Somewhat lost in the shuffle of all the history being made and strong performances on the court was that the Los Angeles Lakers’ Opening Night victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves also marked the first head coaching victory for JJ Redick.
The Lakers didn’t shoot the ball well, especially from 3-point range, going just 5-of-30 from deep. But they made up for it by crashing the offensive glass and forcing turnovers. Even though the shots weren’t falling, Redick was still happy overall with the quality of looks the Lakers generated.
“Yeah, we were able to get good shots in the paint, and that, you know, you can want to shoot a lot of threes, but if you’re getting good shots in the paint, that’s good offense for us, particularly with the players we have that are taking those shots,” Redick said after the Lakers’ 110-103 victory.
“AR, DLo, LeBron [James] and AD, obviously. But Rui [Hachimura] was great tonight in terms of the process of generating threes. Look, the paint was open in the second half. We took, I think, 19 threes in the first half, which is right on pace to kind of where we want to be for our season average in terms of a full game. And we got great looks. And there was even some threes there in the second half that I thought were wide open, and we just couldn’t knock them down.”
The Lakers may not be the best 3-point shooting team in the league, but they certainly aren’t as bad as they shot on Tuesday. And Redick may have discovered one reason for their struggles and plans on talking to the league about it.
“Sending in a request for the league tomorrow that we can play with warn-in basketballs,” Redick added. “I’m not sure why we’re playing in real games. I’m being dead serious. I’m not sure why we’re playing in real games with brand-new basketballs. Anybody who’s ever touched an NBA ball brand new. It’s a different feel and touch than a warn-in basketball. I didn’t realize it till a timeout. There’s a long rebound, and I grabbed it. What? Why are we playing with this ball? Give the guys the opportunity to pick a good basketball.
“You think I’m joking? I’m neurotic.”
It may seem like nothing, but Redick is right in that the feel of basketballs can make a huge difference to players in terms of shooting and dribbling and the feel changes the more a ball is used. But regardless of the balls being used, Redick had the Lakers ready to play on Opening Night and that will hopefully continue going forward.
JJ Redick believes Lakers competed all night with physicality
One thing that was apparent was that the Lakers simply had more energy and competed harder than the Timberwolves throughout most of the night. And above all else, that was something JJ Redick was happy with.
“Yeah, again, we asked them to compete at the high level and match their physicality,” Redick noted. “Those were big talking points over the last couple of days, and for the most part, I thought our guys did that really well. DLo included. We switched a lot. We, at times, had Anthony Edwards on an island, and at times, we doubled them. But in all, our guys competed, and that’s really all we’re asking.”
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