J.J. Redick dodges question regarding Lakers’ need for ‘traditional center’

The head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers — J.J. Redick — seemingly skated around a question of whether the team currently has a traditional center on its roster and if it needs one.

“Uhhh, when you say traditional center what does that mean?” asked Redick. “Is Brook Lopez a traditional center though? … More of the size, I think we have not only one of the best players in the world but one of the most unique players in the world in Anthony Davis because there’s very few people that can do the things that he can do at his size, just in terms of his ball-handling, his skill level offensively and certainly the fact that he’s one of the best defensive players in the world.

“I would also say, I don’t know — I don’t view Nikola Jokic as a traditional center. I don’t know how many traditional — I think back-to-the-basket, that’s just not the modern NBA. I think we have a gift that we have Anthony Davis. It’s not a deterrent that we don’t have a 7-foot-2, 300-pound player. I’m not sure that it’s how we wanna play, anyways.”

It sounded like Redick was then asked about having center help behind Davis. He said that the Lakers aren’t going to ask players like Jaxson Hayes and Christian Wood to play the same way that Davis does and finished by saying that L.A. will “manage.”

The Lakers may not have a lot of players who folks would deem traditional centers, though they do have one of the more talented big men the league has ever seen in Davis.

At 6-foot-10, Davis is far from the NBA’s tallest player, but he can rebound the ball and block shots arguably as well as any traditional center. He averaged 12.6 rebounds and a whopping 2.3 blocks per game in 76 games played with the storied Lakers franchise during the 2023-24 regular season.

As a result, Davis finished fourth in the NBA’s Defensive Player of the Year voting — behind only Rudy Gobert, Victor Wembanyama and Bam Adebayo — and also secured a spot on the All-Defensive First Team.

Davis’ offensive game isn’t traditional in the sense that he scores plenty of his points away from the rim, but he’s still a dominant scorer in the interior. He converted an unbelievable 77.5 percent of his looks at the rim on 520 attempts last season.

Redick didn’t directly answer the question of whether the Lakers need a traditional center, but he perhaps answered it in a subtle way when he said the team has Davis on its roster.