Scheduled
Los Angeles Lakers at Atlanta Hawks
2026-27 · Regular season
JJ Redick kept Austin Reaves on the bench as the Pistons charged: ‘It’s just chaos’ to overreact
JJ Redick explained why he stuck to his rotation while Detroit erased most of a 26-point lead, said the Lakers’ defense has ‘a lot of room to grow,’ and J.B. Bickerstaff went back to the tape on the Pistons’ slow starts.
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Detroit had cut a 26-point deficit down to a possession, Luka Dončić was in street clothes with low back tightness, and the Lakers’ best player on the night was on the bench. JJ Redick left him there. Austin Reaves sat late in the third quarter and into the fourth as the Pistons charged, and Redick did not hurry him back.
“If you start just overreacting in-game and saying, ‘I got to get this guy back in’ … it’s just chaos,” Redick said after the Lakers held on for a 121-116 win at Little Caesars Arena on Sunday. “And we’re trying to create consistency.”
It worked out. Reaves came back and finished with a season-high 43 points on 14-of-27 shooting and 11-of-11 at the line, and the Lakers moved to 9-2 with their fifth straight win. Redick said the staff sticks to its planned rotation patterns, which he called “our matrixes,” rather than chasing every momentum swing, because players need to know when they are going in and coming out.
A 38-14 quarter, then a fight
The game split into two very different halves of the same night. The Lakers made 7 of their first 10 shots, forced eight first-quarter turnovers and led 38-14 after one. Walker Kessler’s layup early in the second made it 40-14.
Then Detroit’s bench took over. Daniss Jenkins scored 20 points in the second quarter alone and finished with a career-high 31, with eight threes. Kevin Huerter added 24 points, five rebounds, five assists and five blocks. The Pistons won the second quarter 34-23 and the third 33-27, got within 88-86 early in the fourth and within one point twice down the stretch, but never led.
Redick liked the composure more than the margin. “We just showed a lot of poise throughout,” he said. “It’s a game of mistakes.” He pointed to the fourth quarter, when the Lakers committed only three turnovers as Detroit turned up the pressure, and said that apart from a stretch of four straight empty possessions in the third, his team handled the Pistons’ activity well.
‘A lot of room to grow’ on defense
Redick’s biggest note was about the other end. He breaks the Lakers’ defense into three phases, and he said only one of them is where he wants it. “There’s three phases to our defense and we still have a lot of room to grow in the first phase, the first eight seconds and the last phase, which is finishing possessions,” he said. “It’s that middle phase that we’re good right now.”
The first phase showed up in the third quarter, when Detroit got out in transition after Lakers misses, not just after turnovers. The last phase is the defensive glass, and the Pistons grabbed 18 offensive rebounds. Redick said the team believed before the season that it could be “disruptive within our stuff,” and that is the half-court part he is happy with.
Kessler was the exception on the boards, with 12 points, 16 rebounds, seven of them offensive, and three blocks. Redick called him “awesome” and “relentless,” and said he loved “the consistency right now for him.”
He also credited the guard group around Reaves for getting through Detroit’s pressure without Dončić. “The other big part of that was having multiple ball handlers,” Redick said. “I thought AR’s decision-making, his aggression, his, you know, just consistently touching the paint and getting downhill, was fantastic tonight.” Quentin Grimes left with a finger injury, but Redick said his X-ray was negative.
Bickerstaff goes back to the tape on Detroit’s starts
On the other side, J.B. Bickerstaff was left explaining another slow start. The Pistons, who opened 6-1, have now lost two in a row and are 6-3.
“I think we had seven turnovers, you know, early,” Bickerstaff said. “They’re one of the best in the league at creating points off of turnovers. So it definitely didn’t get us off to the start we would have liked.” Asked about the pattern, he said he had to “go back, take a look at it” and find the cause, because Detroit’s starts used to be a strength. “We need to go back and compare the two and see what we’re doing to get better at those starts,” he said.
Cade Cunningham and Duncan Robinson were both scoreless in the first half. Cunningham finished with 14 points and eight assists on 6-of-15 shooting, and Robinson had 12 on 4-of-12. Bickerstaff said the Lakers crowded both of them with “two or three bodies” and took the blame himself. “My responsibility to help them more,” he said. “So I’ve got to do a better job of that.”
He praised the bench for refusing to fold. “Very easily, you know, being down like we were, the group could have gone and called it a night,” he said of Jenkins. “But I thought he led the charge.” With Jalen Duren still out, Bickerstaff also wants the physical part of the game to start sooner. “It’s all hands on deck,” he said. “Like the physicality has to start earlier.”
Both teams play again Monday night. The Lakers visit Atlanta on the second night of a back-to-back, and the Pistons host Washington.
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