injury to score 11 points while Dorian Finney-Smith played nearly 40 minutes off the bench. But Reaves has struggled from three-point range this series, Jarred Vanderbilt has been largely ineffective and Jaxson Hayes has been useless. More than ever, Doncic is the engine that powers L.A.’s offense. More than ever, they need it running at full throttle.

Doncic collected another viral moment against Gobert on Tuesday, pushing him back off the dribble, getting him to bite on a ball fake before flipping in a fadeaway jumper. As he ran back on defense the cameras caught Doncic barking “sub him out” in Gobert’s direction. Besting Gobert is fine. As long as his team takes the L with him.


This article was originally published on www.si.com as Full Throttle Luka Doncic Is Exactly What the Lakers Need.