Anthony, how are you? Doing great. JJ Redick didn't tell me to get in shape today, so I'm doing fantastic.
Hey, I think we have an idea who he might be referring to. Hey, Anthony, you refer to JJ Redick. He was very direct in his comments today. He was angry yesterday before the game about insinuations that he didn't consult with his coaching staff on rotations. What do you take away from JJ Redick's first year as head coach? I think the regular season was a thorough success, full stop. I think as a rookie head coach stepping into the situation that he was, coaching a Lebron team, coaching a Lebron AD team, and then coaching a Lebron Luka Dontic team, getting to 50 wins and managing the egos and the injuries and everything that kind of comes with it, I thought he did a fantastic job for 82 games. And then this postseason, I think the moment was too big for him.
It was a situation where I thought some of his decisions were pretty brash and reactive. He was never really on his front foot throughout the entire series. And yeah, you could talk about roster limitations and talent limitations and all that, but you had Luka Dontic and Lebron James struggled to score in the fourth quarter. And it was a lot of the same offense, game in, game out, with no real adjustments there. So I think as great as he was in the regular season, we now have to look ahead to hopefully a giant leap forward in the postseason next year. Anthony Erwin here with us, Lakers insider.
When you think about the fact that he's going through that success in the regular season, and we've had this falter here in the postseason last night, not just going with a big. And do you think he's going to change his attitude? It seems like from beginning to end, he was always on edge with everybody. Do you think he's going to relax just a little bit or is he just going to wind himself up into the ground? It's funny to go from, you know, Lakers fans are accustomed to Phil Jackson, the Zen master to JJ Reddick storming off when he's asked about his relationship with his assistant coaches.
I do think he's going to have to figure out a way to balance out his emotions and not take it so personally when people ask him about stuff. He did something that no other coach in the modern era of basketball has done in the postseason, which is not make a substitution for the entirety of the second half in game four. And for him to be astonished and admonish any kind of question about that and say how he doesn't have any regrets over it. And it wasn't a fatigue thing. And it was this and that and the other. It's just like, man, we watch that game. We know that that wasn't the right decision to make.
Just cop to it and we can all move on. And I thought that the Lakers approach to the beginning of the game in game five was was pretty indicative of a team that saw those quotes and I don't think really appreciated them all that much. Anthony, you talk about the comments that he made earlier today about the team needs to get into championship shape.
We can go down the roster. We know you ain't talking about LeBron James. What are your thoughts on on on Luka Doncic and what this offseason might look like? Is he going to spend a lot of time in Slovenia? Is he going to stick around in L.A. or what's his offseason expected to look like? Well, he said after the game that he has loved being a Laker and that, you know, that it has been a very positive experience for him before game five. He went out and paid the entirety of what was needed to fix up a mural, a Kobe and Gianna mural that was defaced there. So he seems to really love the city. He seems to really embrace the city. And now we're going to see how he embraces the fan base at its most rabid because this is the Lakers fan base holds its teams and its players to the highest standard. Yeah, we don't judge the people or coaches or players based on playoff appearances or division titles or anything like that. It it's rings, right?
It's it's where the whole concept of rings culture came from. And we're going to see how well he handles that. But I think he said everything that he needed to say. I would imagine he's going to rethink some of the conditioning stuff.
He missed a big chunk of the season with a soft tissue injury again. And that's something that I think he has to be more aware of. And look, we've all been in our our mid 20s when the stuff that you got away with at twenty three, you don't quite get away with at twenty seven and then you don't really get away with it again.
It's 30 and then 30, whatever. And and I think watching him kind of move around the basketball court in that series, especially against somebody as explosive athletically as Anthony Edwards, that looked to me like somebody was like, man, I can't play beer pong before I play basketball anymore. Not saying he would, but, you know, well, well, I mean, a college kid who like who just who just realized, man, my mortality is actually he is actually here. If you ask Nico Harrison, maybe he did. OK, we don't know. But we saw that clip of Finley, right? Where I'm taking that beer out his hand.
Yeah, yeah. I'm sure he had a beer tonight, maybe this morning, maybe right now. We'll see. Hopefully not. Lakers insider Anthony Irwin is here with us on the J.R. support show coast to coast. LeBron James at the end of the season or not end of the season, but postgame last night. Of course, he told everybody he doesn't know what he's going to do. Everybody knows he's coming back to collect his 50 and try to win another championship.
Why? Why is he putting us through this exercise? He's LeBron, you know, I think he at this point, he likes the attention. I think he keeps the Lakers a little honest, too, when they when they see kind of the. Not necessarily concerned, because like you're saying, I think everybody kind of understands how this is probably going to play out, but I think he kind of wants the Lakers to see, hey, everybody's kind of freaking out over the fact that I might step away.
I was still really good in the series and I'm still, especially if I'm teaming up with Luca, good enough to invest in. So I think it's it's it's a lot of little things all at the same time. But also, it also just kind of falls in line with him being. Of the facing the idea of being a 40 something in the NBA, that's that's he's he's in completely uncharted territory there and how he handles all of this. And if he wants to go through the rigmarole of an offseason again to get into the shape that he holds himself to the standard of, it's going to take a lot of work. And I do think there are some moments after these games, especially after a series as embarrassing as the last three that he's played and have been, I would imagine that he there is some real.
