The only thing funnier than JJ Redick’s rant during the Lakers’ Game 2 win was LeBron James’ response to it.
The Lakers evened their playoff series at 1-1 with a 94-85 win over the Wolves on Tuesday.
The victory was accomplished with LeBron James leading the charge defensively. L.A. held Minnesota to 85 points, the lowest number of points scored by a Lakers opponent all year.
While there was plenty to celebrate in this victory, it wasn’t blemish-free.
During the third quarter, the Lakers began letting go of the rope. The Wolves scored eight of the first 12 points in the period, and after Minnesota scored five unanswered, JJ Redick saw enough and called a timeout.
Redick went off, dropping f-bombs at any Lakers player in his vicinity. It’s a level of frustration he’s shown before but hasn’t had to bring out in the middle of a game in quite some time.
“Time out. What the f*ck is going on. Jesus f*cking Christ, what the f*ck are you guys doing. Come on!”
-JJ Redick to the Lakers team before they went on their run pic.twitter.com/i0mJdkRwZl
— Ahmed/The Ears/IG: BigBizTheGod (@big_business_) April 23, 2025
After the win, LeBron let the media know that this moment was just JJ being JJ.
“I thought we responded well just from the timeout,” LeBron said. “We know JJ is gonna spaz out from time to time. That’s JJ and so at this point for us, obviously we need to listen to the message and not the way he’s delivering it…You have to be able to understand about it’s not how he’s saying it, it’s about what he’s saying. And I thought we responded after that.”
I’m not here to advocate that yelling works, but the Lakers were noticeably sharper after Redick’s rant and quickly extended the lead back into double figures.
In basketball, leads can evaporate in the blink of an eye. Not only was Redick calling a timeout when the lead got down to single digits wise, but he also knew what buttons to push and was able to make sure his team stayed sharp.
From Redick’s perspective, this is all part of his role more so than an emotional response to what is happening on the court.
“Not frustration,” Redick said. “Just coaching. I think when we were organized in the right spots, we ran some good stuff and frankly, I thought we missed some open threes. [Austin Reaves] got some great looks. So I mean other than just a couple kind of disorganized plays, we played good offense tonight. As a coach, you can see it coming when the other side of that is on the horizon and it was building, I just wanted to make sure everybody was on the same page.”
While Redick will become an angry motivational coach from a feel-good movie when necessary, don’t expect it to be a common occurrence.
“It’s not something that I want to do,” Redick said. “It’s something I’m more than comfortable doing, but I think tonight, it was just more about getting that urgency button switched back on.”
Hopefully the Lakers can keep that urgency activated as they head to Minnesota for Game 3 and 4 of this series. If not, we may have to see Red Redick again.
You can follow Edwin on Twitter at @ECreates88 or on Bluesky at @ecreates88.bsky.social.