JJ Redick Reveals One Key Reason For Mavericks' Win Over Lakers

The former Mavericks player and current Laker head coach believes one thing pushed Dallas ahead.

Jan 7, 2025; Dallas, Texas, USA; Los Angeles Lakers head coach JJ Redick reacts during the game against the Dallas Mavericks at American Airlines Center. Mandatory Credit: Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images / Kevin Jairaj-Imagn Images

The Dallas Mavericks picked up a big win on Tuesday night, upsetting the Los Angeles Lakers 118-97 to break a five-game losing streak. Dallas received big contributions from Quentin Grimes and P.J. Washington and held the Lakers to a paltry 45.3% shooting from the floor and 31.4% from three. But that wasn't the biggest reason Dallas was able to win the game.

At least, not according to Lakers head coach and former Mavericks guard JJ Redick. He wasn't pleased with the team's defensive effort on Tuesday night.

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"[Dallas] killed us with any iso stuff," Redick started saying in his postgame press conference. "We talked about this morning just about not giving up iso threes. We gave two up in the first quarter and then tried to press up a little bit, and sometimes we did a decent job of containing the basketball, and they made some tough twos. There was a bunch of times we didn't contain the basketball well, and our basic shell just wasn't good. The low man wasn't there, if he was there, the weakside rotation wasn't there... I'm not sure what our rotations were, I've never seen us try to execute what we were doing."

The Mavericks picked the Lakers apart from three, shooting 18/38 from behind the arc, using initial ball penetration to break the defense down. From there, they could kick out for open threes, so it's no accident the Mavericks had 29 assists on 45 made field goals.

Redick also referenced the play at the end of the first half, where Spencer Dinwiddie broke through the initial defense and had a wide-open dunk in the final second. That's something that shouldn't happen, but the Mavericks were happy it did.

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