Scoggins: JJ Redick’s no-sub second half for Lakers against Timberwolves looked desperate, appears damaging

JJ Redick employed a fifth-grade AAU basketball strategy Sunday. The one where a coach picks his five best players and only plays them, hoping to win a B bracket championship.

Except Redick unveiled his no-reserves lineup in an NBA playoff game.

The Los Angeles Lakers rookie coach did so with a 40-year-old who has gray in his beard and 71,137 career minutes logged on his legs, and another player who is not exactly known for his fitness and was coming off an illness that, in his own words, required him to spend the previous day “mostly laying down, not doing anything, just trying to get some rest.”

Redick threw the basketball equivalent of a Hail Mary.

The gamble didn’t work. And it might have cost his team a winnable game, and potentially, the first-round series.

Redick played five players the entire second half of a 116-113 loss to the Timberwolves in Game 4.

Target Center has experienced very few occasions that can match the drama that unfolded on the court.

Redick left himself ripe for second-guessing with his personnel strategy. He became the first NBA coach to ride five players for the entire second half since 1997, according to statistician Keerthika Uthayakumar.

“It was not a planned thing to play five guys an entire second half,” Redick said.

Redick looked down at his bench and re-enacted Gene Hackman’s character in the movie “Hoosiers” when he declared unemotionally, “My team is on the floor.”

The Los Angeles roster is so top-heavy with LeBron James and Luka Doncic that it’s a wonder the team didn’t topple over when management constructed the roster. Kiddie pools have more depth than the Lakers.

Redick made the decision to use Dorian Finney-Smith over Jaxson Hayes to start the second half. Hayes is a regular starter who offers next to nothing in terms of production, so benching him barely made a ripple.

Hayes and the rest of reserves could have changed into street clothes at that point. Redick chose to ride or die with his Favorite Five and hope they didn’t run out of gas.

The switch to Finney-Smith sparked a shooting barrage in the third quarter. The Lakers outscored the Wolves 36-23 in the quarter to turn a three-point halftime deficit into a 94-84 lead entering the fourth.

That’s where Redick miscalculated the situation. Rather than get James and/or Doncic a quick breather, he doubled down on his lack of trust in his bench. The move reeked of desperation, as if Game 4 was an elimination game.

His options are limited, but it still was remarkable to see an NBA coach show zero faith in 10 guys sitting at the end of the bench. Not even for a minute.

Redick said he reminded his Favorite Five that he had two timeouts to use in the fourth quarter and asked if anyone needed a rest. Nobody raised a hand because no competitor is going to remove himself willingly from a playoff game. That’s the coach’s job.

“I don’t think nobody wanted to come out the game anyway,” Finney-Smith said. “I don’t think nobody is going to use that as an excuse.”

Fatigued or not, the Lakers crumbled in the fourth quarter. They scored only 19 points on 5-for-18 shooting, including 4-for-12 on three-pointers.

The final miss came on Austin Reaves’ three-point attempt from the corner at the buzzer.

“There’s no excuse for not winning this game,” Doncic said.

James, who played a game-high and season-high 46 minutes, 14 seconds, went scoreless in the fourth quarter. He dismissed the notion of a correlation between an extra-heavy workload and his team’s offensive struggles in the fourth quarter.

“We had some really good looks,” he said. “Luka missed a point-blank layup. I missed a point-blank layup. We had a couple of opportunities. I don’t think fatigue had anything to do with that. We just missed some point-blank shots.”

Asked if he second-guessed himself, Redick said, “Not on that one.”

Neither did his players after losing grip of the game, and the series, in the final 12 minutes.

“This is the playoffs,” Doncic said. “Fatigue shouldn’t play any role. We played a lot of minutes, but that shouldn’t play a role. I just think they executed better during the last minutes.”

They didn’t blame their coach’s strategy, but it was something that likely won’t happen again for a long time. Unless, of course, Redick looks down at his bench in Game 5 on Wednesday night, feels hopeless and decides to try it again.