for two games on their home court.

“You never lose the (series) after the first game, second game, third game, to be honest. You’ve gotta get beat four times, you’ve gotta win four times. So, that’s the outlook. We know we didn’t play very well. We didn’t play to our standards. And we’ll get better.”

LeBron James added: “They took home court from us as far as the series. But we have an opportunity to even the series on Tuesday. And we have to play a much better game than we did (on Saturday). Control the controllables, and if we do that, we’re gonna give ourselves a much better chance to win than we did.”

There were several factors the Lakers mentioned as to why the Timberwolves controlled most of Saturday’s matchup, including outscoring the Lakers 76-41 from late in the first quarter to late in the third to turn an early Lakers’ 20-12 lead into an 88-61 lead for Minnesota.

There were the Timberwolves’ franchise playoff-record 21 3-pointers.

Minnesota also scored 23 second-chance points and had 25 fast-break points.

But a common talking point was that the Lakers did not match the Timberwolves’ physicality during significant stretches of the game.

“This Minnesota team, they’re gonna be physical,” James said. “That’s what they bring to the table. Maybe it took us one playoff game to now get a feel for it and know what type of intensity, the type of physicality, is gonna be brought to the game. But that’s just the way they play. So we should be more than prepared for that on Tuesday night.”

A point of encouragement for the Lakers: them trimming their deficit to 12 multiple times once they picked up their physicality.

“Sometimes it takes a quarter, two quarters, full game to get used to playoff basketball once again,” James said. “So it shouldn’t be no surprise (on) Tuesday.”