The Los Angeles Lakers faced a lot of adversity during the 2025-26 season with every key player missing time due to injury, most notable Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves going down just before the start of the playoffs.
The Lakers have been able to overcome it all though and have no advanced to the second round of the playoffs, something head coach JJ Redick is proud of.
“I think when you’re in the moment of despair, which as a highly competitive person can happen every day unfortunately, but when you’re in the moment of despair, you can have doubts. But to me, that’s the NBA season. The NBA season is about the aggregate and if you look over the course of the year, we lose two games in a row, three games in a row, the guys respond,” Redick said of his team.
“It just kept adding up. And we get done with the regular season or we get close to being done with the regular season and we have Luka and AR’s injuries and I had no doubt in my mind that we could get the group back and build the belief and confidence and be able to execute and give ourselves an opportunity to win a playoff series. Then, go take on the World Champions and be competitive in that too.”
Redick credited the work he and his team have put in all season in order to get to this point.
“It’s our daily work. That’s really what it is,” he said. “There’s sometimes where as a coach, you’re like man, I just wish I could do Xs and Os. That’s not the job. That’s a small portion of the job and so it’s the daily work, it’s building guys up, it’s putting out fires, it’s collaboration, it’s trying to get the group to play for the right reasons. It’s all of that, and it’s just constant. I think when you have great players and you have leaders on the team, I said at the beginning of the year the best teams are player-led teams, that has been the case forever. It certainly makes it a little bit easier.”
The Lakers’ season is by no means over as they now faced their toughest challenge yet in the defending-champion Oklahoma City Thunder. That won’t be an easy task, especially with Doncic still injured, but there’s no doubt Redick will have his team ready to compete when they take the floor for Game 1 on Tuesday.
JJ Redick believes Lakers’ series win was collective effort
The Lakers got contributions from everyone on the roster in their first-round series win over the Houston Rockets, and Redick believes that was the difference.
“I would start with the collective,” Redick said of the Lakers’ effort after the Game 6 win. “I remember there was a press conference that we did after one of our games during the 16-2 stretch and you guys were really hammering home a point about a specific player. I honestly can’t remember who the player was.
“And I made the comment, I said the reason our team is winning is because of our team. Because each guy is starring in his role and contributing to winning. And that’s the story of this playoff series for us. Where each guy had moments that helped us win the game. I thought the collective tonight was awesome, especially defensively.
“Jaxson and DA (Deandre Ayton), with the adjustment we made going into Game 5, made a small tweak to some (Alperen) Sengun stuff this morning. Those guys were just phenomenal defensively and really did a great job of protecting the rim.”
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