Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick finally got the proverbial monkey off his back, notching his first win of the preseason against the Milwaukee Bucks.
Redick has been preaching about establishing good habits and a baseline for competitiveness and the Lakers have followed suit as they’ve steadily improved each outing.
As someone who obsesses over details, Redick hasn’t had much time to properly install certain plays and concepts. After the game against the Bucks, Redick broke down what he saw on the floor and admitted it’s been difficult to practice everything he would like, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“Yeah, again we we didn’t necessarily game plan, but we gave them three things pregame that we truthfully haven’t had a ton of time to work on,” Redick said. “One was our pick-and-roll coverage with Dame, which conceptually we haven’t practiced once, and I thought Max Christie and our bigs did a really good job. We gave them some veer to pop against their popping bigs. We executed it a little bit, not great, but a little bit. We’ve had about five minutes in practice. That’s all the time we’ve had so far to practice that.
“And then our [transition defense] against Giannis, which we showed them on tape, that’s what we had time for, so it would have been nice to have a practice day yesterday. But thems the breaks. So that wasn’t great. Our transition defense in the first half was not great. Overall, I thought the group that played the first half did a nice job.”
However, Redick did seem pleased with the transition defense as the players looked intentional trying to get back or crash the offensive glass, which has been a big focus:
“It was also pretty good in the first half, there was a real intent to crash. We’re gonna have to rewatch the tape, we saw some of the clips at halftime in our transition defense. I don’t think it was the crashing that led to them scoring in transition. There were some plays that we didn’t match up, there were some plays where we clearly were in position to load and we didn’t load. There were some plays where we got crossmatched and then all of a sudden we got discombobulated. So I don’t think it was the crashing that led to the bad transition defense. So I liked the intent from our guys. That was our priority, something we talked about yesterday and today. So overall, pretty good.”
The process should always matter more than the results, and for now it sounds like Redick is happy to see his team making strides.
Gabe Vincent gave JJ Redick game ball after first win
It may just be preseason, but JJ Redick earning his first career win is a big deal and Gabe Vincent made sure to give him the game ball to commemorate the moment.
Have you subscribed to our YouTube channel? It’s the best way to watch player interviews, exclusive coverage from events, participate in live shows, and more!
