JJ Redick believes Walker Kessler has the potential to become an All-Star, but the Lakers coach knows it will take time for the big man to reach that level.
“We’ve got to take a bigger picture approach of certain things,” Redick said. “The same way we got to take a bigger picture approach with Cam and Adou, the same thing with Walker,” Redick said following Lakers’ practice on Monday. “He’s never played with a player like Luka [Doncic] before. He’s never really been tasked with being the anchor of the defense. These are things we think he can be, All-Star level. It’s gonna take time, it’s gonna be a process with him.”
For Kessler, handling the pressure that comes with playing for one of the NBA’s biggest franchises comes down to maintaining the right mindset.
“Yeah, you definitely have to remind yourself. But I think it’s just depending on how you look at it. You can look it at from two perspectives,” Kessler said after Lakers’ practice on Monday. “I think the more energy you give, the positive perspective of looking at the opportunity, the less time you spend worrying about the pressure.”
He added, “I’ve always been a big believer in you got to do what you do, you’ve got to learn. My rookie year, I came in the league just trying to learn. Learn as much information as I could to try and get better. So for me, I’m just gonna try to get better every day.”
Despite the many new faces Redick believes this year’s preseason has afforded him and the Lakers more opportunities to refine their execution.
“We’ve been able to take our time more in terms of teaching and installs,” Redick told reporters. “We’ve also been able to cover not only more special situations, like we had one today in our shootaround. It’s the third time we’ve covered that, so we’ve had time to kind of double and triple down on a lot of things that maybe we’ve only had one pass through last year before our first game.”