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JJ Redick Faces 1st Coaching Challenge Stopping Lakers’ Sudden Death Spin

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After starting the season with an impressive 3-game home winning streak, the Lakers’ recent 1–4 road trip now has them facing what could become an early season death spin unless JJ Redick can pull off some coaching magic.

With a 4–4 record 8-games into the season, the Lakers are a play-in team, tied with the Clippers for 10th in the West. They have a 114.7 offensive rating (9th), a 118.8 defensive rating (28th), and a -4.1 net rating (21st).
Unfortunately, injuries once again are causing major lineup problems for the Lakers, especially in the front court where critical bigs like Jarred Vanderbilt, Christian Wood, and Christian Koloko have been unavailable.

While Koloko finally played in his first game Wednesday night and made his first basket and block, this was his first NBA game in over a year and a half so it’s going to take time for him to get back into shape and condition.
Meanwhile, the Lakers have still not given any indication that Jarred Vanderbilt or Christian Wood are anywhere near close to being able to return to action, which severely limits the moves JJ Redick can make.

Defense is clearly the Lakers’ major concern, with injuries having stripped them of the bigs and size they need to hold their own on the boards and in the paint. Koloko will help but they desperately need Vando and Wood.
Despite the injuries, the Lakers are still one or two elite players from being a legitimate championship contender. They still need a point-of-attack perimeter defensive guard and an elite backup center to protect the rim.

But barring Vando and Wood returning or Pelinks pulling off a big trade, JJ Redick must make major roster changes to give the current starting lineup more defense and bench lineups more scoring and offensive firepower.

Adding Defense To Starting Lineup

While the Lakers’ current starting lineup of Austin Reaves, D’angelo Russell, LeBron James, Rui Hachimura, and Anthony Davis has a +4.7 net rating for the 7 games played, it lacks championship caliber defense.

Fortunately for the Lakers, head coach JJ Redick has two moves he could make right now without waiting for a trade or for injured players to return to active duty that would immediately upgrade the starting lineup defense.
He could start Cam Reddish at guard to give the team a legitimate point-of-attack perimeter defender to slow down top scorers and Christian Koloko at center to unleash Anthony Davis to roam free on offense and defense.

Until Vanderbilt is healthy or Pelinka makes a trade, Cam Reddish has shown he can provide the perimeter defense the team desperately needs. Right now, neither Russell or Reaves is able to keep in front of their men.
Reddish showed in his play against Ja Morant that he has the athleticism and physicality to have a major impact on the Lakers’ perimeter defense. He’s also played well enough offensively to avoid becoming a liability.

Christian Koloko is the other player JJ Redick should consider starting. While he will need time to get into shape and condition, the Lakers should prioritize getting Koloko minutes next to Davis as well as when he rests.
Giving Koloko good minutes alongside Davis in two-bigs lineups could pay off big for the Lakers as those are the specific lineups Redick envisions will ultimately empower Anthony Davis to become the best version of himself.

Lakers’ rookie head coach JJ Redick should demote D’Angelo Russell and Rui Hachimura to the bench and create a new starting lineup of Austin Reaves, Cam Reddish, LeBron James, Anthony Davis, and Christian Koloko.

Adding Offense To Bench Lineup

After 8 games into the season, the Lakers’ bench of Max Christie, Dalton Knecht, Gabe Vincent, and Jaxson Hayes is averaging just 20.6 points per game. That is the second lowest bench scoring in the entire league.

Dalton Knecht is the only bench player who should remain in the Lakers’ 9-man rotation. JJ Redick needs to replace Max Christie, Gabe Vincent, and Jaxson Hayes with D’Angelo Russell, Rui Hachimura, and Quincy Olivari.
D’Angelo Russell should replace Gabe Vincent as backup point guard, Rui Hachimura should replace Jaxson Hayes as backup power forward, and Quincy Olivari should replace Max Christie as backup shooting guard.

Frankly, the Lakers have tough decisions to make on Max Christie and Gabe Vincent, backup point and shooting guards who’ve struggled at both ends of the court and are a major reason bench minutes have been so poor.
Christie may already have played himself out of the rotation and Vincent may not be far behind. While Pelinka might prefer Max and Gabe play due to their salaries, Redick needs to win and his patience may be running out.

