Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick isn’t afraid to let his players know when he’s upset and it was apparent after the team laid a dud against the Atlanta Hawks.
The Lakers lost to a shorthanded Hawks squad by 20, prompting an upset Redick to be short with his responses in his postgame press conference. Redick has been seen calling timeouts enraged over poor execution, but the loss to Atlanta offered what pure disappointment can look like.
Fortunately for the Lakers and their head coach, they got back on track with a win against the Charlotte Hornets. The first half was much closer than it needed to be considering Charlotte was also missing several starters, but Los Angeles responded in the second half to claim a solid victory.
After the win, Redick credited his players for taking ownership of their poor performance against the Hawks, via Spectrum SportsNet:
“They took ownership of [Saturday], which I thought was huge. Didn’t get off to a great start defensively [on Monday]. Our huddles were great: every time we came back, they were trying to problem-solve in real time. The self-correction in real time with dialogue, that’s a mark of a really good team, and a lot of teams aren’t able to do that player to player, and our guys were great with that.”
Redick had to be pleased with a more concerted effort to problem solve on the court against a Hornets team that nearly gave them another disastrous loss. The first half defense was non-existent as Charlotte scored on almost every possession down the floor, but the second half showed how connected they can be once they’re on the same page.
Los Angeles has been one of the elite offenses during the early part of the season thanks to Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves, but the team needs to be better defensively if it wants to hang with the rest of the Western Conference. Taking ownership after a loss like the one against the Hawks is an early indicator that this team believes in itself, so it’ll be interesting to see how they look from this point forward.
Dalton Knecht says JJ Redick was a lot calmer than usual after loss to Hawks
JJ Redick admitted that he saw nothing from the Lakers within the first two minutes of their bad game against the Hawks, so maybe that’s why Dalton Knecht felt he was calmer than usual because he already knew they were in for a rough night.
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