JJ Redick is a hard coach. He teaches with tough love. He’s passionate. Hyper-competitive. A basketball sicko. He doesn’t mince his words. And he gives credit where credit’s due, only when it’s due.
Before the Lakers’ first preseason game this year, Redick reflected on last year’s first preseason game. “I blacked out; I was heated about a preseason game. I’m in a better place,” he said.
After an offseason of journaling, deep self-reflection, and working with his performance coach, he’s learned how to harness his edge. It’s a chemistry that shouldn’t be lost or tamed, only controlled.
His expectations for his team in year two are simple. But they’re hard. He expects everyone to get better, and he expects it every day.
“I think we have to get better at everything,” he said, and then introduced the Japanese philosophy “Kaizen,” a concept that highlights continuous improvement. “Kai meaning change, Zen meaning good. Change for the better. Daily incremental growth. One percent better. There’s not going to be a point this season that we’re like, ‘oh, we’re good.’ That’s just not how good basketball teams operate.”
It was an untimely end to a promising season in April when the Lakers exited the first round of the playoffs. “Obviously, the narrative is the team structure can’t work the way it is,” said Austin Reaves. “So we went out and got a couple really good pieces.”
These pieces, along with Redick’s approach and his hard-knock nature, have shown promise in this ramp-up to the season. The hope is that what’s manifested is a more complete roster, a well-conditioned team, sharper defensive principles, and collective buy-in to a championship mindset.
“There’s no shortcuts to this,” he said. “There are no shortcuts to success. There are no shortcuts to having a good season, great season. The league is too good. There’s too much talent out there. There’s too much balance. You have to be committed on a daily basis to those things.”
From the tip, he cited the progress in camp as “terrific.” After three days, the team was in better shape and talking more.
But there may have been a little disdain when Redick would end practice with down-and-backs. Like on Day 3, after a hard practice, Redick had the team line up on the baseline to do six sprints to the other side of the court and back in 34 seconds, then 10 in a minute, and another six in 34 seconds.
“I just ran the last six…” he said.
The team’s animosity was a good thing; it served a bigger purpose.
As Gabe Vincent put it, “I told JJ about a week or two ago, if we all hate you, but we all hate you collectively, that’s great. As long as we’re together in it.
Obviously, nobody wants to run at the end of a long practice, but we know the goal we have set for ourselves, and we know what we’re trying to do moving forward. We all embraced it. We all got the run in, and we all got better for it.”
Read more about Reaves coming out of his shell and Luka comparing his first training camp to a Backstreet Boys song at the link below. | |
