Darvin Ham needed roughly eight months between the offseason and regular season to land on his starting lineup. JJ Redick needed two months on the job.
Throughout recent years, Lakers head coaches have kept starting fives close to the vest, to say the least. Both Frank Vogel and Ham gained reputations for never revealing their starting lineups until it was absolutely necessary.
JJ Redick isn’t following that mold.
Despite being nearly a month away from the first game of the regular season and still a week out from even the start of training camp, Redick has already landed on his starting five. And on top of that, he’s already willingly sharing it publicly.
Redick appeared on “The Lowe Post” podcast with Zach Lowe on Tuesday and, when asked if he had settled on a starting lineup, he simply…revealed the lineup. What a novel concept!
It’ll be the starting five that went 23-10 last year.
Well, there goes a preseason storyline. And, to be clear, the lineup he is referring to D’Angelo Russell, Austin Reaves, Rui Hachimura, LeBron James and Anthony Davis.
To be fair, there may not actually be much to debate about that lineup. The only realistic change that could be made is inserting Jarred Vanderbilt for Hachimura. However, if reports are to be believed, Vando might not even be ready from the jump this preseason, which pretty much makes the decision an easy one.
After spending last summer talking about continuity and then not leaning into that last season, the Lakers are, at the very least, going to ride that continuity this season with this lineup. In those final 33 games, only one other lineup — the Pacers starting five — played more minutes together in the entire NBA.
The Lakers found ways to leverage their size with that starting five and it really ignited Hachimura as well. The team also found success with that group in games LeBron sat out as well.
Now, the starting five struggled in the playoffs against Denver, but the likely hope is that a season of playing together and figuring out how to correct the weakness will only make them stronger.
And even when they struggled, the Lakers led for the vast majority of the series as well, so the struggles weren’t that great in context.
This is also just a general change for the Lakers, too, as it’s been some time since fans have known what the starting five would be heading into the season. You’d have to go back to the 2020-21 season after the Lakers won the title to have a year in which the team entered camp and the season aware of what it’s starting group would look like.
