LOS ANGELES – Now in his second season as head coach of the Los Angeles Lakers, JJ Redick has often mentioned the need for the Lakers to be in what he calls, ‘championship shape.’ The team has started off the 2025-26 season at 10-4 which is currently good enough for fourth place in the Western Conference. For Rui Hachimura, one of the Lakers’ starting forwards, that championship shape is crucial to compete in today’s NBA.
“It’s [the NBA] more physical, but I think it’s faster. Everybody wants to go fast now. 140-150 points is normal now. Everybody is scoring like that,” Hachimura said following Lakers’ shootaround on Tuesday morning. “We have to be in the shape like JJ’s been talking about, championship shape. We need to think about that every game, every day, practicing it in games and stuff. We’re trying to focus on that.”
Through the early-goings of the regular season, Rui Hachimura has done his best in terms of being in championship shape for the Lakers. He did miss his first game of the season during the Lakers’ win against the Milwaukee Bucks on Saturday due to a calf injury, but he reassured assembled media at shootaround on Tuesday that it wasn’t a major concern.
Hachimura has been the Lakers’ starting power forward and has appeared in 13 games at a little over 34 minutes per game, which is third on the team in minutes played behind only Luka Doncic and Austin Reaves. He’s been averaging a career-high 15.8 points, 3.8 rebounds and 1.2 assists with splits of 57.7 percent shooting from the field, 50 percent shooting from the 3-point line and 73.3 percent shooting from the free-throw line.
Hachimura is now one of the longest-tenured players on the team, having joined the Lakers via midseason trade with the Washington Wizards during the 2022-23 season. That year, he helped the Lakers make a surprising run to the Western Conference Finals amid being the No. 7 seed in the West.
With the Lakers set to take on the Utah Jazz on Tuesday night, a team that does like to play up-tempo and push the pace, Hachimura spoke about the challenge that brings and the kind of shape the team currently is in.
“That’s what we talk about. . .we talk about championship shape. It started this offseason, we talked about how the NBA is changing right now, fast-paced, being physical, you really have to run the whole game,” Hachimura said. “That’s going to be important for us to kind of focus on. I think our shape is pretty good right now. Everybody is back, our playing time is gonna be kind of a little bit spread out. I think with that, we can play harder.”
