MILWAUKEE — At this point in the regular season, non-game on-court time is considered a premium, with most teams 60-plus games deep into their schedules.
So when the Lakers had the rare opportunity to get on the floor together between Monday’s road loss to the Brooklyn Nets and Thursday’s matchup against the Milwaukee Bucks, Coach JJ Redick said they used the time to work on their offensive organization.
“Just our guys knowing our plays,” Redick said before the game. “Again, not a lot of practice time, not a lot of time to do script. Got some lineups out there that haven’t played a ton together.”
Redick said the Lakers specifically keyed in on how the team wants to play against switching defenses, something they have faced more frequently since Luka Doncic made his Lakers debut last month.
The Lakers fared well against switching defenses before Doncic’s debut but haven’t been as efficient since, leading to them prioritizing that area of their offensive game plan.
“We’ve played a number of teams that have played [switching] defense against us,” Redick said. “So just wanted to add and put some common [after timeout plays], off-ball [after timeout plays] as set plays, making sure everybody knew it. We had all the guys [player development] coaches go over it with film.
“We went over it with both groups. We watched it. That’s the simplest way to answer your question is just adding in a couple things that we’ve already been running as ATOs, just as set plays when we need ’em.”
BACK TO L.A.
With Thursday’s game being the first night of a back-to-back set and the Lakers concluding their four-game trip against the Denver Nuggets on Friday night, the team sent its four injured players back to Los Angeles for rehab.
LeBron James (strained left groin), Jaxson Hayes (bruised right knee), Rui Hachimura (left patellar tendinopathy) and Maxi Kleber (recovery from right foot surgery) flew back to Southern California before the Lakers traveled to Milwaukee.
Redick said James, Hachimura and Hayes are considered day-to-day.
“There’s no reason for them to travel,” Redick said. “They’ve got acute injuries that frankly, they’re better served without the travel and rehabbing back in L.A. They won’t play [on Friday], but they’re day to day from here on out.”
James has missed the last two games since injuring his groin late in Saturday’s road loss to the Boston Celtics. ESPN’s Shams Charania reported that James is progressing well from his injury.
Thursday was Hachimura’s seventh straight missed game and Hayes’ third.
ROTATION CHANGE
After not being in the rotation since January, two-way center Christian Koloko was both available and a part of the Lakers’ early rotation against the Bucks.
Fellow two-way contract center Trey Jemison has played over Koloko since joining the team in mid-January, with Koloko’s playing time dropping off since then.
The Lakers won the first 13 games that Jemison played in.
“I think sometimes to understand, when you talk about rotations and availability and all that stuff, I think at one point we were 13-0 when Trey played,” Redick said. “Some of that was, at the end of a game when we’re up 20, but you don’t mess with a good thing. And if we’re winning, we’re going to continue to ride the guys that are helping us win.”