JJ Redick, by and large, has had a successful first season as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers. On Sunday, however, he made his first major decision that drew significant criticism. With the Lakers trailing the Minnesota Timberwolves 2-1 in their first-round series and most of his roster struggling, Redick elected to use the same five players (LeBron James, Luka Dončić, Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura and Dorian Finney-Smith) for the entire second half. They built up a 12-point lead, but ultimately lost the game in part because the players seemed to run out of gas at the end.
Redick was the first coach of the play-by-play era ever to use only five players across an entire second half in a playoff game, and because the Lakers lost, the decision naturally became controversial. After Game 4, Redick explained that “it wasn’t planned. But we just made the decision at halftime.” He has now likely been hearing about that choice for the past three days, and when he was asked about it ahead of Game 5 on Wednesday, he didn’t handle it especially well.
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The exchange began with a reporter asking Redick if he leans on assistant coaches in making these decisions.
“As you watched the film, what do you recall about your thought process in the moment, sticking with the five you stuck with in the fourth quarter the other day? Is there an assistant or someone maybe that you’ll lean on maybe tonight to try to get some other guys involved? And if that opportunity presents itself…”
At this point, Redick interrupted the question.
“Are you saying that because I’m inexperienced? And that was an inexperienced decision I made?” Redick asked. “You think I don’t talk to my assistants about substitutions every single timeout?”
The reporter jumped back in from there.
“No, I just think a lot of coaches lean on their assistants in those situations…” he said, before getting interrupted by Redick again.
“As do I. Every single time. That’s a weird assumption,” Redick responded before abruptly standing up and leaving the press conference.
Redick is not only a first-year head coach, but a first-year NBA coach of any kind, as he spent the period between his playing and coaching careers working in media. The question does not directly address that inexperience, but Redick took it as the subtext to it.
Whether that was intended or not is unknowable, but Redick ironically showed his inexperience in the way that he handled this. Even if he feels the criticism he’s received is unfair, dealing with criticism from the outside is just a part of coaching in the NBA. By responding in this way, Redick is suggesting that the criticism is getting to him. That is not exactly the sort of calm a team would likely prefer its coach to project in the buildup to an elimination game.
This entire series will be a learning experience for Redick. The Lakers hope he can be their coach for a long, long time. There will be more postseasons ahead of him. But his Game 4 gamble wound up hurting the Lakers in the end, and the way he’s handled the doubt it has received has been less than encouraging with the Lakers one loss away from elimination.