Laker players looked around the meeting room Saturday morning, double-checking with one another to make sure that what they thought they just heard was what JJ Redick actually said.
Did he, the Lakers coach, clearly amped up for their game with Denver later that night, tell his players to go to war and to be “willing to die on the court?”
He sure did.
“We said, ‘We’re going to war’ that night,” forward Rui Hachimura said.
After the Lakers beat Denver 123-100 in one of their best wins of the season, the admittedly “amped” Redick was still preaching intensity.
“If we play that hard for the rest of the regular season, we’re going to be just fine,” Redick told his team postgame. “That should build your belief. It built my belief in what we can accomplish.”
The challenge, of course, is that the NBA schedule doesn’t always provide big games like this one, the Lakers facing a team that knocked them out of the playoffs the last two seasons.
Read more: Luka Doncic looks like Luka in Lakers’ win in Denver
Luckily for the Lakers, there aren’t too many lulls heading their way.
The team begins a stretch of big games Tuesday by hosting the Dallas Mavericks, the first meeting between the two franchises since the Lakers acquired Luka Doncic in a shocking trade.
Coming off his best game as a Laker, the expectation is that Doncic and the team will again summon extra energy for the Mavericks.
“I think he’s going to be excited, but everybody in the locker room is excited,” Dorian Finney-Smith said of Doncic. “We got his back. It’s gonna be a hard-fought game.”
The Lakers host Minnesota, the Clippers twice, New Orleans and New York following Tuesday’s game during a six-game homestand that will basically lead the team into the regular season’s final month. Since an 0-2 Texas trip in early January, the Lakers have been exceptional in big games, with just one of their four losses coming to a team with a winning record, the Clippers. Since that loss, they’ve won seven straight games against teams currently with winning records.
“Just gotta stick together. We’ve been stepping up to the challenge, but that’s part of being a pro is playing every game the same, so we definitely gotta work on that,” Finney-Smith said. “But we’ve been playing hard the last couple of weeks, we gotta keep it going. We just gotta stack wins, try to be the better team going into this last stretch of the season.”
Obviously, there will be plenty of emotion Tuesday with Doncic seeing his former team and the Lakers hosting Dallas with Max Christie and the injured Anthony Davis.
“I think he’ll be fine. I think he’ll be fine,” Redick said of Doncic on Monday. “Every day that he’s been with us it’s becoming a little more normal. I’ve been there. The first time you play your old team, particularly this close in time duration, it’s going to be weird. But he’ll be OK.”
Saturday’s win in Denver began a stretch when the Lakers face nine teams with winning records over an 11-game span. That’s a lot of times to ask a team if they’re willing to “die on the court.”
Redick, though, said the Lakers have done a good job meeting the moments when they’ve come along and he’s not worried about overloading anyone.
“There’s certainly a feel to it, of when to press and when not to press, Redick said. “I would say for me, personally, like watching Dallas’ stuff yesterday, watching some of their games. My kids had their semifinals and finals in a travel tournament that I was at. A lot of time watching basketball yesterday. And I couldn’t wait to come to work today. I can’t wait for tomorrow. And I’ll be excited for Wednesday. Like that’s just, for me personally, that’s just how I know I’m doing the right thing right now. And this is what I thought it would be. And my own sustainability, I’m not worried about that.
“I think as a coach, you just have to gauge the energy of the group and the vibe of the group and know when to press and when not to press. But, we’re preparing. Our guys recognize we’re in a dogfight for playoff seeding right now. We’re preparing for the playoffs and everything we do over the next 27 games.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