Right now, D’Angelo Russell and Quincy Olivari should be a dramatically better bench backcourt both offensively and defensively. Russell is a huge upgrade over Vincent and Olivari could be a major upgrade over Christie.
While Russell will need to buy in to coming off the bench, he could be 6MOY this season while he and Hachimura join Knecht as a trio of Laker bench shooters with green lights to fire every time they touch the ball.

JJ Redick needs to replace current bench rotation players Max Christy, Gabe Vincent, and Jaxson Hayes and create a new 4-man bench rotation with D’Angelo Russell, Quincy Olivari, Dalton Knecht, and Rui Hachimura.

5 Things: Frizzle Fried

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The Lakers are a team forever on, at a minimum, low heat. Even the dudes who wipe the sweat off the court are under a microscope when you’re a part of the Lakers organization. So the heat will only get hotter for this team as they come home after a fairly disastrous road trip. All but gone are the good vibes from the 3-0 start and replacing them are injury concerns and mediocre effort from guys we expect more out of. The Lakers trudge home 4-4, 10th in the west, and with a lot more questions than answers.

  1. Laker defense blows. At 28th in the NBA with a 118.8 defensive rating the only way to describe the Lakers defense is dreadful. That’s a whole 4 points worse than we finished last season under Coach Ham. With the same team one would expect at least some form of continuity on that end but that doesn’t seem to be the case. We’re not getting back, we played physically for all of 3 games, and then just started letting the other team get into the paint and bully us on the glass. Our defensive rebounding has taken a 3.7% step back, as well. Whatever the coaches are trying to do isn’t working and I don’t think a trade or Vando coming back is enough. The team needs to either fix the physicality issue or change it’s coverage schemes because the blueprint to beat us is pretty simple: play fast. We’re in the bottom five for most measurable defensive metrics. That’s just not anywhere near good enough.
  2. The offense looks solid through 8 games and I expect it to improve slightly in efficiency. This isn’t the area where the lakers are struggling. Our offense is currently the 8th best. Continuity on this end hasn’t been a huge problem, we’re scoring smart and we’re scoring well. We just can’t get a stop anymore. The only area that could stand to get cleaned up a little are the turnovers where we’re probably trying to force things too much or short cut the play in favor of a riskier cross court pass.
  3. Leave Knecht on the bench. I knew as soon as I saw Rui out this would pave the way for a poor decision: starting Dalton Knecht. The dude is playing pretty well off the bench and has a nice role he’s already carved out. Give him the time to get better at that and start a guy like Cam to infuse the starting lineup with the correct kind of juice. Cam played really well in his minutes and happens to be playing for his NBA life. He was a spark plug for us last season and Coach Reddick has been pining for one of those energy guys while simultaneously ignoring the one he has that’s healthy and ready to play.
  4. Enough with this 9 man rotation. Both the coaches and the players need more time. You’re not doing yourself a single favor by essentially benching 1/5th of your roster so you can play who you think are the 9 best. You’re 4-4 with no clear path back to consistently winning, the first month of the regular season is glorified training camp where the games matter, this is still an apropos time to be discovering combinations that work and a rotation doesn’t have to be set in November. It needs to have an idea of what it is by 2025, it needs to be comfortable with one another by January and if it’s not working it needs to be changed as best it can via trade in February. Lastly, there are 4…maybe 5…total players who deserve to be in a 9 man rotation. The rest are role players so use this time now to figure out which ones augment those intelligent 2 man pairings based off LeBron/Reaves and AD/DLO.
  5. Letting the wrong players leave. Under Rob Pelinka, and numerous coaches, we’ve let the wrong players leave the organization far too often. I’m not talking about how we draft, although prior to Knecht that, too, left a lot to be desired, but rather what we do with the players we actually have and why we choose to let some of them walk for no reason. Alex Caruso left so we could keep THT who has almost bottomed out of the league while Caruso plays a meaningful role in OKC. Instead of Scottie Pippen Jr. we somehow still have Maxwell Lewis on the roster and after watching Scottie dissect us on defense it’s hard for me to understand why. The kid just plays hard and plays right. What does Lewis even do well in the G League? This disturbing trend has resulted in a severe talent drain of affordable players that a team like the Lakers can’t afford to keep getting wrong.

Got another one tomorrow on my birthday. Which seems to always get ruined by an election or a bad Lakers game. The shitty election already happened so here’s hoping at least the Lakers win against the injury ravaged 76ers… Yay 50.