Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick wasted no time in putting his own spin on the team’s offseason, writes Dan Woike of the Los Angeles Times.
In addition to Lakers All-NBA forward stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis, as well as starting forward Rui Hachimura, several Lakers have already returned to the team’s practice facility in El Segundo to begin conducting significant offseason workouts, according to Woike.
Now that Redick and the rest of his new coaching staff are in place, the team has already begun to shake up its routine.
“The workouts featured more live basketball — one-on-one and three-on-three — than in previous summers, when the emphasis was more on individual, noncompetitive work,” Woike writes.
It’s a bit of a stretch for Woike to suggest this is a major change, perhaps, but it clearly reflects an interest in developing the Lakers’ young players who are still earning cost-controlled starting salaries. Last year’s rookies, guard Jalen Hood-Schifino and forward Maxwell Lewis, made little difference in the team’s rotation under former head coach Darvin Ham. Could Redick and his staff be looking to remedy that?
“This could be a step in the development changes Redick committed to when he took over this summer, a change the organization has tied to salary cap changes,” Woike wonders. “But honestly, those changes were probably long overdue.”
The most frustrating elements of Ham’s two-year tenure have been (a) his inconsistent and impenetrable midseason rotation decisions and (b) his unanswerable press conference responses. We know that Redick, a natural character and longtime media mogul with years of experience as an ESPN pundit and podcaster, will at least always be an entertaining quote machine.
It’s unclear whether his supposed basketball acumen will translate into more playoff success than Ham’s. In his first season in charge, the Milwaukee Bucks assistant coach led LA to the Western Conference Finals, despite being technically underdogs throughout its playoff run. Ham also turned undrafted young guard Austin Reaves into the team’s third-best player, and helped Anthony Davis re-establish himself as a magnificent defender. Redick has said he’s going to re-emphasize the three-point line and modernize LA’s relatively pedantic offense, using much of the same personnel as last year.
So far, the Lakers have drafted two starting guards. Dalton Knecht, the 17th overall pick, is seen as an immediate contributor, while Bronny James, the 55th overall pick and son of Lakers All-Star LeBron James, is considered a long-term project.
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