JJ Redick's 'impossible' reaction to Lakers' compressed schedule

03/22/2025 10:20 PM

LOS ANGELES – When the Los Angeles Lakers left the court after their 118-89 loss to the Milwaukee Bucks on Thursday, they had just completed a tough part of their schedule that saw them play six games in eight days. They played that portion of their schedule without two starters in LeBron James and Rui Hachimura, during which Lakers’ head coach JJ Redick lamented the lack of practice time the team has to re-acclimate them to the lineup.

Amid that tough stretch of the schedule for the Lakers, the team opted to sit several players in the loss to the Bucks, including Luka Doncic, Austin Reaves, Dorian Finney-Smith and Jarred Vanderbilt. All of them were upgraded to available for the Lakers’ Saturday matchup against the Chicago Bulls, including James and Hachimura.

But after the Bucks loss, JJ Redick was 100 percent honest about his disdain for the Lakers having such a compressed schedule, especially when it pertains to the modern NBA game.

“I don’t think that the game that exists today in the modern NBA, and the modern NBA player. . .you’re not built to play six games in eight nights,” Redick said. “That game just doesn’t allow you to play six game in eight nights. It’s just not possible.”

Redick recalled the 2010-11 season when he was with the Orlando Magic, in which the entire NBA played a compressed 66-game schedule. He acknowledged that if his era in the NBA was more like today’s game, he wouldn’t have been able to play such a compressed schedule as well.

“I lived through the lockout year. . .they gave me the option, you want to play all 66? Normally I would be like, yeah, but then I was like f**k no, I just played 65 games in 92 days,” Redick recalled. “This is impossible, and it was an easier game to play then because there wasn’t as much movement and there wasn’t as much spacing and you didn’t have to cover as much of the court.”

During Redick’s time as an ESPN analyst and podcast host following his retirement, he often drew the ire of players from the past due to his championing of today’s NBA game over their eras. Following the Bucks’ loss, Redick praised today’s players for being able to withstand a tight schedule amid the changing on-court game.

“What our guys just went through, it’s difficult. And the old heads are going to talk about how physical it was in the 80s and 90s, and that’s fine,” Redick continued. “But the level of physicality in our game, and the way that the court has to be covered, and all the movement and stuff, I’m just glad to be on the other side of it.”

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