Hoops Tonight - Lakers Hire JJ Redick Reaction: Why "success feels inevitable" for LeBron James & LA

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JJ Reddick is the brand new head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, and so we're going to take ten to fifteen minutes here just to give my initial impression on the hire. You guys are the joke before we get started. Subscribe to the Hoops Tonight YouTube channels you don't miss any more of our videos. Follow me on Twitter at underscore JSNLT so you guys don't miss show announcements.

Son't forget about a podcast feed wherever you get your podcasts under Hoops tonight, and then keep dropping mail bag questions and the YouTube comments. We're actually gonna hit a mail bag intomorrow's show. So I'm gonna be grabbing questions from this video as well as the video we did on Tuesday, kind of wrapping up the NBA Finals. So drop questions in the comments. We'll get to them in

tomorrow's mail bag. All right, let's talk some basketball. So there's a bunch of different angles I want to come at this from, but I want to start from the perspective of risk because there's gonna be a lot of focus on JJ's lack of experience and all of the risk that comes with that. And the reason why I have an issue with that is there's a risk no

matter who you hire in this coaching field. It's kind of the reality like, ideally you want to hire a coach that has a great amount of experience, a great amount of talent, and a proven track record, right, But those guys tend to have jobs, right. There was one of them that fake came available, maybe eleven play not really that serious of an option, right, and Dan Hurley he had, you know, lots of experience, proven track record, you know, this big personality, obviously one of the most

respected basketball geniuses in the world. Right, But he has a job right now, right, Like, those guys aren't just sitting around waiting to be hired. And so no matter what direction the Lakers had gone, there was risk. Let's go for a former head coach. Let's go for someone like James Brego or Kenny Atkinson. Well, those guys had mediocre prior stops. There's no guarantee that they're going to just come into the Lakers and have a ton of success.

Oh well, what about these longtime experienced assistant coaches. Well, there's plenty of examples in NBA and NFL history of guys who were successful coordinators or successful lead assistants that transition to a head coaching job and then struggled. There's a certain amount of risk there as well. There was no option. It was an unavoidable part of this process that the Lakers would encounter some risk when they chose a new head coach. And so JJ obviously fits that bill.

But I didn't think that that was something that they could avoid. The focus on experience. Experience is important, but not at the expense of talent. Like if you were looking at checking boxes and all the different things that you look for in a head coach, right, Like I want a certain amount of competitiveness. Well, JJ has that. Like what kind of person would give up their cush media job to take over being head coach of the Lakers which comes with much heavier workload, much more travel,

much more pressure, much more criticism. Why would you do that to yourself and your family. It's because he's obsessed with basketball. It's because he's a psychotic competitor, something that has driven him to all of the success that he's had as a basketball player. Give me talent in competitiveness any day of the week, they're going to find a way to succeed. JJ has the competitiveness. I do believe. I do believe he has the talent. I think he's

a very bright basketball mind. I think he's obsessed with modern NBA offense and all the different intricacies that make especially five out offense work. As we know with the Lakers, they shifted to five out last year, and there were some growing pains early in the year, but they really took off the second half of the year, and I even think there's another level that they could get to

on that end of the floor. So by virtue of JJ's competitiveness and his desire to learn everything there is to know about five out offense, I think he's gonna help that offense get to another level. So like he's got the competitiveness, I personally believe he has more than

enough in terms of natural talent for the job. There's a personality piece, and there's gonna be some growing pains there for sure, because I think that JJ is a really competitive guy, right and obviously there'll butt heads with players from time to time and it's not going to be a perfectly seamless transition. But if you surround him with an experienced set of assistants, and as long as he has the buy in of Lebron James, who's the most experienced star in the league, I think that process

over the next few years can be smoothed over. But in general, in terms of the core piece of it, I do believe JJ's personality is big enough. He's got enough aura in the long run to be a very successful head coach, and so honestly, as I look through it and it's like competitiveness, you know, personality and aura, talent and experience. Like, obviously he's lacking in the talent and experience part, but I think he has a chance to be really, really good in the other three areas.

And so again, like experience is important, but not at the expense of talent, And you can supplement experience by surrounding him with experience, right, Like we see this with players too. It's like you take the twenty twelve thunder, you add a Derek Fisher, you add a Kendrick Perkins. It's like those guys aren't the dudes actually doing most of the heavy lifting, but it just provides the veteran presence that helps those guys navigate that environment. The same

thing goes for the coaching staff. As long as JJ has experienced minds that he can lean on through the process, who can confront him and be like, hey, like when you communicate this to that player, like I had this happened to me three years ago, you know, maybe next time, try this. It seems to resonate better, Like you're right about what you're thinking, but we just got to work on the delivery, you know, whatever it is like all of those processes can be smoothed over by virtue of

supplementing him with experience. And again I put this on my note, give me talent plus competitiveness, Like just because someone's in over their head for a certain job doesn't mean they're incapable of succeeding in that job. Sometimes it can be a little intimidating and intense upfront, but once you break through and learn, as long as you have the talent, as long as you're competitive and work hard enough,

the success to me feels inevitable. And so I think that there's a lot less risk here than what is what it would appear like on the surface, giving the available candidates that are out there, I want to zero in on the offensive end a little bit more so, like again, like one of the things that I think I and we're going to talk about this in much more detail when we do my five Biggest Takeaways from the postseason pod, which I was originally going to do

today but I'm probably gonna end up doing tomorrow morning just by virtue of this report. But you know, I'm a big believer that ball and player movement is important. We saw what happened with Dallas right, they were an elite offense for three rounds against specific types of matchups, but a couple adjustments from Boston and their offense completely fell apart. And it was, in my opinion, in large part because of a lack of ball and player movement.

