The story has been the same for Los Angeles Lakers forward Jarred Vanderbilt for nearly the entire time he’s been with the franchise. When healthy, he is an extremely impactful defensive player that can guard multiple positions and can even be assigned opposing team’s best players. But his offense has, at times, made him borderline unplayable.
That’s been the battle for head coach JJ Redick, to figure out how to best utilize Vanderbilt on offense so the team can have what he brings on defense. But the scrappy forward has not been healthy enough to take strides on that end of the floor, leaving Redick unable to use him at all in some big spots.
But he has looked like a different guy so far in the preseason. Vanderbilt had a highly impactful 13 minutes on Thursday night before taking a knee to the quad, and had strong showings in previous preseason games as well. Redick spoke about what he’s seen from Vanderbilt that gives him high hopes for the upcoming campaign.
“He can be a really impactful guy on both ends,” Redick said. “You can see he’s moving better than he was last season. You can clearly tell that he’s spent a lot of time working on his game this summer. I know he’s spent a lot of time with AJ Diggs who was one of my coaches in New Orleans.
“I said this a lot early in the preseason, I put him in a tough spot last year by necessity of playing him at the five. And having him be able to guard multiple positions at the perimeter and be a crasher and hopefully a high-level corner spacer and a cutter. He got a corner cut tonight against their zone. He can do a lot. I like him as a playmaker. He can make the right read and I thought he did a good job tonight pushing pace.”
Vanderbilt has been at his best when he can be at least a marginal threat from the corners on offense. Beyond just shooting 3-pointers, that also means cutting and playmaking out of those spots, as Redick describes. But if he is shooting as poorly as he has at some points, then defenses can completely ignore him, making his cutting ineffective as well.
Improving at the corner 3 would be a massive upgrade for the Lakers. But they more so need Vanderbilt to be a threat to make some sort of play out of the corner to get defenses to respect him. If he can do that, the Lakers no longer play 4-on-5 when he’s on the floor, and his defense can be utilized to its fullest effect.
It remains to be seen if any of this will carry to the regular season. But if it does, L.A.’s rotation gets that much deeper and more effective.
JJ Redick discusses starting lineup decisions
Since training camp began, one of the biggest questions surrounding the Lakers is what their starting lineup will be. Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves, LeBron James and Deandre Ayton are basically locks, but the fifth spot seems to be up in the air for JJ Redick.
There are multiple different options for Redick, including Rui Hachimura who started all last year, as well as newcomers Marcus Smart or Jake LaRavia. Perhaps Jarred Vanderbilt, who has been one of the standouts of preseason, is an option as well.
Whatever Redick’s decision ultimately is, there will be a lot that goes into the thought process in determining the lineups and he broke down everything that is considered in figuring out the starters and any other lineup he puts on the court.
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