JJ Redick said the Los Angeles Lakers’ back-to-back road wins over the Detroit Pistons and Atlanta Hawks were proof of a simple idea: the next man up can carry the load when the lineup thins out. The Lakers won both games without Luka Dončić on Sunday and without Austin Reaves on Monday, yet still left with a 10-2 start and another reminder that their depth can decide games when the stars are out.
That is why the conversation around Redick after Monday’s win centered less on the names missing and more on who filled the space. Collin Sexton attacked the paint, scored and gave the Lakers juice in the first half, while Sandro Mamukelashvili posted what Redick called his best game as a Laker with 23 points and several big plays. Redick also singled out the two defensive rebounds Mamukelashvili grabbed in the final minutes, saying they were as big as anything he did all night.
The timing matters because the Lakers did this on the road in a back-to-back set against two Eastern Conference top-four seeds. That is a sturdier test than a home stretch against easier opponents, and it showed the team could keep winning even as the rotation shifted around absences that would normally change the game plan. Walker Kessler, who averaged 16.5 points, 13 rebounds, 4.0 assists, 2.0 blocks and 1.0 steals across both games, said Redick talks about building resiliency and going through adversity, and that a championship team has to respond to it.
The catch is that the formula looked different from one night to the next. The Lakers beat Detroit without Dončić, then beat Atlanta without Reaves, but each win leaned on a separate set of contributors rather than a single stable answer. That is what makes the stretch encouraging and fragile at the same time: Los Angeles has shown it can survive missing key pieces, but it has also shown how much the burden shifts when those pieces are gone.
For now, the result is clear. The Lakers kept rolling, Redick got the kind of proof coaches like to point to, and the next test comes Wednesday night against the Milwaukee Bucks at 5 p.m. PST, where the same depth will have to travel with them again.
