Former NBA player Kendrick Perkins gave JJ Redick his flowers for his defensive plan against the Dallas Mavericks.
After the Los Angeles Lakers won a solid victory over the Dallas Mavericks, the organization officially won the Bertz in the 2025 NBA Playoffs.
With this in mind, it was JJ Reddick’s head coach’s first year with the LA Lakers, and not many people were hoping for this result from the team.
In fact, many labelled Redick as inexperienced and inappropriate to take on the helm of the Lakers’ height team. Well, Reddick has proven his suspects wrong, and the Lakers’ victory over MAVS underscored one of his biggest strengths.
Luka Donsic was in the big spotlight as it was his first game in Dallas since it was traded for purple and gold. Donsic was not disappointed as he wore a 45-point scoring clinic, including 31 first half points.
But this was also Anthony Davis’ first game against his previous team. Unfortunately, the ads were limited to just 13 points, so there was no great night.
Former NBA player Kendrick Perkins believes that Manager Redick deserves major credit for a quiet night on the floor.
“JJ is coaching. Today it’s game plan hell on both ends. He advertised the game completely tonight.
Two other examples Perkins mentioned were when the Lakers included the towns of Nicola Jokic and Karl Anthony.
Thanks to Redick’s persistent double-team pressure on Davis, the 2020 NBA champions shot only five-thirds of the field with 33 minutes of playtime.
In the first year of the LeBron James and Anthony Davis partnership, Purple and Gold won the 2020 NBA Championship.
However, since then, the Lakers have been little competition in the championship. Certainly, they reached the Western Conference Finals in 2023, but that was through the play-in tournament.
In fact, this is the first time since 2020 that the Lakers have not taken part in play-in or missed the playoffs. If this is not proof of coaching Redick’s skills, then there’s nothing.
The Lakers also have the chance to reach 50 wins for the first time since their championship-winning season.