HOUSTON — JJ Redick has made it clear: he doesn’t just want the Lakers to be a good team; he wants them to be a great team.
And not only does he want them to be great, but he believes they can be.
But what does it look like for Redick to hold his team to a standard of looking to become great rather than simply trying to be good?
In Friday’s home win against the Atlanta Hawks, it was criticizing his team’s lack of game-plan discipline.
“Why that stuff matters, the reason why executing a personnel-based scouting report that we talked about, is because I don’t want to coach a good team,” Redick said on Friday. “I don’t want to be a part of a good team. I want to be a part of a great team and I believe this team can be a great team. So it is about the small details.”
And after Sunday’s 119-115 road loss to the Houston Rockets, in which the Lakers erased nearly all of a 22-point deficit and got within two before an errant late out-of-bounds plays prevented them from getting any closer, it was acknowledging the obvious.
“Our inability to get defensive rebounds was the difference in the game,” Redick said, with the Rockets grabbing 18 offensive rebounds, taking 21 more field goal attempts and scoring 28 second-chance points.
The Rockets, an athletic, defensive-minded team that was the No. 2 seed in the Western Conference after Sunday’s win, offered the kind of test that’s helpful for the Lakers over an 82-game season.
“We want to be … I want to be a great team,” LeBron James said. “I mean, I want to be a great team but it takes some things that maybe get uncomfortable out there. We got to do a little bit more. We got to do a little bit more, be a little bit more gritty, make more plays, not have so many breakdowns.
“We’re not much of a breakdown team, but sometimes we don’t have a lot of room for error as well.”
The Lakers (20-15) will likely have more room for error in Tuesday’s trip-closing game against the Dallas Mavericks (20-15), who entered Monday having lost five of their past six games after Luka Dončić suffered a strained left calf in the team’s Christmas Day loss to the Minnesota Timberwolves.
The Mavericks had a road game against the Memphis Grizzlies on Monday, making Tuesday’s matchup the second night of a back-to-back for Dallas.
In addition to Dončić being out, the Mavericks will also be without All-Star guard Kyrie Irving, who is sidelined with a back injury.
“They’re still a good team,” Lakers star Anthony Davis said. “They got a lot of talent. We’ll be ready to play these guys. So we definitely need to win. We can’t lose both of these games. It’s going to be a must-win for us and we have to come in with the right mindset.”
Lakers backup guard Gabe Vincent was upgraded to questionable after missing the last four games because of a strained left oblique. Reserve wing Cam Reddish was listed on the injury report as questionable because of lower back soreness.
When: Tuesday, 4:30 p.m. PT
Where: American Airlines Center, Dallas
TV/radio: Spectrum SportsNet, TNT/710 AM
