Jordan Goodwin had done everything right by losing more than 20 pounds, dropping more than 10 percent of body fat, sleeping better, eating right and putting basketball ahead of all the trappings the NBA can offer.
He’d joined the Lakers in training camp on a non-guaranteed deal, a hamstring injury costing him a chance earn a spot on the roster. He’d bounced from Washington to Phoenix to Memphis in the early stages of his NBA career, but was now without consistent work. The Lakers had hopes for him — that he could be the kind of player critical to the culture JJ Redick and his coaching staff wanted to emulate by doing all the little things, by putting the team first and by making life hell for the other team whenever he took the court with his relentless effort.
Goodwin recovered from a hamstring injury while with the Lakers’ G League team and waited for his chance to get back into the NBA. On Feb. 7, he signed a two-way contract, making him eligible for the main roster. And then he got the formal assignment.
“Be a banshee,” Redick said.
A banshee?
Goodwin wasn’t sure if he should be offended or feel complimented.
“I had to look it up after he told me,” Goodwin said.
After one game, Redick was convinced that he’d found one, gushing as he described a possession Goodwin won for the Lakers by giving multiple efforts on the offensive glass.
“That’s just, that play embodies who he is,” Redick said. “And then he’s ripping his mask off and throwing it on the sideline twice. I mean, he’s a banshee.
“He’s a banshee, that’s why we like him.”
Months later as Redick walked toward his car parked near the loading dock at Crypto.com Arena, he thought about the things it would take for his team to advance out of the first-round of the playoffs. The Lakers had just beaten Minnesota 94-85 in Game 2 by winning loose balls, taking charges, fighting through screens and literally, in the case of Rui Hachimura, leaving blood on the court and in the hallways outside the team locker room.
It was the fewest points the Lakers had scored in a playoff win since 1991 — a real celebration of the banshee stuff the coaches had been preaching for months.
“It’s the only way we’re going to win,” he told The Times.
“Banshee” had become shorthand around the Lakers in Redick’s first season for the kind of attitude he wanted his team to have. It’s the name of the group chat Redick has with assistants Greg St. Jean, Beau Levesque, Ty Abbott and video coordinator Michael Wexler.
It was something St. Jean and Wexler used with their Phoenix co-workers as a catch-all scouting term for the type of player all coaches love, the kind who don’t care about anything other than winning and understanding the ugly stuff you have to do on the court to get that done.
The Lakers began the season by successfully getting Max Christie to fully buy in to the role. When Christie struggled early in the season, he was the first player to publicly get the “be a banshee” instructions. Redick has used the term to describe the Lakers’ video coordinators, to rave about Portland’s Toumani Camara’s defense and the impact of Jarred Vanderbilt’s return from injury.
And in speaking to his team, he brought visual aides.
In Gaelic lore, a “banshee” is a female spirit whose scream warns of impending death. In the Halo video games, it’s a combat aircraft. In the “Avatar” universe, it’s a type of mountain dragon. In “Star Wars,” it’s kind of a flying scorpion.
After using the term in news conferences, meetings and conversations around the Lakers’ facility all season, Redick and the coaches finally decided to define to the team in a meeting.
“We had slides!” Redick said, almost bragging.
Luka Doncic, who was in that meeting, remembered thinking that he’d never before heard the word outside of the very TV-MA Cinemax show “Banshee. (“Good show,” Doncic said.) LeBron James had never heard a coach describe players that way and didn’t think much of it.
Yet for the Lakers’ role players, that ethos give a uniform vision for the style and effort in which they should play. The Lakers wanted this to be a defining characteristic all season. Swapping D’Angelo Russell’s on-ball skills for Dorian Finney-Smith’s intangibles and off-ball play started the transformation. Getting Vanderbilt healthy bolstered it. Adding Goodwin and two-way center Trey Jemison III cemented it.
“I heard it in film one day, knew what it was from like folklore, but when he said it, the timing, it made sense,” Jemison said. “Being aggressive. Being a loud talker. I loved it. It makes me feel like I’m bringing value. Encouraging. Yelling. I’m always going to yell.”
And now that the Lakers are in a full-on fight with Minnesota in the playoffs, James, Doncic and Austin Reaves have played with that level of force, particularly in Game 2 when the Lakers’ defense and toughness defined the series-tying win.
“I think it’s the importance of having Doe and Goodie and guys that are naturally like that,” Redick said Tuesday of Finney-Smith and Goodwin. “And it goes back to a conversation we had as a team around the first Brooklyn game [in mid-January] and I talked about leadership and how everyone can lead in their own way. Banshee culture has to be pervasive for it to work. It can’t just be one guy. So you need guys that are going to lead on that and everyone else follows.”
Maybe the Lakers have been able to make this all a part of their identity because it’s always been a part of Redick’s identity.
“That’s why everybody hated him when he was at Duke. … For sure you remember how feisty he was,” James said.
Redick might not have been wrestling rebounds away like Goodwin or putting his chest into scorers like Vanderbilt and Finney-Smith, but he was constantly moving, consistently energetic and continually leaning and embracing the little things during the heights of his NBA career. After retiring, he didn’t stop feeding into being a basketball sicko — his words — or a full-on basketball psycho — his and his peers’ words.
Whatever the task in front of him, at the very least, Redick would fight for it.
After the Lakers won one of their ugliest playoff games in years Tuesday, James scoffed a little bit when asked about one of Redick’s on-court outbursts during Game 2. The four-lettered freak-outs, he said, aren’t that surprising from his coach. It’s just a sign of the seriousness and intensity he’s brought to the job.
And that he’s helped give to the team.
“We finally embodied the spirit and the demeanor of our head coach. That’s just how he is,” James told The Times. “He’s not about the bull—, about the sugar-coating. He understands. We’ve got to be tough. Like, we might not shoot the ball well every game, we might not do this or do that, whatever the case might be, but we’ve got to be … tough.”
They have got to be banshees. And the Lakers all know exactly what that means.