jarred vanderbilt

PHOENIX — Marcus Smart estimated he’ll be limited to about 20 to 25 minutes in his Lakers preseason debut Tuesday night against the Phoenix Suns as he returns from Achilles tendinopathy.

Speaking after the team’s shootaround Tuesday, the 31-year-old guard said the rash of Achilles injuries suffered by NBA stars recently — including three during the playoffs last season — made his initial diagnosis frightening, but he took a cautious approach with the Lakers staff to ensure he was ready for the season.

“It wasn’t scary in the fact of understanding that tendinopathy, we all kind of have it playing over the time,” said Smart, who is entering his 12th NBA season. “Just making sure you do everything you need to do, to make sure that you can get back out here, or to be able to say, ‘No, I can’t.’ So you got to test it, unfortunately, and you got to see where you’re at. So we’ve done all the tests on the court, off the court and we’re feeling fast, feeling good so we want to give it a shot.”

Guard Luka Doncic is also expected to make his preseason debut after he was on a modified training schedule following a busy summer spent with the Slovenian national team. Coach JJ Redick said Monday after practice that Doncic and the team’s training staff had yet to determine a minutes restriction on Doncic, but expects that the five-time All-Star will see an increased workload by the time he suits up again for his second preseason game.

The Lakers will follow Tuesday’s game in Phoenix with a game against Doncic’s former team, the Dallas Mavericks, in Las Vegas on Wednesday. Because of the back-to-back schedule, it’s likely Doncic will play again Friday at Crypto.com Arena against the Sacramento Kings.

Since they are playing four games in six days, the Lakers ruled out guard Gabe Vincent, forwards Rui Hachimura and Jarred Vanderbilt and center Jaxson Hayes for Tuesday’s preseason game.

Rookie guard Adou Thiero [knee] has progressed to on-court activities, the team announced Tuesday, after the second-round draft pick was battling swelling in a knee. He will be re-evaluated in two to three weeks.

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.

Reserve guard Jordan Goodwin is among the reserves who drew praise this season for their “banshee” style of all-out play.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

“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.

Lakers coach JJ Redick, an intense player during his NBA career, has helped foster the “banshee” style of play in his first season with the storied franchise.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

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.

Lakers forward Dorian Finney-Smith forces Timbewolves center Naz Reid to lose possession of the ball during Game 2 of their playoff series.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“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.

SAN FRANCISCO —  Nearly a week ago, Lakers coach JJ Redick and LeBron James spoke about the margins of the game, the things that help provide cushion and cover for a team when it’s not perfect. Both said, internally, there weren’t great options for the Lakers to extend those margins.

In some ways, only a massive roster reconstruction would fix the problem. James will always be 40. Anthony Davis will always have his issues in transition defense because of the way he crashes toward the hoop. The Lakers will always lose the mathematical battle because of their lower volume of three-point attempts.

But on Saturday, one player showed in his first 12 minutes of the season that he could provide the Lakers with a little more room for error.

Jarred Vanderbilt, out since Feb. 1 because of foot injuries, checked in during the second quarter of the Lakers’ 118-108 win over the Golden State Warriors and immediately made an impact, providing the Lakers with a much-needed boost only his unique skill set can provide.

Vanderbilt’s only bucket came on an offensive rebound, but he had three steals and four rebounds, extending possessions on the offensive end and closing them out on the defensive side.

It was these little things he provided that stood out as the Lakers turned in another 48 minutes of good basketball to win their third straight game.

Vanderbilt’s contributions proved valuable for a Lakers team that was forced to make Rui Hachimura a late scratch because of a calf injury.

Max Christie and Gabe Vincent, two other players tasked with helping the Lakers with the little things, defended Stephen Curry wonderfully, limiting the Warriors star to 13 points on four-for-17 shooting, missing all eight of his second-half attempts.

Davis dominated Golden State’s depleted frontcourt, which was missing Jonathan Kuminga and Draymond Green, for 36 points and 13 rebounds. James had 25 and 12 assists and Austin Reaves had 16 points and seven assists.

The Lakers continue their Grammy trip Monday in Charlotte.

The Lakers will begin a stretch of six consecutive road games with an unfamiliar sight — a nearly fully healthy roster.

The team will add a key rotation piece Saturday with Jarred Vanderbilt officially cleared and off of the injury report the team released Friday afternoon. If he plays, it’ll be his season debut.

“We’re not going to put him out there in any situation where he would get hurt,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said after Vanderbilt was cleared earlier this week. “And we don’t feel that’s the case right now. Any player that’s coming back from an extended period of time, there will be a minutes restriction. We’re not going to overuse him.”

Vanderbilt hasn’t played since he sustained a foot injury on Feb. 1, 2024. Vanderbilt attempted to return last season in the postseason, but he was unable to get back on the floor before the Lakers were eliminated in the first round of the playoffs.

In the offseason, he underwent surgeries on both of his feet, and while the team had hoped he’d be available early in the season, Vanderbilt said the recovery took around as long as he expected.

“It’s been a process, but I mean, you know credit to the staff, the guys, everybody in the organization for you know being patient and allowing me to heal and go through this full recovery process,” he said Wednesday. “But yeah, I feel like I’m in a good place now.”

Vanderbilt is a versatile defensive player and a strong rebounder, and when healthy, should help some of the Lakers’ issues in those areas.

Only veteran Christian Wood and seldom-used second-year guard Jalen Hood-Schifino are unavailable. Bronny James will not be with the Lakers at least for the start of their trip as he’ll play for the Lakers’ G League team.