According to sources of Hoops Wire’s Ashish Mathur, members of the Los Angeles Lakers enjoy playing under head coach J.J. Redick far more than they did playing under Darvin Ham.
“Although the Lakers have only played two preseason games (both losses) under Redick, NBA sources have told Hoops Wire that players have ‘loved’ everything Redick has brought to the table,” Mathur wrote.
“Those same sources also said that Lakers players ‘hated’ playing for Ham, who is now an assistant coach with the [Milwaukee] Bucks.”
ESPN’s Dave McMenamin reported last month that folks were telling Redick it would be a “bad idea” for him to take the Lakers’ job in the offseason.
“From when Redick first talked about the position with [Rob] Pelinka during the NBA draft combine in May, to officially becoming a Lakers candidate along with New Orleans assistant James Borrego and UConn (University of Connecticut) coach Dan Hurley, several people close to Redick told him it would be a bad idea to take it, sources told ESPN,” McMenamin wrote.
But Redick was introduced as the 29th head coach in franchise history last summer, and the Lakers hired him to replace Ham. In Ham’s two full seasons as the head coach of the Lakers, Los Angeles never was a truly great regular-season team.
The Lakers won 43 games in the 2022-23 regular season and 47 the season after. Los Angeles had to fight its way through the play-in tournament in order to qualify for the 2023 NBA Playoffs and 2024 NBA Playoffs.
With the start of the Lakers’ 2024-25 regular season just under two weeks away, Redick is hoping that he will lead the Lakers to enough wins to the point where the team will secure a top-six seed in the Western Conference and not have to participate in the play-in.
Considering the last time the Lakers won 50-plus games in the regular season they captured the title later that year in 2020, 50 wins stands out as a goal that Redick should shoot for.
Not only would 50 wins seemingly mark a successful regular season for Redick and company, but such a win total seems realistic for Los Angeles. The Lakers have two of the elite players in the league today in LeBron James and Anthony Davis, and Los Angeles was just three wins away from the 50-win mark with the pair of stars leading the way last season.
While a lot of basketball needs to be played before one can determine if Redick is the right man for the job in Los Angeles, he seems to be off to a fantastic start to his tenure with the Lakers.
