Why JJ Redick isn’t too concerned with NBA Cup amid Lakers’ 4-0 group finish

LOS ANGELES – The Los Angeles Lakers finished up group play for the NBA Cup at 4-0 following their 129-119 win against the Dallas Mavericks on Friday. With the win the Lakers have assured themselves home court advantage for the quarterfinal round on Dec. 10 against the San Antonio Spurs. But the Lakers still have work to do before the knockout round of the NBA Cup, which is why head coach JJ Redick isn’t too concerned about the cup at this moment.

“Really pleased that we were able to go undefeated in our pool, our group. . .More importantly, we’ve got a back-to-back coming up and a really hard road trip,” Redick said following the win against the Mavericks. “Phoenix is playing great, New Orleans has a ton of talent. We’ve got to take care of business in the next two games, and then we’ve got to go be great on the road like we’ve been for most of the year outside of two games.”

“The cup, in some ways, is a distant memory for the next 12 days,” Redick continued.

With the win against the Mavericks, the Lakers improved to 14-4 on the season, and still hold the No. 2 spot in the Western Conference standings. The back-to-back Redick mentioned is Sunday against the New Orleans Pelicans and Monday against the Phoenix Suns.

After that, the Lakers head out on the road for a three-game trip with games against the Toronto Raptors, Boston Celtics and Philadelphia 76ers. All three having winning records and are among the top-nine in the East standings.

Amid the Lakers’ strong start to the season, Redick has overall been pleased with the team’s habits.

“I think the game plan discipline and game plan execution has been pretty good all season, and we’ve been building that,” Redick said. “The outliers on that to me are the games where we lacked effort, didn’t play hard, which basically was two games of our 18. I think our communication habits, on-court huddles, all of that stuff has been great. And then offensively, the organization and the execution is significantly better than where it was last year. And our ability to understand what we’re trying to do and why we’re trying to do it on offense has been really good.”

The two games that Redick kept mentioning in terms of poor effort were the Lakers’ two losses on their early November road trip when they lost to the Atlanta Hawks, 122-102, and then fell to the Oklahoma City Thunder, 121-92. The Lakers were without LeBron James in both of those losses.

When the Lakers do resume NBA Cup play in about two weeks, it will be interesting to see what the court looks like. The Lakers did not have their traditional cup court against the Mavericks following Luka Doncic’s complaint of the court being not up to par.

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