Yeah, I don't I don't know if I can do this. I would imagine he will. But it would be weird if he didn't question his ability to head into another season next time at 41. Yeah, LeBron James would be entering into his age 41 season, 23rd regular season.
Anthony Irwin is here with us on the J.R. Sportbrief show. What could the Lakers realistically do to fill out the roster? Like, who would have to go?
Are we talking about a Reeves? They already tried to get rid of connect. Like, what could they realistically do?
So this is where it's tough. Rob Palenka talked at the exit presser today about how the Lakers clearly need more size. He talked about them needing a big. I think they need multiple bigs. You look at all of the rotations around the league and and they all have plenty of depth at the center position. So I think they need multiple bags.
I mean, I think they need a variety of bags. And I think they also need to get more athletic on the perimeter. But to me, the reason the Lakers lost this series to the Minnesota Timberwolves was they were both smaller and slower. That's a terrible combination in sports like that is it doesn't matter what sport you're playing outside of golf.
If you are both smaller and slower, you're going to really struggle. And the Lakers are going to need to add more size and they're going to need to add more athleticism. And that's not cheap. They only have one first round pick that they can move this upcoming summer. They have the number fifty five pick in the upcoming draft. They have a bunch of expiring contracts, but without touching the actual rotation, it does get a little tricky to check all of the boxes that Rob Palenka said he was going to. So I do think big changes are coming to the roster. I would be very surprised if this team didn't look really different in the upcoming season.
But it is going to take some some creativity that, frankly, Rob Palenka has really kind of struggled with, you know, over the course of his tenure. All things considered, and of course, getting Luka Doncic is just like a gift. But when you take a look at this season, you think about LeBron James, where he is at his stage of his career, you think about the Lakers. There still has to be a lot of optimism versus, you know, what we saw before February one, where you got Anthony Davis and LeBron versus what you have now with the Luka and and and LeBron. It has to be a sense of optimism, no?
Oh, absolutely. It's a it's a completely different organization. It's a completely different era of said organization.
It's really exciting. The idea of LeBron and Luka getting a full loss season to work with each other, to talk to each other, to game plan how they should play together. J.J. Redick might even be able to attend some of those meetings.
I'm really excited about where the Lakers are heading here. But there are there's just I don't know about you, but I think one championship, one Western Conference Finals appearance where they were swept and not much else to show for it was kind of a low return on the LeBron James Anthony Davis era. And there were some contexts there. Right.
You had covid, which completely threw some of the scheduling out of whack. And the return such a quick return after the bubble, I think clearly paints a different picture than than than all this stuff. But it still needs to be noted that I don't think the Lakers maximize that window. And if the Lakers are going to maximize this Luka Doncic era and they're going to maximize certainly the next season or two where they have Luka and LeBron, they're going to have to kind of rethink a lot of their organization. They don't employ a pro scouting department.
They Rob Polinka runs the finished front office in the sport. Basically, they need to invest into the infrastructure of their of their organization and and thus maybe maximize their work on the margins. And if they're able to do that, I think they'll be pretty good. But, you know, the fact that they even have this opportunity in the first place, most fan bases would give their right arm for the idea, the idea of going from LeBron to LeBron and A.D. to LeBron and Luka Doncic. So in that sense, Lakers fans are fans are really blessed.
But that comes with hefty expectations. Well, Anthony, before we let you go, I mean, we know the Lakers are a mom and pop. We saw the family fight.
We saw the family feud after the passing of Dr. Bus. You said they don't have a scouting department was a thin scouting department. What makes the Lakers different than other teams? They have just always believed in running a very tight ship. You have I have some friends who either work there or worked there for past tense. And, you know, they said that almost nobody there gets to just do one job.
Everybody there has to wear multiple hats and everybody there has to kind of get creative with their time and with their resources, given some of the staffing concerns there. They are very well known around the league when it comes to, you know, paying assistant coaches the way that they should, especially if you consider the cost of living in L.A. The Lakers, again, they have run one way for a really long time and they've had a lot of success running that one way for a really long time. But I think we've entered into a different era of professional sports where you have tech bro money running this stuff.
And and that's where, you know, some of these mom and pop shops either have sold completely or have had to really rethink their approach. Well, the Lakers better catch up if they don't win something with Luca, then I mean, everybody needs to get the boot. Hey, Anthony, thank you so much for the time. Tell everybody where they can follow you and your work, whether it be with Odyssey or Clutch Points, fill us in. Yeah, thank you very much for having me at Anthony or in L.A. on Twitter. And then you can find the show on YouTube at his youtube.com slash at Lakers Lounge to find the show there. We're doing some really cool stuff this upcoming summer. We've we've partnered with the Laker Film Room podcast and the Yovan Buhas podcast. And we're building out hopefully this this brand new kind of L.A. sports podcast network. So keep an eye out for that. All right, Anthony, thank you so much. I know the Lakers keep you busy.
They never have a quiet anything. So enjoy the off season the best you can. OK. No such thing as an off season. Yeah, I know.
