After a very busy start to the season, the Lakers were finally afforded a break in their schedule.
Following Wednesday’s win over the Bucks, the team returned to Los Angeles for three days off before playing the Suns in Phoenix on Sunday. While that allowed the team the chance to regroup physically and recharge mentally, it also allowed head coach JJ Redick the chance to present his team with quite the presentation.
After practice on Friday, Redick revealed that he gave the team a 21-page analytical
breakdown of the team.
And here NBA players thought they’d avoid the meetings with analytics and spreadsheets just because they didn’t enter the business world.
If you’re wondering how good of a communicator Redick is at explaining all this information, don’t worry because Jake LaRavia laid it out well.
“He puts numbers in front of us and those are easy to read,” LaRavia joked after practice on Saturday. “It makes it a little bit easier. The numbers are red and that means bad and if the number’s green, it means good.”
Jokes aside, LaRavia also discussed what the numbers and analytics told the players and all of it is what you’d expect it to say.
“I think it just showed us that we’re a good team right now, but there’s a lot of room for growth, especially in the defensive areas,” LaRavia said. “Even in the offensive areas like turnovers and stuff like that. But defensively, there’s a lot of room for growth.
“There’s a lot of areas where we can get better. That was the main takeaway for me, but I think that was the main takeaway that they were trying to get across.”
It’s certainly easier to correct mistakes when you’re winning, which the Lakers have done plenty of recently. It’s also likely easier to receive and digest a 21-page analytical breakdown when you’re winning, too, I assume.
You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude or on Bluesky at @jacobrude.bsky.social.
