The Los Angeles Lakers picked up a 101-73 win over the Phoenix Suns in their best defensive performance all season on Friday night. The team played the kind of perfect defense coach JJ Redick has been expecting for months, as there were no courtside confrontations or arguments over the effort the players were putting in.
This was the Lakers’ second win after a 123-87 loss to the OKC Thunder, where coach Redick had rough moments with two core players. He subbed Rui Hachimura out unnecessarily in the first quarter of the game due to Hachimura not executing the way he was asked to, and then he had a much more aggressive spat with Jarred Vanderbilt in the second quarter, benching the forward for the rest of the game.
Redick also had strong words about those incidents with Hachimura and Vanderbilt after the game. While the team has clearly moved on from those incidents, given the two wins they just picked up, Redick cleared the air to Lakers reporters in a media scrum after their win over Phoenix.
“I went to the facility (Friday morning) to meet with Vando and talked to him. I spent time with Rui when we got to San Francisco, he came up to my room.”
Redick’s coaching style is quite brash. We’ve seen him get into courtside spats with stars like Luka Doncic as well, so it’s clear Redick doesn’t really care how high-profile the player he’s criticizing is. If you make a mistake, Redick will call it out as aggressively as possible.
Hachimura put up 12.5 points, 2.0 rebounds, and 2.5 assists in the two games since Redick’s actions and comments in the OKC loss. Redick had criticized him publicly for ‘not doing his job’ in the loss to the Thunder.
“I just called the early timeout because Rui didn’t do his job, and so took him out of the game. We’ve got to find nine guys that are all-in on us fighting… whatever you’ve got to do to go out and fight and be all in on the team. We’ll find the nine guys. It’s a great opportunity for us over the next three games to find those guys.”
Vanderbilt has averaged 4.0 points, 6.5 rebounds, and 3.0 assists since the incident. Redick had clarified after the incident with Vanderbilt that it was nothing personal, but just a moment in the heat of the game from a coach who’s trying to help an undermanned roster win against the best team in the NBA.
“Just a confluence of things. Again, it’s nothing personal with him. Normal stuff from my end. I think for all of us, being undermanned, we’ve got to scrap and claw, we’ve got to all be on the same page, we got to be great teammates, we got to all play hard. Called a timeout to get him out of the game, and he reacted. But again, normal interaction for me.”
The Lakers will be hoping that Vanderbilt and Hachimura come into their final game of the season against the Utah Jazz on Sunday with full motivation to secure a win and potentially take the No. 3 seed in the West.
