The Los Angeles Lakers put forth another strong defensive effort against one of the better offensive teams in the NBA, holding the Atlanta Hawks 16 points below their season average in their win. Head coach JJ Redick really got into his team at halftime and it paid off as the Lakers held the Hawks to just 45 points on 36.4% shooting in the second half.
Redick wasn’t happy with the defensive discipline of the Lakers in the first half, even noting some rough moments from Dorian Finney-Smith. However, he was happy with how the team as a whole bounced back in the second half.
“Doe (Dorian Finney-Smith) had an awful first half. It was bad,” Redick said after the win. “He was great in the second half. I told him that at halftime. He was awful. I don’t know where that came from. I played with him and watched him. Our game plan discipline in the first half was so bad. It was so bad.
“I thought our guys played offensively with the right intent. Another night where we got close to 30 assists. Defensively, Trae Young bends you in ways. We played coverage tonight, and he still had 33 and nine [assists]. He’s a fantastic offensive player. But I thought our defense overall in the second half was much better. Doe, Max, those guys. You go against elite offensive players, you’re not going to stop them. They’re going to figure out ways to score and assist their teammates.”
As Redick said, it is impossible to stop the truly elite players, but Finney-Smith and Max Christie are doing as good a job as possible of making things tough on them and that’s all you can ask for. Redick is continuing to push this Lakers team because he feels they have the potential to be a great team and wants them to reach that goal.
“I’m encouraged by our team in general,” Redick added. “I think the message that I relayed to them at halftime was the reason why that stuff matters. The reason why executing a personnel-based scouting report that we’ve talked about is because I don’t want to coach a good team, and I don’t want to be a part of a good team. I want to be a part of a great team, and I believe this team can be a great team. So, it is about the small details.
“We said this the other night at halftime against Sacramento and felt the same way against this team. This is not a knock on either of these teams, it’s just the nature of how they play and how they score. At times, they’re just running up and down the court, and it feels like a pickup game. We’re going to lose the pickup game. We have to get back on defense. We have to execute on offense. We have to pass, and we have to screen. When we’ve done that, we’ve been a really good basketball team.”
The Lakers have a standard of excellence and Redick wants this team to live up to that and be a real contender. In order to do that they can’t let those details fall by the wayside which is why Redick continues to push them so hard. And right now it is paying off as the Lakers are playing their best basketball of the season.
JJ Redick details frustrations with Lakers’ defense in first half vs. Hawks
When it comes to why JJ Redick was so frustrated with the Lakers’ defensive performance in the first half, it was mainly due to the team failing to follow the game plan and player trends that the coaching staff laid out before the game.
“It started with makes. They had 11 fastbreak points in the first half and some of them were off our turnovers, but they scored nine right after makes,” Redick noted. “Essentially 20 transition points in a half, which is insane. The thing that really got me was the Bogdanovic running into screens and ghosting out, which we said he was gonna do.
“The last five games, he’s done that a number of times every game. He hasn’t set a screen yet. So why are we switching that? And creating confusion, they get open 3s, he gets behind the defense and they score. He’s not gonna set the screen. He’s going to run, you stay with your own, you call a square, that part of it, we couldn’t have emphasized that any more.”
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