Lakers and Clippers games return to Los Angeles despite wildfire concerns

The NBA will return to its two Los Angeles arenas on Monday, Jan. 13, but the teams’ players and coaches will be thinking about more than just basketball. Concerns still linger about the wildfires in and around the city.

The Los Angeles Lakers will host the San Antonio Spurs Monday night at Crypto.com Arena in downtown LA, following two postponed games late last week.

After practice on Sunday, Jan. 12, head coach JJ Redick was emotional as he described returning to his Pacific Palisades home and seeing the neighborhood. The area lost more than 5,000 structures to the fires over 24 hours.

“I was not prepared for what I saw, it’s complete devastation and destruction,” Redick said. “I had to go a different way to the house and went through the village, and it’s all gone. And I don’t think you can ever prepare yourself for something like that.”

Redick continued, “Everything that we owned that was of any importance to us in almost 20 years together as a couple and 10 years of parenting was in that house. There’s certain things that you can’t replace, that will never be replaced. The material stuff is whatever. My family and I were processing the self-side, the individual side, of losing your home, and you don’t ever want to wish that on anybody. It’s an awful feeling to lose your home.”

Redick said he wants to coach Monday, if for no other reason than to take his mind off the tragedy for a few hours.

“We obviously want to give people hope and we wanna give people –– I don’t want to say a distraction –– but maybe an escape,” Redick said. “We talked about it before practice, it’s our responsibility, everyone in this building, to lead on this.”

Across town, the Los Angeles Clippers had one game postponed over the weekend. The team will host the Charlotte Hornets on Monday in their new arena in Inglewood. However, their thoughts are not 100% on the game.

“People are still barely getting sleep, some guys lost power, some guys got family stuff to figure out, some guys’ kids schools burned down. So, it’s bigger than basketball right now, way bigger than basketball,” said Clippers guard Terance Mann.

The NBA is still figuring out how to make up for the postponed games. Meanwhile, the National Hockey League is also working on making up last week’s postponed Los Angeles Kings game.