Usually, head coaches giving off main character energy is a big no-no. Yet tonight was JJ Redick’s show. From the ‘uncomfortable’ chat to kind of blaming LeBron James, the Los Angeles Lakers coach decided that dramatic changes were needed. With Austin Reaves injured, he’s doing something radical we never thought we’d see this season. Redick is apparently getting around his team’s common woes by ‘not playing’ Luka Doncic.

Redick took a gamble by pulling Doncic out of the game while there were three minutes left in the first quarter. After Doncic spoke about the unusual strategy, the coach addressed it after the Lakers’ 125-101 win against the Sacramento Kings. In turn, he revealed another unplanned change…

Redick couldn’t pull Doncic back in Q3 due to the game flow, which affected his minutes in the final stretch. It fell on LeBron James to call the shots in real time.

“LeBron just decided with 55 seconds left he was going to let Luka finish, but yeah,” Redick said.

Is that gratitude we’re detecting, coach?

A couple of weeks ago, James appeared to have defied Redick by taking the technical free throws against the Phoenix Suns. He missed one of them, and Redick later said he would’ve preferred if Doncic had taken those shots. It was one of those moments that left everybody watching stunned. Had they lost the game, James would’ve faced another layer of flak.

In a rematch with the Suns soon after, the Lakers lost, and they also lost to the Houston Rockets. Redick was not happy with how things were going, and it showed in a bombshell presser on Christmas Day.

“Since we’ve gotten Bron back, we haven’t been as organized offensively,” Redick revealed, and was slammed for it online.

But while the Lakers players appeared to have breezed past Redick’s uncomfortable presser, he was not done…

Is JJ Redick’s new strategy going to make it all uncomfortable?

The assumption after the blockbuster trade was that this would be Luka Doncic’s team. It was, for the most part, with a backcourt partner in Austin Reaves. When LeBron James returned, many thought of it as another adjustment. But not all of it worked.

Redick saw the drawbacks in a Doncic-centric offense. Especially when a contusion in his leg sidelined him. With Reaves sidelined till the next year, the coach has decided that Doncic and James will play short spurts across four quarters to ensure at least one of them is on the floor at all times.

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“I think, particularly with AR out, it just gives more time for those guys to sort of be the quarterback without the other one,” Redick said.

And his experiment paid off with James ensuring Doncic could close the game. Now he plans to continue this new system for the foreseeable future. The challenge would be to distribute the minutes between two very different starters.

“It’s a longer stretch for LeBron and a shorter stretch for Luka, but it’s not going to diminish either of their overall playing time,” Redick assured.

In this new system, Doncic would start the first and third quarters, go back to the bench with three minutes left, and close out both halves while coming on with nine minutes to go. Of course, there’d be issues with timeouts and game flow like today. They were forced to improvise with Doncic coming in with six minutes to go in the final stretch. But James is apparently on board with this change to facilitate better cohesion.

The tweaked staggered minutes system will allow the Slovenian player, who’s been dominant offensively, to stay locked in on defense in shorter bursts. Doncic looked much better against the Kings last night, scoring 34 points, seven assists, five rebounds, three steals, and one block in only 33 minutes.

Lakers Nation, this could be the start of a positive trend.