The Los Angeles Lakers play their first regular season game on Tuesday evening and face the Minnesota Timberwolves at home. While a new season is always exciting, this is a particularly interesting Lakers season with new head coach JJ Redick at the helm.

Redick has never trained at a professional level before. But after seeing his resume as a player and the knowledge of the game he had displayed during his time as a broadcaster, the Lakers felt he was the right guy to upgrade last year’s roster with a few minor adjustments to take it to the next level.

Given the whirlwind nature of the new coach over the last few months, Redick probably hasn’t had much time to reflect on his situation and look forward. But he got the chance and gave himself some advice on how to keep his composure, via ESPN’s Dave McMenamin:

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

Redick elaborated on this point, saying that he must contend with his own nature of being his own biggest critic as the season inevitably hits harder times:

“The self-criticism and the low points go hand in hand. When we don’t implement the things, that is, the things that we have stressed and are talking about don’t happen or are implemented in court, I tend to blame myself. I trust my coaches, so there won’t be a question of, “Why are we doing this?” You said you trained for that.” It’s more like I don’t communicate it clearly because it doesn’t happen on the pitch. This is a low. A defeat is certainly a low point and we as a group just have to maintain that it’s a process throughout the season. Our goal is to get better in every single game and if we can do that and commit to it, we believe that at the end of the regular season we will have a really good team and can compete.”

So far, Redick has been completely open about every step of his process and has also provided great insight into his state of mind. There should be no surprises in how Redick plans to lead his team this season, and perhaps that will give the Lakers a boost.

Austin Reaves believes the 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 there was a lack of strategy and game plan, and while Reaves will benefit from what Redick brings to the table, he believes 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 and talked to everyone is a great start because I feel like last year we won a lot of games a lot of times with talent and if you Talent.” If you take care of the structure, you have the opportunity to do something very special. So I don’t think it necessarily matters to me or not, I just think everything they came in and talked about makes sense to me for our entire collective group.”

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