The Los Angeles Lakers have been through numerous key injuries, bad or questionable trades, poor roster construction and perhaps plain old bad luck over the last two years. But they have seemingly turned the page. They head into the NBA playoffs against the Memphis Grizzlies after being conspicuously absent from the postseason last year.
They did so by earning an ugly and gutsy 108-102 overtime win over the Minnesota Timberwolves in the play-in tournament on Tuesday. Los Angeles fell behind by as many as 15 points in the third quarter, but it turned things up a couple of notches and achieved a win the old-fashioned way — with some suffocating defense that held Minnesota to just 16 points in the fourth quarter and overtime combined.
