First-year head coach JJ Redick found a silver lining after his Los Angeles Lakers lost an Oct. 15 preseason game to the Golden State Warriors.
“If you look at it, for us and our group to take 40 3s in a game, that’s promising,” Redick said after the defeat, before making a somewhat ambitious proclamation. “It’s promising. We can get it up to 50, hopefully, but 40 is good.”
Obviously, 50 3s per game wasn’t a realistic target. Redick would later say that he “would like [the Lakers] to average five or six more 3s a game,” but that initial quote took on a life of its own for its combination of novelty and predictability.
If any coach would push for 50 3’s per game, wouldn’t it be the former sharpshooter-turned-analytics savvy media voice? The seemingly sarcastic target was impossible. It’s also exactly what gawking onlookers were expecting out of a coach with such an unorthodox background. Oh, look at the podcaster and his mathematical fantasies.
And that’s part of what has made Redick’s stellar start as coach of the Lakers so impressive. It’s not happening because he plucked a single piece of low-hanging fruit like shot-selection. It’s happening because he’s overhauled the ways in which the Lakers get to the looks they always wanted.
Through two games, the Lakers are only attempting 28.5 3-pointers per game. That’s nearly three fewer than they did a season ago, and the second-fewest in the NBA so far. It just hasn’t mattered because the Lakers are doing everything else perfectly. They outscored Minnesota by 32 points in the paint on Tuesday. They assisted on 33 of their 40 field goals against Phoenix on Friday. They’ve gotten to the foul line 64 times in two games.
If any of this sounds familiar, it’s because this is how the best versions of the Lakers have played during the LeBron James-Anthony Davis era. Their supporting casts have never been suited to the sort shot-diets other contenders are moving towards, so when the Lakers have won, it has largely been through physicality and unselfishness. The best coaches lean into the…
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