The long wait is over, and the NBA Playoffs are here. The Los Angeles Lakers finished the regular season as the third-seed and will have home-court advantage for the first time since they won the title in 2020. Their hopefully long postseason run will kick off on Saturday against the Minnesota Timberwolves.
Head coach JJ Redick has been perfecting the rotation since the trade deadline that saw blockbuster changes to the Lakers roster. The playoffs are especially unforgiving, so the Lakers can't afford to make any obvious rotation mistakes if they want to win the title.
One of those mistakes would be playing Alex Len.
Lakers Can't Give Alex Len Any Minutes in the Playoffs
Going up against the Timberwolves, there will be an argument to play Len for some minutes to go up against Rudy Gobert. Minnesota deploys a three-headed big-man rotation consisting of Gobert, Naz Reid, and Julius Randle. The Lakers don't have any center depth behind Jaxson Hayes, so there will be times when it feels like the Lakers could use Len's size on the interior.
Redick has to avoid falling for that trap. Len has been a disaster since joining the team after the trade deadline. He fell out of the rotation after nine games and hadn't played until the last day of the regular season. Against the Blazers on Sunday, Len proved why the Lakers can't have him out there in the postseason.
Len fouled out in 14 minutes in the regular-season finale, finishing the game with four points, two rebounds, one assist, and three turnovers. The Lakers were -15 in his minutes.
That is in line with his performance this season. Per Cleaning the Glass, the Lakers are 31.8 points per 100 possessions worse with him on the floor than off the floor.
The Lakers' strength is their ability to play switchable lineups that can shoot in all five positions. Spreading out the Wolves' defense and forcing Gobert to defend out in the perimeter by playing Dorian Finney-Smith and Rui Hachimura extensive minutes at center is the path to beating Minnesota. That leaves no room for playing Len. Let's see if Redick agrees in his first postseason as a head coach.