Los Angeles Lakers coach JJ Redick certainly looked younger than his 40 years as he stormed out of Wednesday’s postgame press conference.
He’s not very young, he’s not much younger, he just lacks the sophistication of a man his age, if not NBA head coaching experience.
Everyone remembers the status Mike Gundy once gave to 40-year-olds, right?
Redick definitely worked through his frustrations as he worked his way through a 1-4 road trip. The fact that LeBron James, six months and six days the rookie coach’s junior, was repeatedly asked to elaborate on why he had the most effort of the Lakers in the final game of the road trip in Memphis was simply cumulative. Ta.
I hope Reddick listens to a positive thinking podcast or falls asleep on the flight home. With a roster full of players with inconsistent performances, coaches must set a steady example.
On Wednesday, Memphis defeated Los Angeles 131-114, the Lakers’ second-worst loss on the road.
Center Anthony Davis, the team’s leading scorer and rebounder, missed the game with soreness in his left heel, and fellow starter Rui Hachimura was out with an illness.
James looked to make up for his absence as much as possible, scoring 39 points on 15-of-24 shooting, with seven rebounds and six assists.
“I thought LeBron was great tonight.” Reddick said. “The thing that stood out the most…he played hard. He was almost 40 years old and played the hardest on the team. That says a lot about him.”
Redick talked about D’Angelo Russell, who played a season-low 6:06 in the 22 minutes after halftime, showing that single-outs can go both ways. Russell was just 4-of-12 from the floor, including 2-of-9 from deep, and Reddick thought his 12 points were inefficient.
“It’s about the level of competition, the attention to detail and some of the things that we’ve talked about with him for several weeks,” Reddick said. “And sometimes he was very good at it, and other times he just fell back into certain habits.”
The Lakers are scheduled to return home Friday night to begin a three-game homestand against an opponent who also has had enough of the “E” word.
Instead of thinking about Joel Embiid, who is serving a three-game suspension for shoving Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes, think about the Philadelphia 76ers. .
Embiid, who was sidelined early in the season with a knee injury, took exception to Hayes’ column that referenced Embiid’s son and late brother when criticizing the star center’s ability to stay in shape.
Redick merely shifted the pressure to the top of the table as he left the media session in Memphis. A follow-up question about how to deal with seemingly every Lakers effort, but James earned his ire. It was already a popular topic after the game.
“It comes back to choice,” Reddick previously said. “That’s something we talked about as a group and how we play is a choice we make every night. It has nothing to do with taking shots. It’s a group of seven or eight people making that choice. We’re a really good basketball team.
“We only had a handful, two or three guys, but we weren’t going to be a good basketball team that night. That’s just the reality.”
The Lakers often fell into the latter category on the road. Friday brings the next comeback attempt.
