In the spring of 2022, after a disastrous 2021-22 season, the Los Angeles Lakers fired then-head coach Frank Vogel immediately after their final regular season game. They had just failed to reach the play-in tournament after trading for Russell Westbrook the previous offseason, and the franchise appeared to be in total disarray.
At the time, JJ Redick, who had just retired from a 15-year career as an NBA sharpshooter, said on ESPN’s “Get Up” that the Lakers’ job wasn’t a good job because of their poor roster construction.
Redick is now their head coach, of course, and while their roster certainly isn’t championship-caliber, it is considerably better and more coherent than it was back then.
He was asked about his comments regarding the Lakers in 2022, and he said that he wants the challenge of coaching the team. While he called its current roster “very good” and “very balanced,” he did say an upgrade at the center position would be welcomed.
“I want that challenge. I’m not going to run from that challenge”
New Lakers Head Coach JJ Redick explains the comments he made in 2022 about LA not being a good job at that time@TermineRadio @jumpshot8 @SiriusXMSports #NBA2KSummerLeague pic.twitter.com/uLN9tH41Ex
— SiriusXM NBA Radio (@SiriusXMNBA) July 13, 2024
“You certainly have to look at what I think is actually a very good roster, a very balanced roster. We’d love to, we tried, but we’d love to, at some point, get another five man, a big bruising five man. You look at the Western Conference right now, whether it’s Denver, Minnesota, OKC with what they added, certainly Memphis, they’re going to be back in the hunt, they added Zach Edey, certain matchups in the playoffs, you’re going to need a lot of size.”
The center position is going through something of a quiet renaissance throughout the NBA right now, which means teams need to be able to neutralize what centers are doing across the league. Sometimes, it isn’t so much about stopping them from scoring as it is about containing them on the boards, something that was a big weakness for Los Angeles this past season.
Of course, it has one of the game’s true superstar big men in Anthony Davis. But it doesn’t have a true defensive-minded 5 behind him, and having Davis match up defensively with someone such as Nikola Jokić can present problems.
Davis has played almost exclusively at the 5 for the past two or three seasons. During the 2023-24 campaign, the Lakers had to get by with either Jaxson Hayes and Christian Wood playing the center position when Davis was resting.
Unfortunately, Wood was a total disappointment. While Hayes had a few good moments of energetic play, his positional defense and effort while boxing out left too much to be desired.
When the Lakers won the NBA championship in 2020, they had Davis play roughly half his minutes at the 5 while starting games at the 4 spot. Their starter at the 5 that year was JaVale McGee, while Dwight Howard came off the bench to play the 5 and handled physical defensive assignments well.
