The Los Angeles Lakers will have home-court advantage in the first round, no matter the result of their final regular season game against the Utah Jazz on Sunday. Head coach JJ Redick and L.A. clinched a top-4 seed for the second straight season on Friday with their win over the Phoenix Suns and the Houston Rockets’ loss.
If they lose or the Denver Nuggets win on Sunday, they will be the No. 4 seed and host the Rockets in the first round. If they win and the Nuggets lose, they’ll jump to No. 3 and host the Minnesota Timberwolves, mirroring last season’s results exactly. And Redick discussed being proud of that regular season result, even if that’s the end of the road for L.A.
“I mean, I think it’s our goal every year I’ve ever been in the NBA. Your goal is to win a championship. That’s your goal. When you represent the Lakers and play for the Lakers and coach the Lakers, that’s their goal every year. That’s our fans’ goal,” he said.
“Let’s not discredit what this group did for the regular season, regardless of what happens in the playoffs. Because to clinch home-court and to win 52 games, possibly 53 games, and deal with the amount of adversity we had, not just with injuries, but again, with the loudness. It is just gonna be out there with our team because it’s the Lakers.
“It’s a credit to our players. It’s a credit to our staff for just persevering and just keeping our head down and doing the work. And [we] coached in a bunch of different ways this year, our players had to adjust, players made sacrifices. A lot of these guys that I’ve talked about are [in] contract years. It’s been, I think for everybody, a really great opportunity to grow as players, as coaches, as people.”
The current Grade 2 left hamstring strain to Luka Doncic and Grade 2 left oblique strain for Austin Reaves — likely keeping them sidelined for the first round of the playoffs — is the end of a long list of adversity the Lakers have faced this season. It’s for that reason that Redick has pride in his team’s regular season.
“I would say I’m extremely proud of our team, our players and our coaches, for dealing with the entire NBA season,” Redick said. “I think for maybe one or two teams a year they don’t have a lot of ups and downs and the roller coaster is fairly flat. But for most every team in the NBA, your ability to bounce back from failure is the key to the aggregation of what your season is.
“You hope you can win 50-plus games and you hope you can get home-court advantage in the first round and be a top seed. I know none of you guys had us in the top four to begin the season, that’s just a reality. Most people had us as a Play-In team or even worse. So we’ve had to manage the expectations of the Lakers and also the negativity that just surrounds every loss. I think our group has managed that well.”
The Lakers, led by LeBron James, will do everything they can to survive long enough in the playoffs to maybe get Doncic or Reaves back in the lineup. But it’s unclear if that will be possible given the increased intensity of the postseason and how undermanned L.A. will be.
Regardless, it seems that Redick is happy with what his team has accomplished, and it increases the hope for the team’s future heading into an important offseason.
JJ Redick knows everyone wants to play Lakers in playoffs
Playing the Lakers in the playoffs went from something teams would like to avoid — given how well they were playing — to something opponents might be seeking out after the Doncic and Reaves injuries. Redick and the Lakers know that teams are jockeying in the hopes to get the Lakers in an earlier round.
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