EL SEGUNDO — With the Lakers set for a matchup against the Minnesota Timberwolves on Friday night, Coach JJ Redick went down a game film rabbit hole on the team that eliminated them in five games in a first-round playoff series last spring.
A rabbit hole so deep that Redick found himself watching film from his own career involving a player he now coaches and a former teammate who now plays for the Golden State Warriors, whom the Lakers lost to in their season opener on Tuesday night.
“I actually, at one point, was watching inverted pick-and-rolls when I was in Philly and Marcus [Smart] was top locking me,” Redick said, “and Al Horford shoved him and I sent him the clip.”
But Redick, who in hindsight said he would have treated the week the Lakers had in between securing the No. 3 seed in the Western Conference and the start of the playoff series against the Timberwolves “completely different” than he did, did watch “a lot” of film from the five games last spring.
What stuck out to him was how hard his team played – and how this year’s iteration of the Lakers needs to get to that level.
“After Game 1, our guys played so hard,” Redick recalled. “And this group has to build a habit of playing that hard every single night. We didn’t start that way. We played really hard Game 1 against Minnesota last year on opening night with that group. And then it didn’t really become our habit until later in late January. That’s the biggest takeaway from watching that stuff is we gotta get back to that.”
The Lakers and Timberwolves will look different compared to the last time they squared off – a 103-96 Minnesota victory in Game 5 on April 30 to end the Lakers’ 2024-25 season.
Forward Dorian Finney-Smith, a key reserve who started in Game 5, is no longer with the Lakers and is now on the Houston Rockets. LeBron James remains sidelined because of sciatica in his right side.
The Timberwolves’ most notable offseason change was losing key reserve Nickeil Alexander-Walker in a sign-and-trade with the Atlanta Hawks.
But they’ve also changed their starting lineup from last season, replacing 38-year-old point guard Mike Conley with Donte DiVincenzo.
“Donte’s an underrated defender,” Redick said. “Mike, in our playoff series, he did a really good job defensively. He is obviously not the defender that he was in the prime of his career when he was on those Memphis teams. But I think it gives them another very physical defender. And similar to our coverage board last season, it’s a coverage board with a lot of lasers on the coverage board and Donte’s that.”
REINFORCEMENT
More than 30 people, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups, Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier and former NBA player Damon Jones, were arrested on Thursday morning for their alleged roles in illegal sports betting and rigged poker games backed by the Mafia.
The arrests, which were two separate cases, came after a multi-year investigation by federal agents involving tens of millions of dollars, FBI director Kash Patel said.
Jones, who was an unofficial part of former Lakers head coach Darvin Ham’s staff and is no longer with the team under Redick, is alleged to have shared non-public information about the status of Lakers players with gamblers during the 2022-23 and 2023-24 seasons.
The Department of Justice’s news release stated: “As alleged, former NBA player and coach Jones shared and sold insider information on numerous occasions about undisclosed information relating to NBA games, such as lineup decisions and pre-release medical information, to his co-conspirators, who then placed significant wagers based on the tips. For example, on February 9, 2023, and January 15, 2024, respectively, Jones provided insider information to co-conspirators about pre-release medical information concerning star players on the Los Angeles Lakers for the purpose of enabling the co-conspirators to place wagers based on this information.”
Redick addressed the Lakers, who as an organization aren’t accused of any wrongdoing in the indictments, being mentioned in the FBI’s press briefing.
“I’m finding it out as you guys are,” he said. “So I don’t really have a comment on that.”
Redick mentioned the Lakers have had multiple meetings to reinforce the NBA’s anti-gambling policies.
“We’ve had two meetings on it already,” he said. “It’s obviously on the front of everyone’s awareness given the last two years, but other than that, there’s no other comment.”
TIMBERWOLVES AT LAKERS
When: Friday, 7 p.m.
Where: Crypto.com Arena
TV/Radio: Amazon Prime Video/710 AM