Los Angeles Lakers’ Austin Reaves Shares 1 Honest Thought About Rotations as Team Prepares for Season Opener

While he’s played all of his professional career under Darvin Ham, he’s about the season with a new coach in JJ Redick. The rookie coach and former analyst knows that the pressure is on him to perform if he doesn’t want to lose his job.

While everyone is waiting to see the results of Redick’s coaching changes, Reaves decided to zero in on one aspect that is central to the team’s performance.

Austin Reaves praises JJ Redick’s decision to stick with rotation during Los Angeles Lakers’ latter preseason games

Reaves didn’t play much during the Lakers’ 111-97 loss to the Golden State Warriors, but his reps allowed Redick to figure out how the team would play during the season.

Lakers fans who watched the game noticed that Redick gave most of the minutes to nine players, and it’s reasonable to believe that this is the rotation he will stick with for much of the season.

AR15 was asked about this tactical decision, to which he replied positively.

Per Lakers Nation’s Matthew Valento:

“Obviously we have scripted plays that either start or end in that to give us an advantage, but I think it’s just read and react and playing basketball,” he said. “To your point of growing through the preseason, yeah, we’re still putting stuff in right now that we’re gonna do when the season starts. So I feel like we’ve done a really good job as a team getting good at what the base was and then kind of just adding things throughout the week. So I think with the staff that we have, it’s very detailed, very IQed and we have to execute it as good as we can, not before we move on to the next thing, but make sure that we’re in sync with what we’re doing right now.”

The Purple and Gold’s remaining preseason games will be against the Dubs and the Phoenix Suns, both of which will prove to test their mettle. Redick will be making the most of these games to finalize his rotations.

Reaves and the rest of Laker Nation hope that these moves will help the team make a serious run for the Finals in June.