After earning his first preseason win against the Milwaukee Bucks, Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick had to endure his team struggling against the Golden State Warriors on Tuesday night in Las Vegas.
There’s always a little extra motivation between the Lakers and the Warriors when they match up, but it was the latter that ended up the victor as they blew out the former 111-97.
Anthony Davis was the highlight of the night for Los Angeles as he dominated the game on both ends, leading all players in points and rebounds with 24 and 12, respectively. He shot an impressive 10-of-14 from the field, though the rest of the team largely struggled with their shotmaking.
Despite the Lakers only shooting 35.8 percent from the field, Redick said he was pleased with the shots the team was able to generate.
“I was highly encouraged with the shots we got,” Redick said. “Highly encouraged. It was when we didn’t trust our offense and got a little stagnant, ball stuck. That’s that was the beginning of that quarter. We had 19 points, I think, in the third and AD had eight on four straight possessions in iso ball, which I called those plays because AD hadn’t touched it. That was just, we didn’t have good offense that quarter. “That happens sometimes, and it’s a growth opportunity, a learning lesson for our group.
“Our execution, ball movement, passing, all of that stuff, and I’ll rewatch it, but I thought it was great in the first half, we just didn’t make shots. And that’s a human nature, it’s a tendency of groups, of players, I’ve lived it, a lot of these things I’ve lived, so I have some experience in some perspective on it. You stop trusting it and you start (thinking) ‘I gotta get myself going. I gotta get myself going.’ That’s not how we want to play, and that’s OK. It happens. We’ll get better I was I was very pleased with the type of shots we generated and look, given their size and given Draymond is a savvy player, this was not gonna be a heavy rim game for us. It just wasn’t, so, again, I just thought the start of that third, I didn’t like how we played.”
Interestingly enough, Redick believes that his group is ready for Opening Night despite the obvious kinks to work out.
“We’re ready. Just continue to build trust with what we’re doing,” Redick added.
“Again, I’ll rewatch it. But our off-ball roles were very clear, they are very clear. We practiced that, we worked on it again today. When we made stuff up, they hurt us. So you just have to trust it. I thought our guys, when they were in lock and trail and chasing and following our off-ball screening rules, they did a really nice job. And when they didn’t, they hurt us. They got layups, they got open 3 and that’s the biggest thing. There’s some stuff, we’ll continue to clean up some stuff in the transition defense, that wasn’t particularly good. You look at that and then you look at us really just making mistakes in our off-ball rules. That’s how they got 52 points in the paint. And that’s what this team does, that’s what the Warriors do. You have to trust what you’re doing defensively.”
With the season opener against the Minnesota Timberwolves in less than a week, Redick will need to use these final two preseason games to ensure that they are indeed ready.
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