The Los Angeles Lakers play their first regular season game on Tuesday night, facing the Minnesota Timberwolves in front of the home faithful. While a new season is always exciting, this is an especially interesting Lakers campaign with new head coach JJ Redick at the helm.

Redick has never coached at the professional level before. But after seeing his resume as a player and the knowledge of the game he showed during his time as a broadcaster, the Lakers felt he was the right person to take last year’s roster to the next level, with some minor adjustments .

With the whirlwind of the past few months for the new coach, Redick likely hasn’t had much time to reflect on his situation and look ahead. But he got the chance to do that and gave himself some advice on how to keep his composure, via ESPN’s Dave McMenamin:

“Learning not to get too high or too low. Probably not too high, that’s the challenge.”

Redick expanded on this point, saying that he will have to battle with his own nature as his own worst critic as the season inevitably faces tougher times:

“The self-criticism and the lows go hand in hand. When we don’t execute, meaning the things we’ve emphasized and the things we talk about don’t happen or don’t translate to the court, I tend to blame myself. I trust my coaches, so there won’t be anything like ‘why are we doing this, you guys said you coached this.’ It’s more like I’m not communicating this in a clear way because it’s not happening on the field. That’s a low point. Losing is definitely a low point, and that’s where we have to maintain as a group throughout the season that this is a process. Our goal is to get better every game, and if we do that as a group and embrace it, we believe we will have a very good team and be able to compete by the end of the regular season.”

So far, Redick has been completely open about every step of his process and has also provided plenty of insight into his state of mind. There shouldn’t be any surprises with how Redick plans to lead his team this season, and perhaps that will give the Lakers a boost.

Austin Reaves believes Lakers will benefit from JJ Redick’s structure

The Lakers certainly have several players who can take over games and really lead the team to victory, such as Austin Reaves. But last season it often felt like the strategies and game plans were lacking and while Reaves will benefit from what Redick brings in, he thinks these new structures will benefit the entire Lakers team.

“It’s not even really just for me,” Reaves added. “I just think the whole structure and foundation that these coaches have put in place for us, talking to everyone, is a good start because I feel like a lot of times last year we won a lot of games based on talent and if you If you have a talent for structure, then you have the opportunity to do something very special. So I don’t think it’s necessarily a thing for me or not, I just think everything that they came in and talked about makes sense to me for our whole collective group.

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