JJ Redick says to keep ‘smart’ Los Angeles Lakers rotation between Luka Doncic and LeBron James

The Los Angeles Lakers are off to the best start in the Western Conference this season with an 11-4 record.

Remarkably, they achieved this impressive record while playing mostly without one of their superstars, LeBron James.

LeBron has already returned from injury and made his season debut in the win over the Utah Jazz.

In fact, he returned directly to the lineup as a starter, playing 30 minutes and recording 11 points and 12 assists.

Now, with LeBron playing regularly, things may change for the Lakers, for better or worse.

Interestingly, NBA analyst Zach Lowe believes head coach JJ Redick has already found a solution to this problem.

Lowe believes Redick should maintain a smart rotation that splits time between LeBron and Luka Doncic, which worked effectively against Utah.

“They’ve already settled into a rotation with Luka where Luka can be on his own and LeBron and Reeves together when Luka is on the bench. I think that’s the smart thing to do. That’s what they did last year,” Lowe explained.

“Offensively, I think they’re A+. They’ve got everything they wanted. Defensively, the starting five looks slow, and as others have pointed out, Reeves is basically an undersized guard who sometimes struggles defensively.”

Even though Doncic, LeBron and Austin Reeves all started, they rarely played together at the same time.

Doncic and LeBron only shared 19 minutes on the court, while LeBron and Reeves played a combined 26 minutes together.

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The Reeves and LeBron combination had a superior net rating of +7.73 compared to -16.99 for the Doncic and LeBron combination, supporting Lowe’s opinion.

Doncic has thrived without LeBron this season, so Redick may continue to pull both players apart instead of forcing them together all the time.