A: Marcus Smart

JJ Reddick gets a lot of shit but he really he really turned having no bench and like half a starting center into a 50 win season.

Lakers have been really good this season and coach JJ definitely deserves credit.

Back-to-back 50+ win seasons as a rookie coach is impressive.

I think it has a lot to do with the fact that any one of LeBron, Reaves and Luka can win a game for the Lakers on their own. All 3 can step up when one or both of their costars aren’t playing. This isn’t a Warriors situation where Draymond is the lone star and intentionally gets tossed from games because he is useless without KD or Curry.

That’s impressive considering how awful the rest of the roster is. Vanderbilt, Kleber and Gabe Vincent make a combined $35M and are all vet minimum level players

And Denver fans think they are the only team who dealt with injuries

Lakers had a good season, DESPITE having a flawed roster. The results achieved should not ever make the ownership forget that the roster needs fixing.

Turns out JJ Reddick is a pretty good coach

What’s their record in those 29 games?

I love the podcaster coaching my team

JJ is a good coach. Luka and Reaves are a great core. They can be really good soon with the right roster construction.

For the people that talk so much shit about our GM and our coach. Suck it

The west conf was weak Warriors in playins with 37-45 record 😂

How is that surprising at all? They didn’t even have Luka for 29 games last year let alone playing with Lebron and Reaves. Of course their record is going to improve from last year when they now have Luka for 64 games

They’re better when it’s only two of them active

Yeah they got luka don, a reaves and then lebron. The real big threeeeee

Isn’t this just the Luka effect?

The Mavs won a lot with compromised rosters as well, did anyone really try to give Kidd and his staff a lot of credit?

I don’t think JJ is as bad as some people do, but I don’t think he’s demonstrated that he’s actually good either, seems like just another typical NBA coach who does well his star player is playing and mediocre the rest of the time.

Like what can anyone point to for this Lakers team that screams out ‘coaching’? Other than what awful coaching is going to point out about how dysfunctional the defense is. And, to note, that’s not ‘Luka only’ that’s the structure of the defense in general.

I mean if you want to look at a team which didn’t have their star for 80% of the season and yet exceeded expectations… Though yes, Mazulla has already shown that he is an excellent coach and consistently gets more out of his rosters than most of us (media included) expect.

So JJ getting 6-8 more wins than expected on a roster that included Luka and Lebron for most of the season (even if not always at the same time) doesn’t really seem all that impressive, just the media getting the Lakers expected win total wrong.

I don’t get this post, they played more games together this year and got a better than when they played less games together. Why rhe “and still ended up” thing about?

Well they are playing 0 games together next season

No Lebron after these playoffs \o/

Better role players, worse conference overall (no real Warriors, no real Clippers, 5 legit teams tanking Vs 2 last season…), having Luka for 64 games vs Luka for 28 + AD for 41…

There are some reasons, not like there is nothing and all merit to JJ or a roster improvement on its own.

It brings me joy thinking some boneheads in the laker front office might try to run large parts of this squad back because they won’t see it implode in the playoffs this year. The Swiss cheese bros with Ayton backing them up will totally work in May, keep it up!