According to Dan Woike of The Los Angeles Times, JJ Redick, the Los Angeles Lakers’ first-year head coach, has spent little time adding his own flair to the team’s offseason.
Apart from All-NBA Lakers frontcourt stars LeBron James and Anthony Davis, along with starting forward Rui Hachimura, several Lakers have already returned to the team’s practice facilities in El Segundo to start putting in some major offseason workout run, according to Woike.
With Redick and the rest of his brand-new coaching staff now in place, the team has already been shaking up its routine.
“Workouts have featured more live basketball — one on one and three on three — than past summers when the focus was more on individual, noncompetitive work,” Woike writes.
It’s a bit extrapolative for Woike to propose that this is a major change, perhaps, but it does clearly reflect an interest in building up the Lakers’ young players still drawing cost-controlled rookie-scale salaries.
Last year’s rookies, guard Jalen Hood-Schifino and forward Maxwell Lewis, hardly made a dent on the team’s rotation under former head coach Darvin Ham. Could Redick and his crew be looking to remedy
“This could be one step of the player development changes that Redick vowed to make when he took the job this summer, a change the organization has tied to the changing salary cap rules,” Woike wonders. “But, honestly, the changes probably were overdue.”
The most frustrating elements of Ham’s two-year tenure were (1) his inconsistent and inscrutable rotational decisions midseason and (2) his non-answer press conference answers.
We know Redick, a natural character and longtime media magnate with years of being an ESPN pundit and podcaster under his belt, will at least always be an entertaining quote machine.
We don’t know if his supposed expert basketball acumen will translate to much more postseason success than Ham had. During his first season in power, the now-Milwaukee Bucks assistant coach led L.A. to the Western Conference Finals, despite the team being a technical underdog throughout its playoff run.
Ham also developed young undrafted shooting guard Austin Reaves into the team’s de facto third-best player, and helped Anthony Davis find himself once again as a magnificent defender.
Redick has said he’ll re-emphasize the 3-point line and modernize L.A.’s relatively pedantic offense, using much of the same personnel as he had last year.
Thus far this offseason, the Lakers have brought on a pair of rookie guards. No. 17 pick Dalton Knecht is considered capable of contributing right away, while No. 55 pick Bronny James, son of Lakers All-Star LeBron James, is seen as more of a long-term project.