Like as long as they had shooters spacing in the corners, but Boston didn't have to help off of them, Dallas couldn't get consistent quality looks right. It was a lot of iso. It is a lot of over the top pull up jump shots right Like to me, ball in player movement in the five out context is more resilient offensively in the later rounds, especially of the NBA playoffs, And the Lakers made a switch to five out last year.

They've made a lot of progress on that end of the floor, but they can still get a lot better. There was even in the postseason in particular, there were a lot of moments where the Lakers got away from their five out attack and ran a lot of just like spamming pick and roll and things along those lines. Having a coach that is kind of like, I mean this in a complimentary way, like a nerd like kind of who will geek out about the all of the different elements of modern five out offense, and there's a

bunch of different ways to look at it. Right, There's like sets that you run to begin possessions. There's the way your natural five out motion flows after the defense deals with whatever first action you run. There's off ball action, there's counters and things along those lines. That's going to be vitally important for this Laker team, especially because they play a lot of non shooters, guys like Jared Vanderbilt, guys like Anthony Davis. Right, So, like, I actually think

JJ has the potential. There will be some growing pains, but because of his obsessiveness with that side of the ball, I think he can do a lot to help the team get to another level on that end of the floor. My main concern, and the main thing that I think JJ is going to struggle with at first, but I think he'll learn and get better at in the long run, is the accountability piece. Accountability was the biggest weakness of

this Laker team. What that means to me is like accepting mediocre results and like remember when Darvin Ham would refer to things as like, oh, we're just in a marathon, guys like we can't overreact to every win and loss, like we're just trying to get through this grind. And it's like, no, you have to attack the regular season in order to have postseason success. That is a fact. I pulled this stat for the pod that I'm doing

tomorrow on the five biggest takeaways from the postseason. Twelve of the last thirteen NBA champions had a top four regular season record, and the one team that didn't was the twenty twenty one Milwaukee Bucks. They had the seventh best record, and they were a dominant regular season team in the previous seasons. And that was that funky COVID season when guys were in and out of the lineup. If I remember correctly, Brook Lopez missed a ton of time in that season. So, like NBA history tells us,

you can't chill your way through the season. You have to attack everything from day one of training, establish habits, build out, attention to detail. That is what will carry you to play championship level basketball. Down the line, that comes down to JJ. He is going to have to ride those guys in terms of their attention to detail every single day of practice, every single game, every single

time out. He's gonna have to be really diligent about how often he holds those guys accountable in order for this team to get where they need to go. And I think there is a challenge there when you're looking at Lebron James and it's like, dude, you're JJ Redick. When I was playing, you know, when you were playing in the league, you were a player that wasn't even in the same stratosphere as me. Like, there's a certain level of like, will JJ be able to look at

Lebron and demand a lot out of him? Will he be able to look at Anthony Davis and demand a lot out of him? Will he be able to look at all those guys That I think is going to be the hardest part. But again, as long as he has Lebron's support, I think that's gonna be key. Lebron's gonna have to stand behind JJ to help him hold these guys accountable. But as long as that attention to detail is there and they continue to make strides on the offensive end of the floor, I do think this

is a job that JJ can succeeded. The main thing is the last thing I put the coach. It certainly plays a role here. I thought Darvinham did a lot to hurt the Lakers in the regular season last year in terms of just rotation stuff. But for the most part, the Lakers' main issues are personnel related. They're not athletic enough in the back court. They do not have a starting caliber player that can both defend on the perimeter

to high level and be a plus offensive player. That player does not exist on the roster like they beyond Lebron and Ad so like, Honestly, the main driving force of whether or not the Lakers have a successful season is going to come down to what they do with those three draft picks, what they do in free agents, and what they do just over the course of the

next month to tinker with the roster. So like, at the end of the day, like we can talk about JJ all we want, and I like him as like a long term coaching prospect with this Los Angeles Lakers team, but they're gonna have to hit some home runs in the offseason to give this Lakers a team a chance to compete going into next season. And I'm really curious to see whether or not they can give him the horses they need to succeed, but again to kind of

put a bow on it all. Yeah, there's risk involved, but I didn't think that was an avoidable part of this process. Yes, experience is important, but not at the expense of talent. I think JJ is talented and freaky competitive. Give me a talented and freaky competitive guy in a job like this ten times out of ten, I think he's gonna find a way to figure it out and be successful. All right, guys, that is all I have for today. As always, as sincerely appreciate you guys for

supporting the show. We'll be back tomorrow to go over the five biggest takeaways of the postseason, as well as to do a mailbag. I'll see you guys though the volume