On the eve of the opener, JJ Redick told ESPN that his “biggest unknown” is how his new-look roster will “deal with adversity.”
The question underneath is whether this rebuilt group is any better equipped for a bad stretch than last year’s. The answer depends on what kind of adversity you mean, and only one kind decided last season.
The Midseason Slump Looks Fixable
The best case for a sturdier team starts with last winter. Los Angeles won only half of its games across December, January and February, and Redick blamed effort rather than talent.
After a Christmas blowout loss to Houston, he said “We don’t care enough to do the things that are necessary.”
The front office built this roster to fix that. Walker Kessler, Quentin Grimes, Matisse Thybulle and Jarred Vanderbilt are defenders first.
Redick said his ceiling for the group has gone up, from roughly average in September to a team with “the chance to be a good defense.” The Lakers ranked 10th defensively during the preseason, which is a small sample but points the right way.
The core is also younger and fresher. Dončić said in August that he had “100 percent” recovered from the hamstring injury.
A team that defends on effort and isn’t carrying a 41-year-old’s minutes has a fair claim to handling November and January better than the last one did.
The Fallback Left With LeBron
The argument against is about the adversity that actually ended last season. The Lakers went 15-2 in March and were starting to look like a dark horse before Dončić and Reaves both got injured against Oklahoma City on April 2.
Reaves missed almost a month with an oblique strain and Dončić was done for the year with a hamstring strain.
What came next was real resilience. LeBron James led the Lakers to a surprise 4-2 series win over the Houston Rockets in the first round. In Game 1, Luke Kennard, Deandre Ayton, Marcus Smart and Rui Hachimura all scored in double figures to cover for the missing stars.
James has since left for Philadelphia, and the new roster no longer features him or many of the top rotation players who helped lift the Lakers past the first round.
That leaves a thin safety net. If Dončić misses two weeks, the offense runs through Reaves, Collin Sexton and a group of defenders whose shooting is unproven.
The roster was built to support Dončić, and nobody on it has shown it can carry the team without him.
The chemistry these players would lean on hasn’t formed yet either. Dončić, Reaves, Kessler and Sexton all missed multiple games during the preseason, and the lingering unknowns include the opening night starting lineup.
Effort Is Solved, Absences Are Not
Redick is right that adversity is the unknown. He is framing it around market noise, the “[So, the sky was falling] 29 times” kind.
That kind of adversity is the one this roster is best built to absorb. A defense-first group with clear roles should get through losing streaks without the effort collapses that sank last winter.
The adversity that decides a Lakers season is a Dončić absence, and on that count this team is less resilient than the one it replaced.
Last spring the Lakers had a Hall of Famer and a bench of veteran scorers to fall back on. This year they have Reaves and a defensive identity that has only been tested in preseason.
The view would change if the Lakers play .500 or better during their first extended stretch without Dončić. If Reaves and Sexton can keep the offense afloat while Kessler anchors the defense, the roster has a real floor.
Until that happens, the safe read is that this team will handle bad weeks well and will struggle without its best player.
Source: ESPN
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