LOS ANGELES — The words that came out of JJ Redick’s mouth Friday night, after the Lakers’ eighth victory in 11 games – but one that featured kind of a sloppy start – were a challenge to his team. If you are a Laker fan of long standing, you might have heard the echo of another young coach with this franchise, one who ultimately became a coaching icon. “Our game plan discipline tonight was so bad, so bad,” Redick began, after the Lakers had pulled away for a 119-102 victory over the Atlanta Hawks. The criticism? The stuff was in the scouting report, particularly defensively, and the players weren’t following it. And a few minutes later, he added this: “The reason why executing a personnel-based scouting report that we’ve talked about (is important) is because I don’t want to coach a good team. I don’t want to be a part of a good team. I want to be a part of a great team, and I believe this team can be a great team. And so it is about the small details.” I hate to put pressure on a coach still settling into his first job with one of sports’ most demanding franchises. But if you read or heard those words and your first thought was “Pat Riley,” you were here for the “Showtime” era. You understand the process, and the way a young coach develops and follows his instincts with a team of veterans and stars and future Hall of Famers. These Lakers aren’t of the caliber of those Lakers at this point, not close. This roster is trying to avoid play-in territory, where it has had to fight its way into the postseason three of the last four seasons (and missed out altogether in 2022). LeBron James and Anthony Davis collaborated for one championship, but that was five seasons and three coaches ago, in the pandemic bubble in Orlando … and Redick was still an active player at the time. Some of the doubts, when Rob Pelinka lured Redick from ESPN’s microphones to coach one of sports’ most glamorous franchises, involved whether he would be able to speak truth to power, or whether when he spoke James’ lips would be moving. I think we can erase those concerns. Redick has shown that he can be blunt, sometimes painfully so, and the word is that he tells the players to their faces the same criticisms that he will then take to the media. For example, there was this description of one of those scouting report issues to which his players didn’t pay sufficient attention early in Friday night’s game. “They had 11 fast-break points in the first half,” he said. “Some of those were off our turnovers, but they scored nine right after makes – essentially 20 transition points in a half, which is insane. “The thing that really got me was (Bogdan) Bogdanovic running into screens and ghosting out, which we said the last five games, he’s done that a number of times every game. He hasn’t set a screen yet. So why are we switching that and then creating confusion and then they get open 3s. He gets behind the defense, they score. He’s not going to set the screen. He’s going to run. You stay with your own (man). … That part of it, you know, couldn’t have emphasized that any more.” And, back to those transition points, Redick noted that his team was trading baskets with the Hawks much the same way it had with Sacramento the previous Saturday, in a 132-122 victory. Outscoring people is fine if you can do it, but it’s not a recipe for consistent winning basketball. “This is not a knock on either of these teams,” Redick said. “It’s just the nature of how they play and how they score. You know, at times they’re just running up and down the court. It feels like a pickup game. We’re going to lose the pickup game. We got to get back on defense. We have to execute on offense. We have to pass. We have to screen. And when we’ve done that, we’ve been a really good basketball team.” And there was this, during his pre-game briefing: “I think the guys have a very solid understanding that if you don’t defend, you’re not going to play.” Maybe this is what Pelinka saw, and maybe this is the vibe Redick transmitted during their early conversations: The idea that he wasn’t going to coddle anyone, and that he would be as painfully honest as necessary. There was talk that Darvin Ham had grown reluctant to issue such criticisms to his players. It would be perfectly understandable if a coach preferred not to step on the toes of James and Davis. It just wouldn’t be conducive to winning basketball. Oh, by the way, Redick doesn’t play favorites. In his pre-game remarks Friday night he talked about how newcomer Dorian Finney-Smith has a “natural gift” of leadership: “Guys respect him because he plays hard. … His impact is going to not necessarily be in the box score every night.” Afterward, he told the media: “Doe had an awful first half. It was bad. He was great the second half. I told him that at halftime. He (was) awful. I don’t know where that came from.” And Redick played with Finney-Smith toward the end of the 2020-21 season in Dallas, Redick’s last as an active player. If Redick does turn out to be a great coach, this might be part of the reason: He embraces the hard. 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And then when we was about to go out, he was like, basically, the reason I’m saying that is because I want to be a great team. I don’t want to just be a good team.” Yeah, it’s going to be a challenge. But if it were easy it wouldn’t be as rewarding, right? [email protected]