Burning Questions the Los Angeles Lakers Must Answer in 2025 NBA Playoffs

Six games now separate the Los Angeles Lakers from the start of the 2025 NBA playoffs following Thursday night's 123-116 loss to the Golden State Warriors.

The game was telltale in many ways, reinforcing our overlying impression of these remade Lakers: that they are clearly dangerous yet also a somewhat mysterious work-in-progress.

This may not come as much comfort to the Purple and Gold faithful, but it makes for one heck of a compelling journey into the postseason.

In anticipation of what will be one of the more fascinating playoff pushes, we've cobbled together our most pressing questions for this version of the Lakers.

Inquiries cover everything from the best- and worst-possible playoff matchups to concerns and general curiosity about the team's results post-Luka Dončić trade.

We will not pretend to have all of the answers here. The questions spotlighted are more about shedding some clarity on what to monitor for the rest of the regular season and, most critically, through the playoffs.

The Oklahoma City Thunder are an obvious no-go here. It doesn't matter if you don't actually fear them.

It also may not matter, period. The Lakers don't have to worry about facing them unless they dip out of the top six.

Golden State is a potential answer. Its lack of size should play right into the Lakers' shallow big-man rotation, but the Warriors really seemed to throw off Los Angeles' offense with its switching defense and targeted attacks on Luka Dončić.

Denver is the other option. No team has anyone who can rumble with Nikola Jokić. The Lakers are especially barren of options after dealing Anthony Davis. Aside from the six possessions of generational defense they get from Rui Hachimura, they'll be at a severe deficit.

Falling to the Warriors did not cost the Lakers ownership of fourth place in the Western Conference. They are still clinging to a home-court advantage slot and can feasibly climb all the way up to No. 2. They can also technically fall back into play-in territory. Such is life in the West, where just three losses separate the No. 3 and No. 8 seeds.

Los Angeles should not be focused on gaming the system to set up what it deems a more favorable first-round matchup. It does not have the cushion necessary to engage in shenanigans.

Assuming the Lakers stick inside the top six, though, the question of who they should want to avoid gets more interesting. It feels like the Memphis Grizzlies or Houston Rockets are their most desirable matchups.

Los Angeles doesn't play banner transition defense, which can prove problematic against either opponent. But it has the bandwidth to slow down the pace of play, particularly after making shots on the offensive end.

Neither Houston (22nd) nor Memphis (10th) field a particularly scary first-shot offense, even with their fast-break motors, per PBP Stats. The Lakers will be sitting pretty if they can keep them out of transition.

Let's go ahead and settle on the Rockets. Some of Houston's most athletic lineups could give the Lakers fits, and it is more frequently deploying a Steven Adams-Alperen Şengün frontcourt that is grabbing every rebound possible and currently a statistical darling. Still, the lack of an upper-echelon half-court creator looms large in a playoff setting.

Los Angeles has turned in more than 1,000 possessions without a quote-unquote center on the court. It is posting a net rating of 4.2, with a 122.2 offensive rating (92nd percentile), during these stretches. The defense is a different story.

Jaxson Hayes is the only player taller than 6’9” regularly in the Lakers’ current rotation. Head coach JJ Redick has worked around the roster’s lack of traditional size by leaning into no-conventional-big combinations.

The Lakers’ no-big units are allowing over 118.1 points per 100 possessions (26th percentile) while fouling a ton and barely holding it together on the glass. Rival offenses are predictably feasting on the inside, hitting almost 70 percent of their shots at the rim (13th percentile) and over 47 percent of their looks between four and 14 feet (19th percentile).

Prospective matchups will play a huge role in shaping the success of these arrangements. Turbo-charging the offense may be good enough on its own, regardless of the opponent. But it remains to be seen how teams will respond.

Will bigger squads downsize to align themselves with the Lakers’ personnel? Will they try to overwhelm them with size? Can Los Angeles’ no-big lineups stand their ground enough defensively for the offensive benefits to win out? Are there more teams, such as Golden State or the Los Angeles Clippers, who can (technically) beat them at their own game? 

Adding at least one starting-caliber big will top the Lakers’ offseason agenda. In the meantime, they must lean into dynamic offensive lineups without imposing presences in the middle—for both better and worse.

This question encompasses a ton of other ones. Will the LeBron James-Luka Dončić minutes get any better? Can Gabe Vincent keep opposing defenses honest enough from beyond the arc to stay on the floor? How much does Los Angeles need to rely on Jarred Vanderbilt?  

The initial defensive highs following the Dončić trade have settled to something like an almost-happy medium. The Lakers are 17th in points allowed per 100 possessions since Luka made his debut. (They were 13th before the loss to the Warriors.) That is good enough if you’re spitting out an elite offense. Los Angeles is not. It ranks 18th in efficiency during this same span.

Absences from LeBron and Rui Hachimura weigh heavily here. Ditto for some of Dončić’s own performances. (More on this shortly) 

Push comes to shove, it doesn't take much to believe the Lakers can hit and sustain a higher offensive peak. The defense is a separate matter. Some of their smaller lineups can be frenetic and feisty, and they can hold serve when they have the chance to get set. Opponents are generating too many second-chance opportunities, but Los Angeles isn't forfeiting nightmare efficiency in these situations.   

Transition defense is the dicier proposition. Only three teams since Dončić's debut are allowing opponents to get out on the break more often. The LeBron-Luka minutes have thus far exacerbated the problem, in part because they don't always get back, but also because the offense can get weirdly turnover-prone with them.

There is also the Luka-of-it-all issue. LeBron's energy on defense can peter out, but he's capable of doing a bunch of different things on a semi-consistent basis. Offenses aren't routinely singling him out in the half-court. They don't hold Dončić in the same regard. The Warriors went at him on Thursday, at times relentlessly.

And so we arrive here, wondering what the Lakers' defensive ceiling is with the current personnel, and whether it's more likely to be better than expected or the team's undoing.

Just so we're clear: This question refers exclusively to the 2025 playoffs. We are not in the Patrick Dumont family business of declaring 25-year-old superstars permanently out-of-sorts.

Luka Dončić has turned in some spiffy highs as a member of the Lakers. But there has been more unevenness to him, particularly on the offensive end.

While his three-point percentage has often wax and waned amid absurd volume and shot difficulty, he is typically uber efficient inside the arc. This has yet to be the case in Los Angeles.

Dončić is converting just 46.6 percent of his twos since joining the Lakers. His 65 percent clip at the rim would be his lowest since he was a rookie, and he has seen his mid-range efficiency plunge to a personal nadir.

Adding to the confusion: There is not a marked change in Dončić's shot distribution. He is taking fewer mid-rangers and slightly more catch-and-fire threes in Los Angeles, but those aren’t groundbreaking shifts. The quality of his looks at the rim, on floaters and from mid-range overall is also right in line with the rest of his career, if not slightly better, according to BBall Index. 

Could he be dealing with lingering symptoms from his ankle issues earlier this year? Is this part and parcel of joining a new team midstream? Will familiarity with his teammates fix everything? Does he need more vertical threats around him? Is this much ado about nothing, a blip destined to correct itself when it matters most? One way or the other, we'll find out.

Dan Favale covers the NBA for Bleacher Report. Follow him on Bluesky (@danfavale), and subscribe to the Hardwood Knocks podcast, co-hosted by Bleacher Report's Grant Hughes.

Unless otherwise cited, stats courtesy of NBA.com, Basketball Reference, Stathead or Cleaning the Glass. Salary information via Spotrac. Draft-pick obligations via RealGM.