The Los Angeles Lakers' season is officially over after a crushing 103-96 loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves at home in Game 5 of the first round. Los Angeles was in each of the last four games late into the fourth quarter, but a lack of execution on offense doomed them in three of them and eventually led to their elimination.

One of the biggest storylines during the series was the Lakers' decision to go with a small lineup for most of the series, putting starting center Jaxson Hayes on the bench. Hayes didn't eclipse 10 minutes in each of the first four games and didn't see any playing time in Game 5.

After the game, head coach JJ Redick talked about the reason that Hayes couldn't get on the court.

“There's always a trade-off,” Redick said. “We couldn't score. So there's a trade-off to everything.”

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In hindsight, the decision to bench Jaxson Hayes backfired on Redick. The Lakers struggled to rebound throughout the series and especially in Game 5, where Wolves center Rudy Gobert finished with a 27-point, 24-rebound double-double to help send the Lakers home.

In the end, the Lakers were just too small and too shallow on the bench to compete with a Timberwolves team that has a lot of size and several quality bench players. Los Angeles consistently got tired at the end of games and gassed out down the stretch, causing a lot of missed shots and bad possessions on the offensive end in the closing minutes.

On the other end, the Timberwolves were quicker to loose balls and made more hustle plays to pull out the wins.

The Lakers now head into a murky offseason that will be clouded by LeBron James retirement talk until he makes a final decision one way or another. However, it's clear that Redick and the rest of the decision makers for the Purple and Gold have a lot of work to do to round this roster around Luka Doncic and potentially James if they want to see a different result a year from now.