The regular season has come and gone for the Los Angeles Lakers and they clinched the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference, which means a first round matchup with the Minnesota Timberwolves.
JJ Redick’s first season as a head coach can unquestionably be considered a success, although he knows he will be judged by what happens in the playoffs.
Redick was part of many postseason series’ as a player, but this will be his first as a head coach. So as far as having a week to prepare for a series goes, this will be Redick’s first crack at formulating a plan to do that and he explained how things will be handled, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“A lot of value. We’ll get together Tuesday night and watch the Play-In together. We’ll spend some time Tuesday and Wednesday introducing a little bit of playoff stuff. It’s not necessarily gonna be everything at once this week, we’ll have to slow-drip and I think that’s the approach that I think is gonna work best for our group. So Tuesday will be more about us, Wednesday we’ll introduce Minnesota. That gives our coaching staff now basically three fulls days and then we can sort of map out what we want to do in terms of Minnesota prep Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and potentially Saturday.”
The Lakers are set to host the Timberwolves in Game 1 on Saturday evening, so Redick and his staff have around a week to prepare.
That much time off should also give the Lakers players plenty of time to rest and practice, which is very valuable at this point in the season.
While Redick is a first-time head coach, he has a lot of experience on his staff that he can lean on this postseason, not to mention high IQ players like LeBron James, Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. With a week to prepare, it will be interesting to see what type of game plan that group can put together to win Game 1 and the series overall.
JJ Redick knows Timberwolves will be challenge for Lakers
After a slow start to the regular season, the Timberwolves have been one of the best teams in the league in the second half, so JJ Redick knows they will be a good challenge for the Lakers.
“Very difficult opponent. They’ve played as well as anyone lately. I believe they’re one of four teams in the top 10 in offense and defense, so they present a lot of problems.”
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