For the second straight year, the Los Angeles Lakers were eliminated in the playoffs by the Denver Nuggets, as they were bounced in five games by the defending champs in the first round of the postseason after getting swept by them in the Western Conference Finals last year.

And yet, the series was much closer than the 4-1 record seemingly indicates. If you ask popular hip-hop artist Snoop Dogg, he believes that while the Lakers didn’t win, they did manage to expose the Nuggets during their battle in the first round.

Snoop Dogg’s unique stance on the Lakers first-round loss to the Nuggets

The Lakers aren’t going to feel good about losing in the first round, but it wasn’t like they were totally blown out of the water by the Nuggets. Denver won two games on last-second shots, and Los Angeles frequently threw away big leads throughout the series.

Now, the Nuggets are getting exposed by the Minnesota Timberwolves in their second-round series, as they have fallen behind 2-1 through three games. As a result, Snoop Dogg believes that the Lakers provided the Timberwolves with the blueprint for how to beat the Nuggets.

“We softened them up for the Timberwolves, and if you watching you can pay attention to what I’m saying,” Snoop Dogg said on The Stephen A. Smith Show. “We showed all their loopholes, all their weaknesses, and we didn’t have the height to deal with it, we didn’t have the young gangster to deal with it. Now they up against somebody that’s not afraid, that don’t know nothing about nothing but we just gonna kill everything that’s in front of us.”

“I like (Anthony Edwards), I love how he get at them. We didn’t have that. We had the makings of, and we had spurts of it; we had the lead by 20, and we lost. They beat us two games with last-second shots, so that let you know that we wasn’t bad and we wasn’t far off, we just didn’t have that killer instinct that the Timberwolves got. When they get up, they kill. We let people come back,” Snoop Dogg added.

Snoop Dogg highlights the big need the Lakers need to address this offseason

While Snoop Dogg does an excellent job highlighting how this series was closer than it seemed, he also exposed the Laker’s biggest flaw. While they have top players in LeBron James and Anthony Davis, they don’t have a guy like Anthony Edwards, who can close out top teams late in games.

The Laker’s late-game execution was their biggest flaw in this series. They threw away big leads time and again, and they failed to close out the Nuggets late in games when they had an opportunity to do so. The Timberwolves have not struggled with those same problems, though.

The Nuggets showed life with a bounce-back victory in Game 3, but it’s been tough to ignore how the Timberwolves have managed to dominate their opponent early on with their height and tough shot-making ability. Those are two things that LA seriously lacked for much of the year.

Los Angeles has to figure out their future, particularly when it comes to LeBron James, over the next few months. But once they figure that out, they would be wise to look to add some height and clutch shotmakers to the team’s supporting cast.