3 things we learned about JJ Redick’s coaching style at his intro press conference

Through some brief quotes and snippets of insight, Lakers fans saw glimpses of what JJ Redick’s coaching style could be.

Fans are never going to get too much insight into a head coach’s style and philosophy at the introductory press conference, no matter how hard they try. As was the case for JJ Redick on Monday, when he fielded as many questions about his podcasting future and conversations with LeBron as he did on his offensive strategies and how he’ll coach games.

There were a couple of brief moments and peeks behind the curtain where you learned a little bit about Redick’s thinking and how that might apply to the court.

Based on his quotes at his introductory press conference, let’s examine three things we learned about Redick’s coaching style.

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Offensive rebounding

Last season, the Lakers were not a good offensive rebounding team. With Jarred Vanderbilt out and the team often struggling with transition defense, the shift was made early in the season to abandon the offensive glass and get back defensively.

To be fair, that didn’t really work either as the Lakers ranked in the bottom five in the league in fastbreak points allowed.

Naturally, then, Redick wants to scrap the whole approach and focus on hitting the glass, which he said is an attribute of good teams.

“The team was 29th in offensive rebounding percentage,” Redick said. “If you look at the trends in the NBA right now, teams that really value possessions are sending guys from the corner. They’re not worried about getting three guys back. When I played, you were either a “go guy” or “get back guy.” I think giving players the freedom, especially from the corners, to crash is huge. You create a margin there. That all came from analyzing the game the last three years.”

There isn’t necessarily a direct correlation between offensive rebound percentage and being a good team, but that also could be chalked up to good teams not missing as many shots, too.

I’m not going to be one that pushes back against Redick on this one, though, as what the Lakers were doing on this front last year didn’t work at all, so I’m more than willing to try to mix it up.

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Off-ball movement and cutting

One of Redick's big questions will be his offensive system. The Lakers found success playing in a five-out system late last season, but does he want to continue that style?

While we won’t know that, we did learn that he wants off-ball cutting and movement offensive. Even more specifically, Redick talked about manipulating screening angles as well.

While this all came to light in a question about how Rui Hachimura would be used, it did offer plenty of insight into how an offense will look under Redick

“Beyond just the Lakers and LeBron and Anthony Davis, I’m excited about some of the younger guys on this roster and helping them,” Redick said. “I had great conversations this weekend. Two that I had that I loved were my conversation with Austin and my conversation with Rui. I think for him for how I envision him on this team, I want him shooting more threes so that’s a big part of it.

“I brought up the offensive rebounding. I think he can really become an elite offensive rebounder. As we sort of build out our offensive system and how we’re going to play, when we start incorporating movement and cutting, Rui can be an excellent cutter and part of that is because we’re going to manipulate screening angles, he’s going to get mismatches and he can really score at the basket if he has smaller players on him.”

The Lakers spent a season getting used to off-ball cutting and movement of the five-out offense. At worst, that’ll help them adapt to Redick’s system and, at best, it’ll serve as a strong foundation from which to build a more complex offense off of.

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He’s going to use math

One of the funniest out-of-context soundbites of the press conference was JJ saying he was going to use math as a head coach.

The context to that quote, though, is important. Redick is very much someone who believes in analytics, even dating back to his playing days. And that isn’t going to change now that he’s a head coach.

This doesn’t give us a direct idea of what the offense and/or defense will look like, but it does mean that it should be a very modern and analytics-friendly approach, which are great qualities to have in a system.

You can follow Jacob on Twitter at @JacobRude.