JJ Redick’s first year as an NBA coach has gone better than most anticipated. The Lakers, after three years of being a Play-In team, became the West’s No. 3 seed in Redick’s first year. While that was certainly aided by the addition of Luka Doncic, Redick has acquitted himself quite nicely to the head coaching role and seems to be getting the most out of L.A.’s roster.
While there wasn’t much doubt about Redick’s schematic acumen, that doesn’t matter if you can’t get guys to buy in to your message. To this point, he has been able to do that, as evidenced by the Lakers bounce back performance in Game 2 in which their defensive effort was vastly superior to a Game 1 flop.
Redick’s career as a player gives him some instant credibility for what he’s asking guys to do, and as was abundantly clear in Game 2, Redick isn’t afraid to get after his guys if he doesn’t like their effort. In the third quarter, with the Wolves having trimmed the Lakers’ lead to 11, Redick lost it as he took a timeout before an inbounds play, f-bombing his guys as they walked to the bench.
Redick was clearly not happy with how they were getting into whatever action they were supposed to be starting off that inbounds play, and had a mini-meltdown as he strode onto the court in disgust after calling the quick timeout on his own guys.
After the game, Redick tried to claim it “wasn’t frustration, just coaching,” noting he could see the Lakers were starting to lose some of the crispness and organization to their offense and wanted to stop that before it became a real issue.
It’s a tough sell on the “not frustration” aspect when you drop a bunch of f-bombs on your guys as they walk back to the bench, but he was right about the timing of the timeout. The Lakers were starting to wobble and maybe lose a bit of focus, and his quick tirade certainly got that message across.
LeBron James shrugged off Redick’s tone, noting with a chuckle that the Lakers have grown accustomed to the fact that he will “spazz out” at times. He says the players have to focus on the message and not how Redick’s saying it, and in this case that was to lock back in and keep running good offense.
They certainly did that, with a quick 7-0 run out of that timeout to push their lead back out closer to 20 and keep the Timberwolves at arm’s length. While the offense struggled in the fourth quarter to maintain the crispness Redick was asking for, the defense did more than enough to hold up and get them back into the series at 1-1 heading to Minnesota.
