Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick is trying to find ways to get the best out of his group in the middle of the 2025-26 season.
The dog days of the NBA calendar can be challenging, especially for a Lakers squad that is still finding its way.
Injuries have played a part in the team’s inconsistency, though Redick and company will face even more obstacles as the team is set to play a gauntlet of games.
They have five games this upcoming week, starting on the road against the Sacramento Kings on Monday, then back at home against the Atlanta Hawks on Tuesday and Charlotte Hornets on Thursday. To close out the week, L.A. travels to the Portland Trail Blazers on Saturday and then is back home for the Toronto Raptors on Sunday
That is an extremely challenging stretch and Redick explained that managing the upcoming schedule will come down to how well he and the coaching staff can read situations daily.
“You ever read the book ‘Catch 22’? So it’s a Catch 22 in this case cause every time the schedule comes out and you look at it you say, ‘This little stretch, this is gonna be nice.’ But the catch is you’re gonna make it up with a brutal stretch and I think with the Cup we’ve seen that now for the last three years there’s certain teams that have dealt with, whether it’s right after the Cup or in our case January last year, it was March for us. I think we had 17 or 18 games in March of last year, March was our tough month. This is generally speaking our toughest month just from a games standpoint. We got frontloaded to start the season and then we kind of paced everything out and now we’re frontloaded again this month.
“But it’s kind of just for us to have a deal with it I think it was just reading the team. We made the decision I guess what is today, the 11th? We made the decision 12, 13 days ago that we weren’t gonna do shootaround every morning anymore. And part of that thought process was we have a 41-year-old who shouldn’t be on his feet twice a day. Let’s only rev his engine once. The other part of it was just reading personnel. Like, what are we actually getting out of shootaround based on who’s on our team. That’s just the reality.
“And I was on a number of teams that would make that decision halfway through a year. For us in Philly, we always met at the arena after the first probably month-and-a-half of the season because that was good for Joel, that was good for our star player. For him to not have to wake up at 8 a.m., drive in, get to the facility, all that stuff. It’s just good for him. So we kind of made that decision.
“And Friday night felt like we were a little tired, to be honest with you. We gave our effort, but we just didn’t have the pop and the juice against Milwaukee and I would probably attribute that to back-to-back 3 a.m. get into a city nights on Tuesday and Wednesday. So we made the decision we’re not gonna practice Saturday. Yesterday was a scheduled practice, we gave the guys off, we made that decision after the game. So that’s kind of what you have to do in this, you have to read it in real time.”
With the glut of games coming up, the Lakers’ physical and mental endurance will be tested so it’ll be interesting to see how Redick manages it all.
JJ Redick admits he wasn’t at his best during Lakers’ recent rough stretch
The Lakers had a rough December showing as they were blown out multiple times by playoff-caliber teams. JJ Redick took some responsibility for Los Angeles’ rough stretch, admitting that he wasn’t at his best.
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