LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Lakers began training camp this week with a new look roster centered around Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. It’s too early to put any labels on this Lakers’ team and their potential, but during a preseason press conference last week, Lakers head coach JJ Redick admitted his belief that this specific team can reach championship level.

And as training camp got underway following Media Day, JJ Redick expressed what his goals are for the Lakers as they prepare for the start of the regular season.

“I have three goals for camp, and it’s to continue to establish our defensive principles, continue to establish our early offense, which has been our main priority for all of September, and then last, just getting in great shape,” Redick said following Lakers’ practice on Sept. 29. “We’ve gotten terrific buy-in for the last several weeks, and today was very additive to those three things.”

Among the topics discussed during training camp was Redick’s own growth as a head coach. When the Lakers hired him ahead of the 2024-25 season, he had no prior coaching experience. Following his retirement as a player, he had gone into the media realm and was serving as an analyst on ESPN while hosting a podcast alongside LeBron James.

However, it’s not like the Lakers randomly decided to show interest in him for their coaching vacancy. That same offseason, the Charlotte Hornets were rumored to have interest in him, and in 2023, he actually interviewed for the Toronto Raptors coaching job, as per former ESPN insider Adrian Wojnarowski

Now heading into his third season on the job, Redick has gained the trust and respect of his players, and he’s feeling much more comfortable than he did when he first arrived. He initially suffered from imposter syndrome, and has now been able to overcome that.

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“I probably shouldn’t amid this, but early in my coaching career, I felt like I was cosplaying a little bit, like I was pretending to be a coach,” Redick recalled. “I just think you get more reps, you get more comfortable, I don’ think the confidence was ever not there. And you also just know what you want.

“You’ve done things enough, and you build out plans throughout the summer and the preseason, recognize those plans often will have to change, you’ll have to adapt. But just feeling more comfortable with everything whether that’s teaching on the court, I had a great revelation towards the second half of last year that I talked about with my performance coach this summer which is just that some of the things that helped me as a player, are deterrents for me as a coach … I felt like calm is better.”

And that’s a contrast to the competitive fire Redick often showed as a player, and has sometimes manifested itself as a coach.

“I talked with Coach K about it this summer, when I played, I played with anger. There was an inner anger that drove my competitiveness,” Redick continued. “That’s not always a good thing as a coach, particularly now. Just working through all that stuff. I think the biggest thing is just intrinsic knowledge. When you do things enough, you just feel more comfortable.”