LeBron's Friend and Head Coach Eviscerates His Team After Christmas Meltdown: 'Don't Care Enough to Be a Professional'
When the Los Angeles Lakers and Dallas Mavericks consummated a blockbuster trade that sent Slovenian wunderkind Luka Doncic from Texas to California in exchange for damaged goods in February, it was a universally reviled, mocked, and panned trade.
(It also eventually got then-Mavs general manager Nico Harrison fired from his job.)
Fast forward to this season, and all the critics appeared to have been 100 percent correct about that debacle of a trade.
The Lakers sit at 19-10, with Doncic averaging 33.7 points, 8.5 rebounds, and 8.7 assists a game. The Mavs, meanwhile, are 12-20, and Anthony Davis got hurt — yet again — during a Christmas game loss.
The vibes are understandably bad in Dallas, between the losing record and A.D. now referring to the term “always damaged” instead of Anthony Davis.
But why are the vibes so toxic in Los Angeles, too?
Not unlike the Mavs, the Lakers lost on Christmas, as the Houston Rockets blitzed Los Angeles, jumping out to an early big lead and never truly looking back en route to a 119-96 drubbing.
Couple that beatdown with the last Lakers game, which was a humbling 132-108 loss to the Phoenix Suns, and Lakers head coach J.J. Redick appeared beyond fed up with his team that featured Doncic, future first-ballot Hall of Famer LeBron James, and ascending offensive star Austin Reaves.
According to ESPN, Redick didn’t mince words when calling out his own team, which includes the very same James that he built a friendship with when the two briefly became co-hosts of a podcast together.
“We don’t care enough right now,” Redick said following the game. “And that’s the part that bothers you a lot. We don’t care enough to do the things that are necessary. We don’t care enough to be a professional.”
Redick also made clear that he was going to make things “uncomfortable” going into Sunday’s tilt against the woeful Sacramento Kings.
“Saturday’s practice — I told the guys — it’s going to be uncomfortable,” Redick said. “The meeting is going to be uncomfortable. I’m not doing another 53 games like this.”
“The two words of the day were effort and execution,” Redick continued. “And I feel like when we’ve done both of those things at a high level, we’ve been a good basketball team. When we haven’t, we’re a terrible basketball team. And tonight we were a terrible basketball team. And that started legitimately right away.”
Ex-ESPN reporter Arash Markazi called the entire soundbite “scorched earth”:
JJ Redick went scorched earth on the Lakers postgame. pic.twitter.com/ZLuOKyqMBQ
— Arash Markazi (@ArashMarkazi) December 26, 2025
While Lakers critics have called out the team’s lack of athleticism and inability to commit to playing defense, Redick’s hands may be tied personnel-wise — which could make that Saturday meeting beyond just “uncomfortable.”
Redick’s friend, former podcast co-host, and the NBA’s all-time leading scorer, James, turns 41 on Dec. 30, which is well beyond when most professional athletes start to break down physically. It’s both unrealistic and foolish to expect James to start flying around the court while playing lockdown defense like he did when he was 26.
Meanwhile, neither Doncic, who actually is 26, nor Reaves, 27, are especially athletic, and neither has ever been considered a plus-defender. And Doncic has also been criticized for having other warts in his game, like his penchant for arguing with referees instead of getting back on defense:
Steven Adams with the HARD FOUL on Luka 😳 pic.twitter.com/Cckyw5TNLx
— NBACentel (@TheNBACentel) December 26, 2025
When your three best players are all uniformly unwilling and/or unable to commit to playing 48 minutes of “professional” defense, there’s only so much a head coach can do — post-game “scorched earth” tantrums and all.
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