Do the Undermanned Lakers & Timberwolves Stand a Chance vs OKC and Wemby?

Vincent Goodwill of ESPN walked The Rich Eisen Show through the second-round wrinkle that nobody penciled in when they were drawing up brackets in Sharpie. Two banged-up teams, the Lakers and the Timberwolves, might still have something to say about the Western Conference picture.

For weeks, the consensus was clean. Spurs and Thunder in the Western Conference Finals. Then the Lakers and Wolves advanced without their stars on the floor, and the conversation got more complicated.

Goodwill split the two situations apart. Luka Dončić is not close. "My colleague Brian Windhorst said that they haven't even begun the ramp-up phase of Luka Dončić," Goodwill said. The instinct around hamstrings, he warned, is to underrate them next to knees and ligaments, but the Lakers are looking at a 10-year investment in Dončić and there is a list of players in NBA history who tore a hamstring and never got their pop back. The smart play, in his read, is to be careful even if it costs the second round.

Minnesota is a different problem. Anthony Edwards coming back, Goodwill said, is the raisin in the potato salad for anyone who already booked Spurs versus Thunder for the conference finals. He thinks the Wolves can be spoilers. They have made the Western Conference Finals two years running. They beat up on the Denver Nuggets, the team most observers expected would give San Antonio a real second-round tune-up. They have outplayed more favored opponents through the early rounds and look comfortable doing it.

"They've always seemed to be in this underdog status," Goodwill said, and added that he does not think a hobbled or recovering Edwards changes that. The Wolves have the experience to walk into San Antonio, steal a game or two, and make the series uncomfortable for a team that has not been there yet at this stage.

Rich brought up Shams Charania reporting that Edwards was at a shootaround that morning and might be pushing for an earlier return than expected. Goodwill nodded along, then circled back to a food reference he had dropped earlier in the conversation, the raisin in the potato salad line. He told Rich he would not have thrown it out there if he didn't think Rich would catch it. Rich confirmed he caught it. T.J. laughed at the suggestion that he would have missed it. The bit landed, and Goodwill kept moving.

The through-line of the segment was a useful corrective to Sharpie predictions. The favorites are the favorites for a reason. The Spurs and Thunder are loaded. The Lakers without Luka Dončić and the Timberwolves without a fully healthy Anthony Edwards are not the favorites. They are also not done. Goodwill's read was that the gap between expectation and outcome in this round is going to come down to which underdog stays standing long enough to make the conversation about something other than the team everyone already crowned.