Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick will have to maneuver these next handful of weeks without his top two scorers in Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. After a great month of March, L.A. crashed back down to reality to begin April with both players suffering injuries that will keep them out for the remainder of the regular season and beyond.
As Redick tries to salvage these last five games before the postseason, he discussed what will change, particularly offensively, with Doncic and Reaves out, via Khobi Price of the California Post:
“From a strategic, tactical standpoint, we obviously are gonna have to play a little bit differently. There’s enough that we have in that we can play through LeBron, play through Rui, play through DA [Deandre Ayton]. And then we’ll just wait and see until Austin [Reaves] and [Marcus] Smart are back. But, our mission hasn’t changed. We want to go get the 3-seed and we want to win a first-round series. I know Luka [Doncic] is gonna do everything he can to get back on the court. We don’t know what this recovery timetable looks like, but our job, the rest of these guys and my staff are going after the three seed and we are going to try and win a playoff series and we will see what happens with Luka.”
Without Doncic and now Reaves, who is dealing with a left oblique injury, the second-year coach discussed which players could see increased ball-handling responsibilities:
“Yeah, I think the only thing would be again until we know the status of AR and Smart, those are the second and third ball handlers, so the the ball handling role, we’ll obviously have to ask guys to do more. Kobe [Bufkin], Nick [Smith Jr.], Dalton [Knecht], those guys will be with us at some point for tomorrow. It’s much easier when Luka, AR LeBron, when those three guys are in the lineup, again, I don’t know if people know this, but there is 240 minutes you can play for a game, for players. When three guys are taking up 34 to 38 minutes, it makes it really difficult to play a nine-man rotation. So, we’ll probably have to play a 10, 11-man rotation, all hands on deck.”
Odds are certainly stacked against the Lakers right now with two key pieces sidelined. However, this is the time for young players to step up and impress their head coach in these final regular season games.
How Luka Doncic can still qualify for NBA awards
Doncic had a historic first full season with the Lakers, with March being the best stretch offensively. Since he is sidelined for the rest of the season due to injury, Doncic was only able to play 64 of the 65 games necessary to qualify for end-of-season awards.
However, there is a way for the Lakers star to still qualify for these awards, as his agent Bill Duffy put out a statement discussing their plan to make it happen.
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